Sunday, October 24, 2010

A tour around our village

During the one day of awesome weather last week Jack and I decided to take a walk around our village so I could take you on a photo tour of where we live. 

Our village is tiny. According to wikipedia it is only 1 square mile, most of which is farm land. We have a population of just over 200, but in the few months I've lived here I have seen less than 50 people. We live right at the end of the village next to acres and acres of farm land. Here is the road to our house:


Jack threw a fit when he realized that he didn't have a camera. So I had to run back and get him one. Thankfully this road is seldom used:
Ready for our photo tour!
A view of the village and Lake Morat in the distance
One of several farms
Jack found a piece of trash he wanted to photograph
There are several signs warning of kids playing...but I've never seen these kids. They must keep them locked up all day
More signs of warning of the kids I've never seen:
Neighbors driveway











Where we pick up fresh apple juice
Only one box of apple juice left


Our town thrift store.
The guy who runs the thrift store also runs our town dump. We think that he just picks stuff out that villagers throw away and attempts to resell them at exorbitant prices. The white table shown here is $500!


Just as a side note, our village has no trash service. Every saturday we have to cart all our smelly, stinky trash down to the dump. 
 Here you sort all of your recyclable by paper, cans, bottles, glass, yard waste, etc.
Then anything that you can't recycle you have to put in this big bin and you pay per pound of trash. I think it is around $6/pound of trash. Kind of forces you to recycle to keep your trash costs low.
Now back to the tour: Here are some random concrete blocks. Not sure what these are, but they are all over the village and in the forest
Jack is getting tired of walking

Most of the homes here have a date of when they were built
This one is 1848

Here is a house built in 1818
Another view of the lake
Here is our village center.
We have a restaurant
And a winery
And a fountain
Walking back home


Done with walking!
Back inside, here is our living room where Jack likes to spread his toys out from wall to wall

The other side of the living room
Our view of the farms from the living room
Dining room
Our kitchen. Notice the wires hanging from the ceilings. Here the previous tenants take everything. Even the light fixtures. We haven't gotten around to putting up all the lights yet, and at this point we'll probably just leave it like this until we move (yep, I'm still voting to move out of this place once our 1 year lease is up)
Our stash of wines and liquor
Our tiny fridge which is actually huge by European standards.
Sirop is a popular kids drink here. You mix a little bit of sirop (comes in many flavors such as strawberry, grenadine, orange, iced tea, etc) with some water and voila you have a tasty drink

Jacks has learned that if he stands on a chair he can reach almost anything.
Amazing view of the alps from our window
But alas, most days here are so foggy we can't even see the neighbors across the street.
Sure enough, Friday morning the fog rolled back in.
And this was our view

And there you have it. Our little village.

2 comments:

  1. Fascinating. Especially about the trash - what a pain. Daisy loved the pictures of Jack. Thanks for posting. That's seriously it for your town? Are you in Neuchatel proper or is it a smaller city?

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  2. We live about 35 minutes from Neuchatel. In the area between Lake Neuchatel and Lake Morat. There is not much here, not even a train where we live... not even a bus for that matter. I think the cows and sheep far outnumber any people living in our village :)

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