Timely Letters

By Sandra Iskander

One of the best hotels in the charming city of Neuchatel in Switzerland is the Best Western Plus Hotel Beaulac and it isn’t just for the beautiful view of the lake that it offers but also because of its location.

Across the road from the hotel is the city’s Museum of Art and History and one of the museum’s highlights is the famous Jaquet Droz collection of automatons displayed in a private room. Open to the public during set hours, the three automatons are amazing, which is not made less by the fact that they were designed in the 18th century. 
The artist, the pianist and the writer are elegantly displayed next to each other, showcasing their talents, though the writer is quite outstanding as it can be programmed to write any message, albeit only using the 40 characters it is designed to write, and only capable of writing 4 sentences. Though requiring 5 hours to dismount the writer’s mechanism to program it to write anything you want, it could definitely be well worth it for a romantic message you may want to pass on to your special someone. Could there be anything more romantic than a message written today by an automaton from the 18th century?

Best Western Plus Hotel Beaulac

2, Esplanade Léopold-Robert ,

2000 , Neuchatel 

www.mahn.ch