A Study in Neutrality

Saturday, March 22 I snagged the 8:20 train leaving Sion and was surprised to see that the train marked the transition from French speaking Switzerland to German Suisse: the order of station announcements swapped (French, German, English to German, French, English). Back to more orchards, but this time with direct sunlight! In Visp, I swapped platforms for the train to Zermatt and found myself in the midst of a Chinese tour group.  It must've been a mixed language group because the tour guide did all his explaining in English, lucky me 😆 I eavesdropped while he explained about their day plan in Zermatt (including a 30 minute ride to the Gornergrat observatory and a 30 minute stay up there), how the current Toblerone packages are forbidden from using the actual likeness of le Cervin / Matterhorn and was able to catch pieces of his recounting of the Quartz Crisis in Switzerland which resulted in the founding of the SWATCH brand.   The little train had huge windows to obser...

 Friday, March 21 Today was a quick one at the office: after watching a scientist’s presentation of a year’s worth of work from my office, I quickly zipped across the street to observe something in the lab.   Sadly, I missed all the action but it was good to get a debrief on how things went, the upcoming plan, and to ask follow up questions; plus I got to chit chat with the assistant scientists in the lab for a bit, which was a lot of fun. We ended up chitchatting about travel ideas because one of them had spotted me walking to the office this morning with my suitcase. In response to my Iceland plans, he mentioned that he'd spotted the aurora borealis in Zurich last year! Lunch featured a "hot dog", a Swiss schüblig on a brioche bun with coleslaw and a curry sauce: it was a tasty treat 😋 It felt a bit strange to eat a hot dog not covered in chili with a knife and fork but I was pleased with the result.  After lunch, I put together an update of what I've done in my 1s...