La pendaison de la crémaillère
Although I've been living in my new apartment since mid-October, it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I finally felt ready to throw a proper housewarming party. In French, a housewarming party is a Pendaison de la crémaillère, which translates to something like "hanging of the trammel." According to the internet, a trammel is a thing that you put in your fireplace which can be adjusted to hold a pot at different heights. Presumably, in the past, one could only truly say that they had moved into a new home when they had put this very important piece of cooking apparatus in the new fireplace. At any rate, nowadays I don't think anyone has any idea what a crémaillère is or why you would be hanging it, but the phrase survives.
So, despite the fact that my apartment is pretty tiny, I decided to invite everyone I know in Switzerland (aka my labmates, my boss, and the administrative assistant) to my home for an evening of merrymaking. Upon being invited, many of my labmates asked if there was something they could bring to the party. Of course, I suggested that they just bring a desire to enjoy themselves and maybe something to drink, but many felt that wasn't enough. They suggested that it was traditional that people should bring some sort of item to help me setup my new apartment. Of course, I didn't invite anyone over until I had essentially everything I needed to be properly setup, so I couldn't think of anything for people to bring.
Fortunately, I had been to a pendaison in Grenoble when I went to visit Loren a couple of months ago, so I stole an idea from there. I gave all my friends blank note cards and asked them to fill them out however they pleased and then bring them to the party so that I could make a big collage. Although not everyone completed their task, I got enough creative responses that I was able to make something cool out of it. So, with no further ado:
Fig. 1: The collage.
If you click on the picture, you can see a full-size version which gives you a lot more detail. Most of the cards are pretty self-explanatory, but here are some brief explanations.
The top middle piece was made by my labmate Marc, who apparently remembers me complaining once or twice about just how awful the Swiss apartment management companies (régies) are. The various pictures and logos are all of different régies in the area, and the bulls eye will come in handy if I ever have to apply for another apartment again (god forbid). The top right piece was made by my administrative assistant and is absolutely awesome. In case you are wondering, the photo she used is the "mugshot" that EPFL took of me for my ID. I always have great ID photos. The bottom center is a group of postcards that one of my labmates, Bernard, bought for me as an example of "typically Swiss humor." Translations:
In other news, I've been working really hard lately on my French. I guess I realized that I just haven't made the progress I was hoping to make up to this point and that if I was going to get any better I would have to be proactive about things. Towards that end, me and my officemate Jens -- still German -- have instituted "French Thursdays." The idea is that we get together for dinner and then maybe watch a French movie, or play a game, or something, the whole time speaking in French. Last Thursday it was my turn to host and we were fortunate to have one of our labmates, Mirjana, join us as well. To work on our French (Mirjana is much better than Jens and I, but she humored us by going along with our plans), we played a little bit of Taboo Junior -- in French.
Fig. 2: The Taboo Junior game, en français. Exciting french vocabulary lesson: the hourglass timer is called a "sablier" from the word "sable" for sand.
If you have never played Taboo before, here's how it works: a word is written on the top of a card and below it is a list of "taboo" words. The idea is for you to get your teammates to guess the word at the top without saying any of the words on the list. Of course, the words listed below are chosen to make the whole process as difficult as possible, so it really forces you to be creative. I remember one time giving the clue, "these things were put there by aliens," which, as Matt guessed correctly after about half a second, is a great way to describe "the pyramids" without saying "Egypt," "pharoahs," "built," or a couple other useful words. Although I can't claim to be the Taboo expert that my friend Monzy is, I would like to think that I am pretty good so I was definitely looking forward to playing.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of things about Taboo Junior that make it somewhat less than fun. First, there is the fact that there are only two taboo words, not four or five like in the normal version. Looking over the cards, it looks like they just picked two words out of the four or five on the normal card without any real thought. As an example, one of the cards visible in the picture is cochon -- pig. The two words you can't say are "pink" and "corkscrew." Of course, you can say "animal" and "oink" and "pork" and lots of other words, so for the most part, we didn't find the "taboo words" very constraining at all. Still, they were frequently helpful in giving us clues as to what the "guess word" was when we didn't know what it meant. Also, the "categories" are things like animals, school items, household items, and clothing. As useful as these are for helping build vocabulary, they don't really require a lot of creativity. It is definitely more difficult and more interesting to try to define adjectives, adverbs, phrases, etc. Still, it was a lot of fun and I look forward to playing again.
I heard through the grapevine that little Alexander wanted to see more photos of his Unkie Paul and less photos of police reports and windex bottles, so this is for him. I went to Grenoble this weekend to visit Loren and since the weather was so nice on Saturday, we had no choice but to go skiing. Here I am on the ski lift, looking sharp.
Fig. 3: I got my stunna shades on.
So, despite the fact that my apartment is pretty tiny, I decided to invite everyone I know in Switzerland (aka my labmates, my boss, and the administrative assistant) to my home for an evening of merrymaking. Upon being invited, many of my labmates asked if there was something they could bring to the party. Of course, I suggested that they just bring a desire to enjoy themselves and maybe something to drink, but many felt that wasn't enough. They suggested that it was traditional that people should bring some sort of item to help me setup my new apartment. Of course, I didn't invite anyone over until I had essentially everything I needed to be properly setup, so I couldn't think of anything for people to bring.
Fortunately, I had been to a pendaison in Grenoble when I went to visit Loren a couple of months ago, so I stole an idea from there. I gave all my friends blank note cards and asked them to fill them out however they pleased and then bring them to the party so that I could make a big collage. Although not everyone completed their task, I got enough creative responses that I was able to make something cool out of it. So, with no further ado:
Fig. 1: The collage.If you click on the picture, you can see a full-size version which gives you a lot more detail. Most of the cards are pretty self-explanatory, but here are some brief explanations.
The top middle piece was made by my labmate Marc, who apparently remembers me complaining once or twice about just how awful the Swiss apartment management companies (régies) are. The various pictures and logos are all of different régies in the area, and the bulls eye will come in handy if I ever have to apply for another apartment again (god forbid). The top right piece was made by my administrative assistant and is absolutely awesome. In case you are wondering, the photo she used is the "mugshot" that EPFL took of me for my ID. I always have great ID photos. The bottom center is a group of postcards that one of my labmates, Bernard, bought for me as an example of "typically Swiss humor." Translations:
- Top left: (Store name: "The strike of the foot in the ass") The shop of Mr. Jeannot, the last buttkicker in Paris. Small businesses of times long ago.
- Top right: The end of the lake. The ancients believed that the lake was flat, like the earth and that if you went to the edge, you would fall into the emptiness
- Bottem left: Hunting, fishing, and tradition. A memorable flan hunting party.
- Bottom right: Mrs. Bemolle's class of hyperactives.
In other news, I've been working really hard lately on my French. I guess I realized that I just haven't made the progress I was hoping to make up to this point and that if I was going to get any better I would have to be proactive about things. Towards that end, me and my officemate Jens -- still German -- have instituted "French Thursdays." The idea is that we get together for dinner and then maybe watch a French movie, or play a game, or something, the whole time speaking in French. Last Thursday it was my turn to host and we were fortunate to have one of our labmates, Mirjana, join us as well. To work on our French (Mirjana is much better than Jens and I, but she humored us by going along with our plans), we played a little bit of Taboo Junior -- in French.
Fig. 2: The Taboo Junior game, en français. Exciting french vocabulary lesson: the hourglass timer is called a "sablier" from the word "sable" for sand.If you have never played Taboo before, here's how it works: a word is written on the top of a card and below it is a list of "taboo" words. The idea is for you to get your teammates to guess the word at the top without saying any of the words on the list. Of course, the words listed below are chosen to make the whole process as difficult as possible, so it really forces you to be creative. I remember one time giving the clue, "these things were put there by aliens," which, as Matt guessed correctly after about half a second, is a great way to describe "the pyramids" without saying "Egypt," "pharoahs," "built," or a couple other useful words. Although I can't claim to be the Taboo expert that my friend Monzy is, I would like to think that I am pretty good so I was definitely looking forward to playing.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of things about Taboo Junior that make it somewhat less than fun. First, there is the fact that there are only two taboo words, not four or five like in the normal version. Looking over the cards, it looks like they just picked two words out of the four or five on the normal card without any real thought. As an example, one of the cards visible in the picture is cochon -- pig. The two words you can't say are "pink" and "corkscrew." Of course, you can say "animal" and "oink" and "pork" and lots of other words, so for the most part, we didn't find the "taboo words" very constraining at all. Still, they were frequently helpful in giving us clues as to what the "guess word" was when we didn't know what it meant. Also, the "categories" are things like animals, school items, household items, and clothing. As useful as these are for helping build vocabulary, they don't really require a lot of creativity. It is definitely more difficult and more interesting to try to define adjectives, adverbs, phrases, etc. Still, it was a lot of fun and I look forward to playing again.
I heard through the grapevine that little Alexander wanted to see more photos of his Unkie Paul and less photos of police reports and windex bottles, so this is for him. I went to Grenoble this weekend to visit Loren and since the weather was so nice on Saturday, we had no choice but to go skiing. Here I am on the ski lift, looking sharp.
Fig. 3: I got my stunna shades on.That about brings everyone up to date. Sorry for the huge delay between blog posts, I just haven't had much time or energy to write anything. I think the next post will probably be work-related, but after that I am short of ideas. Anyone have anything they want to know? Any questions about Swiss people?
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