A fun concept here in Switzerland has been that of "Apero" which more or less would translate to "cocktail hour" in English. It's basically a time of drinks and snacks, usually before a meal. When I meet with my Swiss friend Petra we meet for an apero after work ... when we go to a dinner party it starts with an apero. The word is the same in any language it seems. Most interesting is that Martin's lab group has regular aperos. Every time a member of the group defends a dissertation or leaves the group for a new job that member has to throw an apero. This involves buying a ridiculous amount of alcohol since there are over 20 20-something men in Martin's group. There is also usually a nice spread of food like bread and cheese, nuts, chips, and other snacky fare. The entire group gathers at 4 or 5pm and they give a nice gift to the member who is leaving and then they drink and snack for hours on end. It usually rolls into dinner and then into post-dinner drinks as well. It's a nice way to send somebody off on a new stage of their life be it to a post-doc or a job.
It's kind of silly to put up pictures of an apero because they're just pictures of drinking but here are a few pictures of an apero for our friend Nick from yesterday. He is leaving for a job at Dupont in Delaware. As you can see, the apero is just in a classroom in the chemistry building. Sometimes they are outside but since it's cold and rainy here that wasn't possible. I only arrived one hour after it started but all the food was already gone (it's impossible to keep food around with so many hungry men) so I didn't get any pictures of what it should really look like. In this picture is the one girl in the lab group, Camille:
And this is from last year's Christmas party (all of these people were in Martin's lab group, plus there were more sitting behind me):
