à La Neuveville |
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29 November 2024 - Zürich
This week sees me headed to the French part to get in a race this month - a trail run starting from La Neuveville. I really love that my lately adopted land is a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic place. I've also really been slacking this month and only heard about the race tomorrow yesterday. La Neuveville is on the Bielersee in Bern on the border with Neuchatel. Within my lifetime a large French-speaking part of the mainly German-speaking canton of Beern seceded to for its own canton of Jura. Since then some further towns have joined Jura. La Neuveville, despite being francophone, is however not among them. In Switzerland towns decide the language children are taught in, which has led to a sorting of people by language but also peace as the wider cantonal and national governments don't set the rules. Educating children is intimate and local. A centruy ago the USA had a similar system. My great-grandmother in Baltimore graduated from the Hochschule. My great-grandparents in Wisconsin had their education in Norwegian and learned English as a foreign language.
