Escaping to Neuchatel
When I was a graduate student, teaching at a university in the Southwest United States, we worked in drab, gray rooms filled with desks. To reinforce our mood there, we referred to these rooms as pens, as if we were animals, but one co-worker sought to escape the dullness of our environment with a large poster of Switzerland, featuring a town and a lake. The place had a sweeping panoramic view, with a dark blue lake and vivid, clear skies. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that the picture was taken in the town of Neuchatel, which has about eighty thousand people in the surrounding area, but only a few thousand over thirty in town. The town’s name means New Castle in Old French, but this place has been around for a long time — since the 11th Century, which was when the “new castle” of Neuchatel was built.
If you were to stay in one of the Neuchatel hotels, you’d find businesses and homes set on the shore of Lake Neuchatel, where the roads and tracks lead high up into the Jura mountain range. Not as mountainous as the Alps, but still hilly and steep, with valleys both rugged and deep. You’ll find nearby the River Doubs which is also in a gorge created by the Saut du Doubs waterfall and another lake, the Lac des Brenets.
With the history of the town only two years shy of a thousand years, Neuchatel has a lot to offer its visitors, containing an Old Town filled with interesting architecture, including 140 or so street fountains, dating as far back as the 16th Century. The Place des Halles holds a place to drink and converse in several cafes. The Maison des Halles, also from the 16th Century, overlooks the square. There’s also the magnificent Hotel de Ville, which is the Town Hall, built in 1790. The place abounds with museums and, if my co-worker’s wall poster is any indication, it’s a perfect place to relax, at least in my mind, far from the rigors of a graduate student’s life.