That little birdie on your shoulder? It’s me…

…tweeting away into the ether. Yes, I caved. I’m actually finding it pretty cool, although following people like Nicholas Kristof and Bill Simmons makes my own life seem hugely uninteresting (at least for the moment.)
If you have a Twitter account, you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/kaylamcculley.

 

Liberté et fraternité, indeed

The Neuchatel scholarship students took a trip on Saturday to meet our counterparts in Geneva and celebrate the anniversary of the "Fete de l'Escalade" which occurred in 1602. In an effort to reconvert the Protestant, Jean Calvin-controlled city, the French Savoyard army made a nighttime sortie over the city ramparts (l'escalade). The stalwart Swiss stood their ground, and the legend is that a villager now known as the "Mere Royaume" seized a hot cauldron of soup (la marmite) and poured it on the invading Savoyards to help rouse the city. Today the legend of la marmite lives on pinata-style: the two oldest and youngest members of the family are chosen to break a chocolate marmite, revealing marzipan candies. Since I was the youngest of all the scholars, at lunch I had the honor of slicing open the cauldron with a rousing "Ainsi perissent les ennemis de la République!" Thus perish the enemies of the Republic!

 

I’m now a D.A.R.E. graduate AND an expert on doping

Students in the law faculté can elect to enroll in a three-week seminar at the end of each semester, which is how I found myself in a class called “New Developments in the Fight Against Doping.”  It was taught by two of my Fulbright advisors.  Every seminar is based on intensive group work and a mock trial at the end.  Our practicum was a simulated Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) case of a Swiss-Italian marathoner facing two accusations, one for missing three doping tests and another for presence of a banned substance in his organism.  In my group of five, we represented Swiss Olympic, whose disciplinary chamber had rendered a suspension of six months with probation in the first instance ruling.  Our claim was probably the hardest to write, since this degree of sanction is in fact impossible and waaay more lenient than what is outlined in the Anti-Doping Code and international track and field Competition Rules.  Normally, the athlete gets slapped with a two-year ban for either a positive test or missing three controls in a period of 18 months.

On Thursday, the last session of class, we took an overnight field trip to the Federal Office of Sport and Training Grounds in Macolin where we would argue the actual case.  We stayed in a rather nice hotel/dorm overlooking the bilingual town of Bienne, and ate our meals alongside many Swiss athletes in the cafeteria.  I guess you could say it was like visiting the USOC training center in Colorado Springs or Carson, Calif.  In the morning, we presented the first round of pleas from all three parties – the athlete (Marco Pepperoni), the track-and-field federation, and Swiss Olympic.  In the afternoon, we took a two hour break and went to the gym to organize a “unihockey” tournament.  Since I had never heard of “unihockey” before, I went online the night before we left and found YouTube videos so I wouldn’t look like a complete rube.  I discovered that it is pretty popular in Switzerland and the Nordic countries.  Basically you take a whiffle ball, goals, and a plastic hockey stick and go at it.  Anyone who’s ever played with a whiffle ball knows that they rarely obey the laws of physics.  So it squiqqled and scooted around the gym, thwarting any attempts at possession, ball control, or shot accuracy.  It mostly resembles a game that a third-grade PE teacher would organize for hyperactive tots.

On Friday morning, we listened to a brief presentation about the whereabouts system from David Gervasi, a young Swiss decathlete.  He showed us the online platform that athletes use to update their training schedules, home addresses and even vacations so that they can be located at any time by doping controllers.  All the girls in class were totally focused on his, um, speech.  Mmhmm.  I mean, come on, look the guy’s picture on the left.  This bring my “Elite Decathlete Sighting” count to two.  Flying back to Claremont last January, the pilot announced that “Continental Airlines was proud to serve our reigning Olympic gold-medalist in the decathlon, Brian Clay!!”  (Cue the rubbernecking and rapturous applause.)  Minor celebrity sightings are way cool.

Finally to close out our seminar, the mock CAS panel rendered their sentence.  No proof of doping, but a one-year suspension for violating the three-strike whereabouts rule.  One-year instead of two, because the facts related to each missed test had some tweak to them that could represent a mitigating circumstance.  In a way, everyone lost since none of the appellants nor Swiss Olympic got the sanction that they were arguing for.  But I left with a small measure of satisfaction because the allegation of doping was dismissed, and that was the section of our claim I orated in front of the class.

 

Switzerland goes to the polls….

On Sunday the Swiss went to the polls to vote on a number of federal and cantonal referenda.  Props to the Swiss for holding their elections on a weekend to encourage voter participation, instead of on a Tuesday workday.  The most controversial ballot measure proposed a ban on the building of minarets, prayer towers on mosques.  And wouldn’t you know it, 57.5% of the voters agreed, with nearly two-thirds of eligible voters participating.  And this in Switzerland–neutral home of the UN, WHO, Red Cross, and unicorns.

In fact, Switzerland is a very conservative country.  So conservative that women in the Appenzell canton were not granted suffrage until 1990.  That’s not a typo, folks.  1990.  The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) that was behind the minaret measure commands widespread legitimacy.  There are a grand total of four minarets in the entire country.  Two more were proposed for future construction.  Minarets traditionally transmit the Islamic call to prayer, but this was already suppressed in Switzerland several years ago.  According to the SVP, minarets symbolize a muscular, political Islam that must be batted back from the frontiers of Western Europe.  Today minarets, tomorrow Sharia law.  Ironically, the vast majority of practicing Muslims in Switzerland emigrated from the Balkans, seeking political asylum from an intolerance-fueled conflict.  While Switzerland is one of the most benign and democratic countries in the world, support for the minaret ban demonstrated a not insignificant undercurrent of fear and xenophobia.  Sadly, it’s business as usual in the larger context of Western Europe’s bumbling attempts to integrate immigrants.

 

Zurich See, Zurich Do

Look who decided to take a break from Spain and come visit!

Two weeks ago I got the chance to visit Switzerland’s largest city with Evan, a friend from CMC who lives in Spain, and his high school classmate Brad who works in Basel.  The colored facades in the old-town district of Niederdorf and exterior gold clock faces reminded us all of Prague, albeit a more sterile (and expensive) version of Prague.  We started off the day with a healthy dose of Culture.  First up was the Fraumunster Church, home to five 30-foot tall stained glass windows by Marc Chagall.  The colors of each were a rich green, yellow, orange, red and blue, my favorite of the bunch.  Chagall accepted the project at the ripe age of 80, and after overseeing all of the construction he handpainted the black outlines on each of the windows.  By far the most attractive stained glass windows I’ve ever seen.  After being bowled over by the Catholic splendor at the Roman churches (see below), the Protestant austerity of Zurich’s churches was striking (with the exception of Chagall’s color explosion, a modern addition to the Fraumunster that certainly would have invited excommunication from the likes of John Calvin and Zwingli had they been made in the 1500s.)  Next we visited the Kunsthaus Museum to tour a special exhibit showcasing the works of Georges Seurat.  Not only were many of his famous pointilism works on display, but there were also lots of Seurat’s pencil and charcoal sketches.  We decided the next obvious step in our lives was to recreate Seurat’s largest tableau, La Cirque, with Jellybeans.  Definitely an express track to artistic fame and fortune. 

After lunch we wandered down Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping street in Zurich which oozed wealth with a capital W.  Audis, Porsches, Ferraris, oh my!  How do you translate “RECESSION” in Swiss German?  It was still fun to window shop, or as the French expression goes, “window lick.”  Bahnhofstrasse ends at the confluence of the Limmat River and Zurich See, or Lake Zurich.  The clouds had graciously cleared up enough for a great view of the Alps.  It never gets old, really, looking at those mountains.  I can’t wait to start ski classes so I can really experience the Alps!

After a little interwebs research at the Apple store for dinner recommendations, we made our way to Zueghauskeller restaurant, a sprawling Teutonic tavern housed in the 400-year-old armory.  The fare was standard, yet tasty German staples like bratwurst, rosti and wienerschnitzel.  Afterwards we all caught our separate trains home.  Better get crackin on that Jellybean Seurat if we have any hope of buying ourselves a Swiss timepiece.

 

Sports, illustrated.

At the Sports Studies Centre on Friday, sounds of a debate between two colleagues came drifting across the hall into my office.  The essential argument put forth was that from a fan’s point of view, sports like soccer and hockey are inherently more fun to watch because the action is continuous, fluid,  whereas, say, a game like tennis is point. stop. point. stop.  Too many interruptions written into the rules.  I suppose there is some truth to that, but then again I’ve never found myself shaking my fist at the TV during a tennis match yelling “Get on with it, will you?!”  This is why it so hard to compare what are essentially apples and oranges.  It is precisely these differences that makes sport so enthralling (and why a money pit like the Olympic Games continues to be viable.)  Nowhere is this diversity more evident than in my coursework – I have read legal cases dealing with hockey, wrestling, volleyball, soccer, boxing, swimming, diving, Formula One racing, snowboarding, skiing, and judo.  In my Sociology of Sport class, I’ve even learned about ancient games like pankration, jeu de paume and la soule, an antiquated form of rugby that opposed two neighboring villages in an attempt to place a ball (la soule) in front of the other’s church.  From what we can decipher in the historical records, the action played out irrespective of both human mortality and geographic limitations.  Seems like a Monty Python sketch waiting to happen.

I run into this dilemma all the time when I try to describe lacrosse to Swiss people.  I tell them how lacrosse is like a combination of soccer, basketball and hockey.  Well, it is, and it isn’t.  Five minutes into a discussion about lacrosse with my colleague, a Ph.D. candidate who has studied sports for the past ten years, he stopped, furrowing his brow.  “Wait, you play this game on ice, non?  It is just an adaptation from hockey, c’est ca?”  Sheesh.  Other conversations have gone something like this:

Me: “See, you’re running with this stick that has a sort of…basket-like net on the end…”  (Here is where the French gets a little dicey.)

Them: … (Slowly nodding, looking at me as if I landed on Planet Earth ten minutes ago) …

Still, it is fun to play the “Could professional athlete X be just as good playing in a totally different sport?” game.  Apparently, Lebron James has been ruminating on this very same question, too.  Maybe the whole “Chosen One” persona has gone to his head.  But even Lebron had to admit that the skills and fitness required for a stint in the NFL alongside his basketball career would probably not be the best idea.  (Unfortunately, THE Number 23 himself did not have such reservations back in the 90s when he tried his hand at baseball.  How ’bout those Double A Birmingham Barons, eh?)  All this comparing business reminds me of a George Carlin sketch called “Baseball vs. Football,” which can be found here for your viewing pleasure.

 

Separation

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

— W.S. Merwin

 

Roman Holiday*

The last three hours spent reading blogs about life in the Foreign Service have inspired me to finally catch up with updates on my own cosmopolitan life–so it’s off to Rome!  Well, before touching down in Italy I should mention that the takeoff from Geneva was easily the most beautiful plane experience I’ve ever had.  With the late afternoon sun dipping behind the French Alps, we

Evan and I at the Capitoline

crossed the length of Lac Léman before making an S-maneuver that displayed Mont Blanc in all its glory.  My brother is on a Kenyon study abroad program with a concentration in history/art history, so Mom and Dad seized the opportunity to take their own vacation along the Amalfi Coast before coming to the Eternal City at the same time I visited–a veritable McCulley family reunion in Rome.

Thursday Oct. 29 I met the ‘rents at Termini Station and we hopped on Bus 40 across town (the same bus that I took everyday last summer to the EU Summer School, which, it should be mentioned, is an experience that provides a fair representation of what a sardine must feel like).  Evan’s apartment building looks out over Piazza Navona, an oblong public square home to Bernini’s “Four Rivers” sculpture and the favored site for political manifestations.  (“Say NO to egomaniacal, self-immunity-granting, lecherous politicians! Vote NO on Berlusconi in 2011!!”)  For dinner we headed across the Tiber to Trastevere.  I am borrowing from Evan’s own description of this special Italian trattoria: “We walked to the foot of the Janiculum Hill to eat at Da i 2 Ciccioni (literally, Two Fat Guys).  Truly a hole-in-the-wall spot, the owner and chef Gianni cooks whatever he feels like making that night and serves it to whoever happens by his kitchen. We started with bruschetta, spicy mashed potatoes, and beans before moving to heaping plates of pasta carbonara with pancetta and rigatoni alla’ amatriciana (spicy tomato sauce with guanciale, pig’s cheek).  The secondi plates consisted of wonderfully moist and flavorful chicken sauteed in white wine, garlic, and rosemary…”.  Two Fat Guys was certainly a memorable meal, although its hole-in-the-wall anonymity may disappear since Gianni’s kitchen was recently scooped by the NYT’s travel writers.

The following morning, we shopped at the Campo de Fiori market for dinner fixins, and crossed town to tour the Villa Borghese museum.  I missed out on this museum in summer 08, so I was particularly looking forward to its collection of Bernini sculptures and pinacoteca, painting gallery.  And the Borghese definitely delivered.  The famous pieces here include Bernini’s “Rape of Persephone,” “David” and “Apollo and Daphne,” which were truly masterful works.  It is impossible to imagine these sculptures, so full of movement and emotion, as big hunks of rock transformed by the strength and precision of one man and a chisel.  Exiting the Villa and traversing its expansive park, we arrived at the top of the Spanish Steps just in time to catch the sunset behind St. Peter’s Basilica.

Saturday…All Hallow’s Eve!  The morning started off as all mornings should, really, nursing a cappucino at the Caffe Sant’Eustachio and rubbing elbows with other Romans crowded around the bar.  Then it was on to the Capitoline Museum, next door to the Forum with curiosities like a GIANT Marcus Aurelius bronze and dozens upon dozens of ancient busts.  SEGUE-WAY!  I would rate myself as about a 5 on a superstitious scale, with ONE being “I am a kooky cat lady who owns no less than three black cats and could not care less that they constantly cross my path” and TEN being somewhere in the rabbit’s foot-carrying/lucky underwear-wearing domain.  I’ll avoid walking under ladders and the like…For visitors to Rome, it is said that if you toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain you are ensured a return trip at some point in the future.  Well, in my case it evidently had worked, seeing I was now back in Rome just over a year after my EU program in summer 08.  I was so worried during our whole visit of the Capitoline because the night before we had sought out the Fountain, stopped to take pictures even! without so much as digging in our pockets for a centime to launch.  Would this be last time I would get to see this city? I asked myself with a sense of dread.  Superstition had gotten the better of me, on Halloween no less.  Well, long story boring, I called a family meeting and insisted we return.  Needless to say, the hordes of turisticos and cheap vendors hoping to exploit said turisticos at the Trevi Fountain are enough to make one never want to come back to Rome, but we all made our appropriate coin offering and dreamed of the next time we would have pasta carbonara as good as Gianni’s.

*Yes, it’s a cliché, I know.  So sue me.  I’m tired.

Mom and Dad at the Capitoline

Trevi Fountain

 

Lyon: Great food, great football team, great fun!

Streets in Vieux Lyon

Two weeks behind and two trips to catch up on…starting with Lyon, the second-largest city in France and only three hours away by train.  Leaving from work on a Friday afternoon, I met up with a good friend from Pomona, at Lyon Part Dieu train station.  Kush is working in Brittany as an English language assistant, a program offered by the French government, and his week-long fall break had just started.  Exiting the frenzied train station, we walked the six blocks to where we would be staying for two nights–with Katrin and Ingolf, hosts that I had found on CouchSurfing.  For my first CouchSurfing experience, it was definitely a success.  (SEE Mom and Dad!?)  After greeting them and dropping off our bags, Kush and I headed into Vieux Lyon to sample some of the vaunted Lyon cuisine for dinner.  Food here is characterized by rusticity and using seasonal ingredients–lots of la chasse (game), organ meats, cassoulet and heaping salads.  On the train ride over, I had been listening to the audiobook version of Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France, so I was practically drooling by the time I arrived.  These past few months in Europe have taught me that the best travel companions, above all, must have an appreciation for good food.  Everyone else can take a hike!

On Saturday morning, our CS host Ingolf, an avid cyclist, lent us bikes and we took off on a two-hour bike tour of the city.  We passed through the Parc de la Tete d’Or, with its small enclosures of elk, giraffes and flamingoes and followed the Rhone riverbank before crossing onto the Ile de la Cité and Vieux Lyon.  Every so often Ingolf would stop and narrate about a particular landmark or show us inside les traboules, hidden staircases that were once used as passageways for silk workers to bring the silk safely from their workshops to the market.  We had perfect weather and by vélo was a fascinating way to see the city.  In just one morning, I practically felt like a local!  At lunchtime, Kush and I headed for Les Halles de Paul Bocuse, a glorious modern food market named for the many Michelin-starred father of Lyon cuisine.  We saw oyster bars, cheesemakers, butchers and of course the boulanger and chose some bread, ham and cheese.

During the afternoon, we rode a funicular up to the church of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, Lyon’s version of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris.  From our panoramic perch we could see the Alps beckoning in the distance, but I wasn’t ready to head back to Switzerland just yet.  That evening Kush and I met up with Pierre, Kush’s host brother from a high school trip to Lyon and several of his French friends to celebrate one of their birthdays.  Alex, the honoree/organizer had found perhaps the only restaurant in Lyon that could manage to corral 22 people into a room and successfully serve such a rowdy group Alsatian-style pizzas and wine/beer.  We switched seamlessly into French mode, our language ability following the standard bell-curve relationship between number of drinks consumed and aptitude for conversing in French.  Fun was had by all.

On Sunday, after a quick trip to the market to buy flowers as a way of thanking Katrin and Ingolf for their generosity, Pierre picked us up and drove to his family’s house a short ways outside of Lyon, so that Kush could have a chance to reunite with his host mother/father.  They were kind enough to invite me along.  I can attest that Jean-Pierre and Christine just might be some of the nicest people I have ever met, French or otherwise.  It didn’t hurt that their charming house was also home to the cutest tabby cat and cutest Golden Retriever named Sylvain, an embarassment of riches when it comes to adorable pets for one family.  Christine served us a decadent lunch: wine from Jean-Pierre’s homeland of Bordeaux, pot-au-feu, a splendid cheese plate with Roquefort, Reblochon, Saint-Nectaire and a chèvre, topped off with an oozing fondant au chocolat.  After taking Sylvain out for his afternoon walk, Jean-Pierre and Christine kindly drove us all back to the train station, where both I and Pierre were departing back home, he to Metz and I to Neuchatel.  FACT: I love Lyon.

Kush and I with his host family: Pierre on the left and Jean-Pierre on the right.

 

Spain : Switzerland :: Night : Day

Thanks to the wonders of European budget airlines (and no classes Thurs or Fridays), I took a weekend trip to Madrid to visit my friend Evan and celebrate his 23rd birthday in style.  I was very thankful to have had the opportunity to travel to Madrid two years ago with my friend Iris, and check off all the important sightseeing spots like the Prado, the Royal Palace, Plaza Mayor and Guernica.  This was decidedly not that kind of trip.  Instead this is what Evan, his roommate Kyle, our friend Marco from Germany who was also crashing at their apartment, and I did, for four days straight:

8-9 PM  Prepare glasses of 1 euro Don Simon vino mixed with Fanta and munch on apps at the apartment

10 PM  Dinner: the first night, delicious tapas in the Sol area; Friday and Saturday some home cookin; and finally the best doner kebap I’ve ever had in Europe…made even more tasty by the one-hour journey it took us to find it off the Plaza Embarjadores.  I was incredibly envious of how cheap food was in Spain compared to Switzerland.  Arrgh.

11 PM – 1 or 2 AM  Bars. Mingling!

2 – 5 or 6 AM  Discothéca!  (TECHNO BEATS EUROTRASH TECHNO BEATS EUROTRASH)  Màs dancing!

6 AM  Taxi home, sleep until 2 in the afternoon, lunch, naptime, RINSE AND REPEAT

Along the way, I met several of the other ETA Fulbrighters, and grew envious of their active social life in Madrid.  Well, mainly the fact that they have one, and I don’t.  Going out is apparently a non-state of being for Swiss people, even the students here in Neuchatel, as far as I can tell.  Unless there is some underground cave accessed only by an unmarked door in town that I don’t know about yet, my life stays pretty quiet and independent on weekends.  I’m guessing people go clubbing in Geneva and Zurich, places for all the wealthy and fahbulous jet-setting crowd that can afford a night out on the town.  Eh bien, c’est la vie.  My Saturdays and Sundays are productive in other ways, like visiting markets, hiking or running by the lake and admiring the Alps in the distance.  Maybe not as exciting, but certainly fulfilling.  In any case I’m already dreaming of my next visit to Espagna, or trying to plan trips elsewhere with Evan, Kyle and Marco.  Thanks guys for a great weekend!  I’ll try and put up a few pictures taken by more camera-savvy friends soon, to give this post a little more liveliness, à la Madrid.  Cheers!