First Things Fifth

It occurs to me that maybe you lot (whoever you are) might want to know where I live. Not more pictures of the flat (that would get repetitive pretty quickly), but dull facts, figures and maps.

There, as you can see, is Switzerland. I am in Aarau, which is in the middle in the north, in the west of the light blue section (the light blue section being the canton of Aargau). I realise the map is too small to see, so try here for a better view. Aarau is the capital of Aargau, but in spite of that, the population of Aarau is only something around 15 000 people. This, for those of you who don't realise what I am saying, seems very small. I grew up in a town of 10 000 people, and although it may have provided some sort of quasi-idyllic childhood experiences, it was tiny and didn't have much stuff. There was no movie theatre, for example. Movies were held once a week or fortnight or something in the local Town Hall, where the seats were uncomfortable and it was always cold (I remember turning up there one night to find my friends, who shall remain nameless for their own sakes, wearing ugg boots and carrying blankets, and this was looong before it was socially acceptable to wear ugg boots in public. Not that it is, by the way). This being Europe, though, everything is closer than you think and 15 000 people is probably quite a few. There is a cinema (which I fully intend to frequent), there's a bunch of stuff, and far larger cities (Zürich, Basel) are only half an hour or so away.

There are a bunch of undoubtedly important historical features of Aarau, but me being Australian, I don't really care for all that vague stuff that allegedly happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago. For those of you that do, here are the (heavily edited) highlights:

• Aarau was apparently founded in 1240;


• There is a bunch of old stuff here (churches and so on);


• There's a river called the Aare;


• Aarau was once the capital (only for 6 months) of the Helvetic Republic (which was apparently what Switzerland turned into briefly during the late 1700s/early 1800s when those pesky revolutionary Frenchies got a bit fed up with their own back yard);


• Albert Einstein lived here for some time in the mid 1890s. Now there is a vaguely excellent cafe that bears his name and sells overpriced coffee;


• The mayor is a chap called Marcel Guignard. This is what he looks like:



• Aarau turns into a "carrot wonderland" (I'm not kidding, although I'm hard pressed to find a photo that proves it. You'll all just have to use your imaginations) in November at the annual Rüeblimart (carrot festival).
  

In order to help you cope with all those vowels, Aarau is pronounced something like "aah-row" ("aah" as in the moment of realisation, and "row" as in argument, or for those of you familiar with recent-ish political scandals in Australia, "row" as in "Rau" as in "Cornelia Rau"). Not "aroo" (like a dingo howling), not "arrow", not "aaargh" (like a pirate).