Need Research Help! Plus Photos of Yverdon-les-Bains, Fribourg, and Vevey

elp!

As I try to edit two novels at once, I have a few random questions I've started research on, but the more information I can collect the better.

If you have any nuggets you'd like to share, please do so!

Druid's Moon

What's a good word for a female Kraken that forces you to do her bidding? I've been calling her The Mistress, but is that servile and forbidding enough?

What are some introductory texts on archaeology? I've watched Time Team, read their book Archaeology is Rubbish and also read a few scholarly articles, plus Agatha Christie's Come, Tell Me How You Live, but what else should I read to help me immerse myself in that mindset?


The Charm of Time

What's a good midlife crisis sort of car for a recently divorced man in his late 30s? He's Scottish, living in Switzerland...

This is a bit darker, but I need some details on surviving a basal cell carcinoma surgery -- is there any radiation or chemo in the follow up? What are the day to day pain levels and side effects?

What are some good resources for Scottish slang? I don't need Irvine Welsh level dialogue, more the inflections and word choices of someone who was in high school in Edinburgh in the early 90s and has been living abroad for over a decade. So far I've picked up a new Christopher Brookmyre to read (I've read his Pandaemonium but that was mostly younger kids)... What other novels would be good?

Does anyone know anything about the police system in Switzerland? I need basic information on hierarchies, how often the different cantonal systems communicate and some procedural details with regard to murder -- are statements taken from all witnesses right away? Does one have to leave an address with the police if it's close to Christmas and one is travelling out of the country?

What is it like to travel to the Isle of Lewis? What's the ferry like? The roads between villages? Opening and closing times for shops and pubs? [This is something I hope to research in person sometime!]

What are some good menu items for lunch and dinner at a fancy spa hotel with a famous chef?


I haven't had time to sort through all our photos from recent weekends in Yverdon-les-Bains, Fribourg/Freiburg, and Vevey in Switzerland, but here are a sample few! Otherwise I might end up posting photos in May, when winter has long since gone...

Yverdon-les-Bains on a cold and cloudy day...

Fribourg/Freiburg

I was editing when I posted this, like some sort of starving author in a European garret...

La Sarine river, the geographic representation of the Rötisgraben division of Switzerland (French and German speaking parts)

View from hotel

At time tower of Cathedral was completed Shakespeare had not yet been born

Vevey, where Dostoyevsky lived for some time.

Vevey is also mentioned in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, "as the location of the [Laurie's] early studies at boarding school as well as a stop on Amy March's European trip. It is in Vevey where she hears of her sister's death and becomes engaged to Laurie. Vevey was also the place where, in real life, Alcott met Ladislas Wiesniewski, who served as one of the models for Laurie."

Officially the world's largest fork, "it was designed by Jean-Pierre Zaugg, a sculptor from Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and embedded in the lake in February 1995 to commemorate the tenth anniversary [of the Alimentarium]," the food museum of Nestle.

A new-to-me poet: Anna de Noailles

Charlie Chaplin lived here from 1953 until his death in 1977

Some of these photos were upside down, others were not. I did not adjust them in anyway, posted them here, and look! they're all rightside up. I fail to understand this...

Balloons and slippers for a little guest!

What sort of research questions do you need help with?