Welcome to Noucastelch, Euro 2008’s greatest parody!

As some of you know the Portuguese team was located at Neuchatel, Switzerland during the European tournament. The city became so packed with Portuguese fans that, to the eyes of some, it had become a replica of a Portuguese city abroad.

A Lausanne-based agency came up with the brilliant idea of creating an online parody of the Swiss town: the result was Noucastelch.
The town’s website is a near-perfect copy of that of the official one of Neuchatel written, however, in a language defined to be portugiesch, an imaginary rough portuguese dialect.

Yet that wasn’t enough for the facetious minds behind the idea: they also changed the names of the streets! Flipping through the pictures we find: La Rupital (instead of Rue de l’Hopital), Rua du Concertoch (instead of Rue du Concert) and a fictitious monument to Vasco da Gama!!!

As if it weren’t enough even the names of the bureaucracy have been translated into portugiesch!
We end up having Alano Ribeiros instead of Alain Ribaux and Pascal dos Santos instead of Pascal Sandoz! And all policemen have the same facial features as Cristiano Ronaldo!

The website has also been sending fake news such as the case of Neuchatel Xamax’s president wanting to change the club’s name to Noucastelch Xamach: “Neuchâtel Xamax est mort, viva Noucastelch Xamach!”

However, the Neuchatel authorities have threatened to sue the website creators because of violation of the federal law on copyright. Pascal dos Santos, I mean Pascal Sandoz has said: “Our objective is clear: we want to prevent them from using the unique and personal characteristics of city.”

Now that Portugal has left Neuchatel and the city has gone back to its Alpine calm who knows if the website will still be open to test the Swiss sense of humour?

How about sitting down at a café in Rua Luis Figo?