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Neuchâtel — Thoughts and Observations #8

Martha is now safely on her way back home and Sammy is enjoying an unusually long nap. I thought I would take this time to post some random bits:

  • It’s difficult to find non-white bread here without nuts and seeds baked into it. (Or, more accurately, the only brown bread I’ve found without nuts in it is crappy supermarket bread, good only for feeding to birds.) This would be a total non-problem if it weren’t for Sammy. Like all book-trained North American parents these days, we’re paranoid about food allergies in general and nuts in specific. I decided to take the plunge a couple of weeks ago and start slowly giving Sammy some of the local bread. After several meals involving different bread varieties and compositions, I think I can be confident that he doesn’t have a nut allergy. Now if only feed himself some other way than cramming his mouth full of food and then gagging when he swallows.
  • Internet banking here is a fair bit more secure than in North America. Along with our bank account info, we were given a RSA SecurID key. We need to input the current number whenever we log in (in addition to the username and password) and again whenever we make any kind of payment.
  • It took a while, but I finally found pita bread here. The packaging identifies it as “pain libanais”. This makes me wonder about the etymology of the word “pita”.
  • I also recently found, after much searching, some actual local microbrew. (Another post will have to be devoted to my opinion of Swiss beer. For now, let’s leave it that Switzerland is like North America in this respect: the beer you can get in the big stores is mostly crap.) The stuff I found is very tasty, but with lots of lees in the bottom. Care must be taken during pouring and drinking.

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