It has been a soccer summer with the European games going on. For weeks it was everywhere. You pass a bar and hear a game. In the restaurant in Konstanz (an otherwise elegant place), the game was showing on a big screen TV. At Turnhalle, a bar in the courtyard of an old gymnasium where Jon’s co-workers like to go on Thursdays for a beer or a ‘Cuba Libre’ (rum and coke), a tent was set up with a TV and waves of cheers and moans washed over those outside. So it seemed fitting that Autodesk held its annual Soccer tournament in Switzerland this year and we were able to attend. The Neuchatel AD office is quite large and fields two teams. Gumligen is quite small and has no one who is even interested. Thus it was that Jon and I were able to borrow the company car and drive by ourselves to Neuchatel for the all-day event Saturday 7/7.
Once again, the theme of the year played out: things foreign may be interesting but they are also stress-inducing. After a week of facing minor everyday foreignnesses like not knowing what someone is saying to you or whether the change you’re getting back is correct, driving a strange car to a new place on roads with different signs wasn’t exactly a fun time. The games themselves were fun. We’ve begun to understand the rules a bit and although we knew almost no one there, we managed to meet a number of people and have some nice conversations.
Sunday was bike repair day. The tandem’s front tire had gone flat from a slow leak, the result of a failed old patch thus requiring a new tube. And it was caked with dirt from the muddy paths we’ve been on. All 3 bikes needed cleaning and oiling. And we needed a bit of body repair as well, a quiet at home day was definitely due.