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I worry sometimes that this blog is getting off-track, thus, with this post I hope to return it to its original purpose: making fun of weird stuff in Switzerland. That is what the people want, and that is what they shall have. As mentioned in the previous post, the weather here is finally starting to change. A couple of Sundays ago, in fact, it hit the blistering heights of 55 degrees. What could I do but take to the sidewalks of Lausanne and soak in the city. First off, I'll say this for the people of Lausanne: they know how to take advantage of good weather. Morally broken by months of abysmal, depressing, seasonal-affective-disorder-causing weather, they heroically emerge from their caves at the first hint of a sunny day, heavy coats left at home in favor of slightly less heavy coats. And how do they greet the spring? Why, how else? Fig. 1: As ski season ends, petanque season begins. Although more of French thing, petanque is fairly popular in Switzerland. Well-maintain...

I'm at work right now, but I am waiting for epoxy to harden (50 minutes at 100 C), so I have a little bit of time and I thought I would use it productively ... to complain about the weather. What is up with the weather here? I woke up this morning, and it was snowing. It is March frigging 24th, and it is snowing. Not a ton of snow; in fact, since it was so windy, it was as if there was a constant amount of snow that just kept moving up, down and sideways -- like living in a snowglobe. Here at work, which is about 400ft lower in altitude and 4 miles away, the sky is blue and the weather is nice. Just bizarre. Another point: I don't know when it happened, but all of a sudden "50 degrees" has become the dividing line between good and sucky weather for me. Why? I guess because in Celsius that's the difference between one digit and two digits, but still, when did my expectations drop so low? If it was 50 degrees in Palo Alto, I would drive the two blocks to Saf...

Go watch this video on youtube. Try not to get TOTALLY PUMPED. What you just saw was Red Bull's Crashed Ice , a four-person, downhill ice-skating race through a specially designed obstacle course in the middle of a city. Downhill racing and ice hockey. Seriously, it's like peanut butter and chocolate: I cannot believe that no one thought of this sooner. Previously, it has been held in Québec, Helsinki, Davos, and Duluth (?). This weekend, the 2009 season finished in Lausanne. The course started at Place du Château (near where I used to live), came down Avenue de l'Universitie (right by an apartment that I was denied), and finished up at Place de la Riponne (next to another apartment denied to me). At Place de la Riponne, there was a huge, packed crowd of idiots pressed together watching a giant TV screen and cheering on the competitors at the finish. Jens (German), Jen's girlfriend, Ana (also German), and I were some of those idiots. Fig. 1: There is not law aga...

Although I've been living in my new apartment since mid-October, it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I finally felt ready to throw a proper housewarming party. In French, a housewarming party is a Pendaison de la crémaillère , which translates to something like "hanging of the trammel." According to the internet , a trammel is a thing that you put in your fireplace which can be adjusted to hold a pot at different heights. Presumably, in the past, one could only truly say that they had moved into a new home when they had put this very important piece of cooking apparatus in the new fireplace. At any rate, nowadays I don't think anyone has any idea what a crémaillère is or why you would be hanging it, but the phrase survives. So, despite the fact that my apartment is pretty tiny, I decided to invite everyone I know in Switzerland (aka my labmates, my boss, and the administrative assistant) to my home for an evening of merrymaking. Upon being invited, many ...