Everyone stood at the side of the road to watch. Clowns gave out candy. A procession came up the central, main st. with the commune flag. The village girls lay out piles of sawdust every metre and put an egg on each one for ~ 100m. They had a measuring stick to make sure the eggs were evenly spaced! A man dressed in a white chef's outfit, carrying a huge basket of sawdust, stood at one end of the line of eggs. He will be known henceforth as the 'egg catcher'. Two village boys actually did the race. One had to run 1 km in each of the 4 cardinal directions, pick up a huge, cardboard number and bring it back to the line of eggs. He was followed by a girl on a horse. The other boy was the 'egg thrower'. Once the race started, he just went up and down the line, picking up the eggs off the piles and throwing them to the egg catcher, who would try to catch them with the basket of sawdust. As he worked his way up and down the egg line, the girls would come down replacing eggs, giving him more to throw. It didn't seem to matter if the eggs were caught by the egg catcher. Eggs went short, eggs went long, eggs went into the crowd. The egg thrower had some set number of eggs to throw before the boy returned with all the numbers. Walter was told the running boy represented winter and the thrower represented spring. In the end, the thrower won the race by a matter of seconds before the boy returned with the last number. That's why we're very hot and bothered at the moment. Allie and Toby watched the whole thing. They were remarkably interested yet non plussed. The photos are rather small as they were taken on Walter's phone.
That contrasts with our 'foire' (fair). The commune main st. was very crowded with the ubiquitous stall that seems to be found all over the (western) world these days: Incense, candles, knockoff sunglasses, jewellry, trinkets, crap toys at childrens' eye level, crafty geegaws, knitwear... These were interspersed with tasty cured meats and other gastronomic treats, plenty o' wines and dried fruits. The Saint Blaise marching band had us rocking out to the 'Rocky' and 'Police Academy' themes (they played really well), while they walked up the main st. The frites were extremely tasty, and we even sat with some neighbours and had (somewhat of) a conversation. Something they mentioned was the 'tradition' that most of the local youths have now. If you can picture this, the area around our apartment is quite open and devoid of traffic. The road up to it is a dead end and the church owns a huge piece of unused ground. When we went out in the morning, there were a few teenage boys dressed in hoodies, sitting around. When we returned at lunch time, there was a full scale battle going on outside our front door. Boys with huge backpacks and replica guns (pellet style) were hiding, shooting and telling us we couldn't come up the street because they were fighting! Very few of them had protective eyewear on, and we certainly didn't. Apparently, last year was even worse, so a police man was assigned to watch our area. We saw him enjoying the raging battle. I took a couple of photies, which seemed to alarm some of the youths... hehehe. Imagine seeing this in the US....
The StB marching band.
Today, we went to the Fete d'Absinthe in the lovely commune of Boveresse in the Val-de-Travers. I thought it was nice here, but the scenery is stunning there. That's why I didn't take any pics. I can never capture the beauty of the surroundings. This site does a good job of explaining the festival (although last year's) and has some nice pics. The boys weren't that interested, but there was a little train and some Llamas to keep them somehwhat occupied. We didn't try any, but we did procure a couple of wee bottles to taste. THere's a specialized way of drinking this stuff, which includes special spoons, glasses and decanters. We didn't have time to look. On the way home, Walter wanted to stop at the Cherry festival in Chez-le-Bart. Sadly, we were too early. No cherry pie for us :(
I have no idea what fetes are on next weekend. Maybe we'll just go for a swim in the lake. It's clear, clean and warming up nicely, BUT all the ducks that occupy it have some kind of tick that's best washed off when one exits the lake. You must always remember to take a shower at one of the many there when you're done.
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