Valangin

by Jess

 

Valangin has been a fleeting and frustrating place- merely a blip in my peripheral vision – until today. I always say to Jon, as it goes whizzing by and I’m craning my neck to get a last peek of the impressive castle, “We should really gooo there.” Then, the next time we’re escaping foggy Neuchatel to find sunshine in the higher city of Chaux de Fonds, we come out of the tunnel and, whooosh, there goes the castle and the turn-off. So, it came down to making a plan specifically to go, and today was the perfect time. First, I dragged Jon to run with my boxing club in Chanet, which is a village up in the hills. The downside of this was that we had to run up hills BACKWARDS. The upside, however, was that to get back to Neuchatel we drove the other way, and therefore didn’t miss the exit yet again.

Many people are complaining about the weather in Switzerland, but I couldn’t be happier. I detest winter. Sunny, warm days meant we explored the village after our obligatory Cappuccino-Carac pit-stop, and enjoyed sites like these:

             

Archway leading to castle.  

         

Home with antique grain pulley.

  

12th Century Castle

                                                                         
Duck in stone wall.

Valangin has been documented for reasons of religious history. A set of records from 1547 to 1558 show the rural peasants’ aversion to the new Reformed Protestant faith, and the village is cited as the best example of how “ordinary people” received the new faith. At the time, a “morals court,” called a consistory, existed to guilt people into acting in the ways deemed “proper” by the new faith. City people were receptive to the change, but rural peasants were quite the opposite. When the local people proved to be rather stubborn and deaf to mere preaching, the court resorted to public acts of humiliation, fines and prison, and eventually, after some decades, succeeded in changing people’s behavior. Fast forward to today, and I see this temperament is still kicking. The Swiss, and especially people from Neuchatel, are often said to be trying to ignore the rest of the world, and avoid external influences and changes. Or, as its sometimes called, “hedgehogging.” If you strip this cultural stereotype of its negative tones, there is a truism. As annoying as their pride may be to me at times, these are a people who have been prodded and altered for centuries, and they have good reason for that skeptical and stand-offish character we run into. Actually, their ability to maintain a way of life as they see valuable, is quite impressive. And, they aren’t altogether closed off. The village church is a dual religion building, serving both Protestants and Catholics, since the 1500s.

It turns out, Valagnin is known for more than just a pretty view and the good brocantes. A company called Belval, which installed more than 100 systems worldwide with only 15 employees, is here. They make highly advanced systems for the measurement of photovoltaic cells and modules.I’m pretty much at a loss as to what that means. According to the website, “the second activity of the company consists of Meterdrive displacement detectors based on a perforated stainless steel ribbon and associated optoelectronic detectors,” and that means even less to me. Still, I’m just floored to imagine all this going on behind the shutters while the tiny P’tit Train carries children around the walls of the 900 year old castle, and the antique shops air their treasures in the cobblestone street.