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Neuchâtel — Thoughts and Observations #4

  • After 7 days, today I finally saw not one, but TWO other lone men pushing baby strollers. While it remains nowhere near as common as in Toronto, I feel somewhat less alone now.
  • I had my first communications failure today. Among my list of things to get today were measuring spoons. I searched the kitchen gear section of the neighbourhood big store and found everything but measuring spoons. Feeling cocky, I approached an employee and said (or, more accurately, tried to say), “Pardon moi, mais mon français n’est pas très bonne. Avez-vous cuillères pour mesurer, s’il vous plait?” The poor lady made it clear that she didn’t understand me (saying “Je ne comprende pas”), but got that I wanted some kind of spoon. Seeing that I had a baby, she asked, “Pour le bébé?. Knowing that I wanted these spoons for mixing baby food, and not grasping the implications of my answer quickly enough, I said, Oui, oui — pour mon bébé.” She then showed me every kind of baby feeding spoon they had (which were many…), and I couldn’t get her to understand what I really wanted. Eventually I gave up, said “Merci”, and left.
  • I’ve been up both funiculars now, and they’re pretty neat and very useful. One connects the lakeshore/city centre to the train station, and the other directly connects the city centre’s pedestrian zone with the residential area further up the mountain. Both cost CHF 1.90 to ride, or access to them is included with a transit pass.
This was written by Quentin Blasingame. Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010, at 10:12. Filed under Switzerland. Tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.