sey085

It may come as a surprise to some of you, but I really don't get a lot of opportunities to speak French on a daily basis. In the morning, I say pardon a few times as I bump into people on the subway, and at lunch time I say merci to the women at the cash register when I buy my coffee. The only person with whom I interact on a regular basis in French is my apartment manager, Madame Delessert, and that's only every week or so. I've learned lots of Vaudois French from her (she says ça joue? constantly), but I hunger to learn more. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Switzerland, go to Migros. I signed up for a French course that meets once a week for two hours at the "Ecole-Club Migros" in Lausanne. I had to take a test online to determine my placement level (it goes A1,A2,B1,B2,C1,C2) and it put me square in the middle of level B1. I looked at the description of level B1 and was immediately intimidated. I figured that the online test only measured ...

Tuesday afternoon, I cut out of work early to catch the train to Lyon, France. Waiting for me in Lyon was a veritable posse of former Bay Area All Stars: Loren, Jess, Dan and Jen. Loren lives in Grenoble, Jess was visiting him, and Dan and Jen are on their honeymoon and were in Lyon to visit some friends of the family. Since the train was late (those darn Swiss trains!), by the time I arrived, there was already an empty wine bottle on the table. Things pretty much progressed from there. I spent about 7 waking hours in the city, and it was raining and/or dark for a lot of those, so I didn't exactly see the sights. We did have a nice meal, and we did have a great time hanging out afterward, so it was an awesome mini vacation. And, of course, I found something stupid to photograph. Fig. 1: This is what Europeans think of us. If you take the time to read this sign, you'll notice some awesomely French things about it. First, it's called "American Sandwich," whic...

Once you have an apartment, you can apply for a residence permit. Once you've applied for a residence permit, you can apply for a bank account. And, once you have a bank account, you can finally pay the rent and deposit on your apartment, sign up for renters' insurance, fire insurance, and health insurance, get internet access, etc. Having an honest-to-god Swiss bank account means that you are finally established as more than a transient visitor to the country. Also, it means that you have a Swiss bank account, which makes you just a little bit more like James Bond. It was thus with great excitement that I went to the Post Office a couple weeks ago to open an account. The Post Office? Where else! For a country with such a reputation for banking, there sure aren't a lot of banks in Lausanne. Actually, I think there are lots of banks; there just aren't a lot of banks for the hoi polloi. You basically have your choice between PostFinance, UBS (which is currently ...

Today is Sunday, which means -- of course -- that absolutely nothing is open. Well, practically nothing -- maybe a half dozen or so small grocery stores are open. Swiss people find this state of affairs perfectly normal and, I guess, find ways to entertain themselves that don't involve eating, buying or doing anything. As far as I can tell, they don't even stray from their homes. Here's a picture I took at 2:00 PM at "Place de la Palud," pretty much dead in the center of town. Fig. 1: This town... is looking like a ghost town... Under normal circumstances, I would probably take the train somewhere or go for a hike or something. Today, though, I am not planning on doing anything that might require moving or flexing any of my muscles. Why? Well, the simple answer is because I'm an idiot. Here's how it went down. My officemate (Jens, the German) noticed that I had packed a pair of court shoes in my lugage (all of my lugage was in my office for a while...

As I sort of hinted at in an earlier post, finding an apartment in Lausanne has been a difficult task. When I was planning this little sojourn to Switzerland, I figured that a week or two ought to be ample time to find an apartment, a bank account, a cell phone, etc. I had heard some rumors about the excesses of red tape here, and I knew that there was a housing shortage far away in metropolitan Geneva, but I thought that my prodigious talent at bureaucracy would rule the day and I would be fine. Oh, how naïve I was those many days ago. Without going through more boring details, the bottom line is that at present I am living in what can only be described as the last available apartment in Lausanne. I got the last available room in the only furnished apartment building in the city that had any vacancy whatsoever. Let me describe it to you. I live at Avenue de Menthon 16, in the "Studio-Cité" furnished apartment building. It is in the neighborhood known as "La cité,...

In an effort to keep this blog from devolving into an extended rant, I've decided to post something that focuses (almost) entirely on positive things. It seems like 90% of the stuff I talk about with my labmates is "back in the US, it's better because ..." which, I hate to say, is true about a lot of things around here. For instance, there is absolutely nowhere to get a burrito on campus. Terrifying, I know. That complaint out of the way, here is a list of ten things (in no particular order) that I've found to be pretty cool about the country, despite it being a horrible, desolate, burrito-less wasteland. 1. Yogurt Fig. 1: It's healthy, because it's yogurt. Yogurt here is fricking awesome. I'm really not a big yogurt fan back home, but here, I enjoy almost a cup of yogurt a day. Why? I guess the answer is simple: the yogurt here is "full fat," i.e. it's not specifically aimed at dieting secretaries. Thus, they don't need to ...

Since it is unlikely that you (dear reader) are a professional photographer, allow me to give you some photographic advice: no one wants to see your pictures. OK, that's not entirely true, but trust me, it's true of most of your pictures. Let me rephrase: no one wants to see your pictures unless there's someone or something they love in them. This, I claim, is almost universally true. Certainly, somewhere in those gigabytes of photos is an artistic, wonderfully captured gem, but odds are that most of them are boring photos of buildings, trees, and fuzzy landmarks. This is especially true of vacation photos. Do not take a picture of the street your hotel is on. Do not take a picture of your hotel from the outside. Do not take a picture of the corridor your room is on. Do not take a picture of the entrance way, the bathroom, the bedroom, and the view out the window. The only thing these photos will do is bore everyone to whom you show them and or provide a chain of ev...

Be warned, future pictures might not always be this sexy.

This evening, I had an appointment to view an apartment. That's how it works here in Switzerland; recent immigrants are always making appointments to view apartments. Why? First: there are no apartments. Well, practically none. According to a recent study, the percentage of apartments which are vacant in Lausanne at this moment is around 0.1%; that's 1 per 1000. Actually, this is an estimate, as the actual number is probably fewer. During the month of June, for example, only 48 people moved into new apartments (in a city of 125,000). How did I find all this information out? Did one of my many Swiss friends warn me about this before I left from the new world? Of course not. I found out about this when I bought a newspaper -- so that I could casually check out the classified ads and really "get going" about an apartment -- and saw the lead headline: "Housing Crisis Becomes Dramatic" ( La c rise du logement devient dramatique ). Once one appreciates the fact t...

I really don't have time for a blog, what with having to actually work and all. I'll try my best to write updates while I'm at home then post them online in the morning. Thus, I should be able to maintain a fairly frequent post rate (I really don't have a lot to do at home) while minimizing time wasted at work. We'll see how it goes. I wrote the first post last night, and will put it up in a moment. It's long and probably boring, and includes very few pitctures. Future posts will improve upon this format. word is bond, -paul