East Berlin apartments

Many apartment buildings in the former East are surprisingly modern with cheerful colors.

Almshouses

The triangular courtyard of a set of almshouses.

Boston ivy

Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) on the north side of a neighbor's house.

Blue and yellow

I pass this house on my daily walk.

Home construction

This new building is going up on the hill by our grocery store. This is typical Swiss construction: the exterior 

and interior walls are made of orange ceramic-y brick, which explains why we had such a hard time

hanging art in our apartment.

Fancy house

We both admired the decorative woodwork on this house in the Val-de-Ruz.

Boudry's old town

The colorful homes in Boudry's old town, on the road up to the castle.

Rowhouses

 

The neighborhood where Zak stayed. 

External elevators

We've seen several buildings retrofitted with external glass-enclosed elevators like this one. Friends of ours rent the top floor apartment of the house with the red shutters. Over dinner one evening, they told us their house was recently purchased for 1.5 million Swiss francs. (One Swiss franc is roughly equivalent to one U.S. dollar.)

Neuchâtel housing

Five minutes of walking takes us to this bridge that crosses the train tracks. There is very little in the

 way of single-family homes here. It's easy to see how challenging it was for Zak to find the apartment 

we wanted: one with garden access and away from traffic.