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To paraphrase Harry Doyle: this ain't the best blog about Lausanne hip hop for nothing. Want to know who the latest sensation on the Swiss hip hop scene is? Well, you came to the right place! Now, most of you are probably rolling your eyes and saying, "Duh, this is just going to be an update about how Stress ( my previous favorite swiss rapper -ed. ) has a new album that just dropped on April 3 and how he is coming to Lausanne on the 30th for a concert." Wrong. This blog isn't about old info that you could find anywhere; this blog is about what is happening right now on the streets and what everyone will be talking about next . Wanna know who's next? One word: Sisma . (p.s. do not click on that link unless you actually like myspace pages). Fig. 1: Proof that wearing a bandanna does not automatically make you cool. Sisma is from the mean streets of Bellinzona, aka "B'Zone", population 17,111, in Ticino but has recently relocated to Lausanne, p...

One of the constant pleasures of living in Switzerland is receiving bills that just do not make any sense. For instance, when Christine mailed me an official "Google" jacket, along with some other small items, I had to pay a bribe of 55 CHF at the post office in order to pick up the package. Why? Well, customs had opened the box and determined that the jacket was worth 300 CHF (ha!), then charged me tax on that value (25 CHF) and a "customs fee" of 30 CHF for not properly declaring the item. Lame. Although I have received countless packages from my parents without any customs costs (maybe because they ship to my work address), the same thing happened again when I ordered a pair of shoes online from England. After receiving the shoes (which were about 100 CHF), two weeks later I got a customs bill for 60 CHF. Not only did I pay tax and "customs fees", I also had to pay "administrative costs" and "commission." Super lame. I could g...

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...

This morning when I arrived at work, there was a message on the phone from the Lausanne police informing me that my wallet had been turned in and that I could go pick it up from the Lost and Found office at my leisure. Not a bad way to start a day. At lunchtime, I took the metro downtown and swung by the office. The clerk there had no idea how or by whom the wallet had been found or turned in, but was happy to give it to me when I presented my passport and a 5 CHF fee. From the looks of it, the wallet had suffered during its time away from me (it had clearly spent some time in the dirt), but was otherwise ok. The police apparently had separated the contents from the wallet, so I received a small rubberbanded stack of cards as well. A quick check through the cards revealed the following. Items left in wallet: My CFF 1/2-price railway pass Pretty much everyone in Switzerland already owns one of these, so I imagine it's not particularly valuable, although it does cost 150 CHF a y...

Having been raised on the mean streets of Kearny Mesa, I pretty much assumed that I would not have too much trouble with the wannabe gangstas and street punks of peaceful Lausanne. Certainly, I've run into some rowdy drunks and been accosted by the occasional obnoxious transient, but nothing I couldn't handle. In fact, until last night, I can't think of a single time that I was even slightly worried about my person or my belongings. That was the night everything changed ... First, the official police report of the incident (unfortunately in French). It is quite thorough. Fig. 1: Just the facts, mainly. I note that there are a lot of facts that I was asked for that did not make the report, I have no idea what happened to those. Fig. 2: The majority of the testimony. Although it is written in first person, I assure you that these are not my exact words. Still, it is quite illustrative. For those of you that don't speak French, I offer my humble translation of the t...

Well, it only took two and a half months, but I have finally moved into a quasi-permanent apartment. With a little help from Serge and his car, and a few fully-encumbered hikes across town, I have cast off my tiny, ugly, smelly studio for a much larger, less ugly, and significantly better smelling apartment on the other side of Lausanne. Last night was my first night in the new apartment, so I am still getting to know the place, but I figured I ought to post something before people start boycotting my blog in protest. First, the good: The apartment nice, clean, and spacious. The bathroom is clean, has a full shower, and nice fixtures. The kitchen has a full-sized oven, four-burner stove, and plenty of cabinets. The bedroom is large, has it's own radiator, and has a wooden floor. The building looks really high-class on the inside and looks well-maintained. I have a cellar the size of a basketball court. Unfortunately, there's no electricity, so I can't turn it into a seco...

Probably the two most common questions people ask me about this blog are, "What can you tell me about the swiss hip-hop scene?" and "How are you, my little son?" Until this weekend, the answers to those questions were, "not much" and "I'm fine, Mom." Thankfully, this weekend I got my first taste of Suisse-Romande hip hop and it was not bad at all. This weekend was Label Suisse , which in addition to being a clever pun was also a weekend-long party featuring dozens of free concerts in a handful of venues across Lausanne. The party was supposed to commemorate the opening of the new M2 metro line, but since that won't actually open for another month, Party-goers were forced to wait inline for a half-hour if they wanted a special "test ride" this weekend. At any rate, it was a huge deal and an estimated 300,000 people showed up for the excitement, and I was one of them. And, if that wasn't enough, meanwhlie the Comptoir Sui...

To prove that I have thoroughly infiltrated Swiss society, I have taken a picture of the various cards and such that have been issued to me sine my arrival. Fig. 1: My wallet bulges with ... cards. After I've been earning the sweet post-doc coin for a while, hopefully it'll bulge with " Giacometti's " as well. On the right are all the (Swiss) cards I use regularly and thus carry with me in my wallet. On the left is my brand new Residence Permit, type B. This document -- which I am legaly obligated to keep on my person at all times -- not only allows me to remain legally in this country until at least 31 July 2009, but it also represents the final piece of the legal puzzle here. Permit in hand, I can finally apply for a credit card, sign up for internet access, and most importantly, get a library card. Yesterday after French class, I finally fulfilled the promise made by every first-year high school French student, and je suis allé à la bibliothèque . Specific...

Today was a bad day. Bad, bad, bad. In just about every way that a day can be a failure, today was a failure. Normally, I wouldn't want to bore my beloved readers with the sordid details, but I think that this blog has taken on an unrealistically upbeat and optimistic tone. I don't want the reader to get the mistaken impression that, as the Hungarians might say, life here is sour cream all the way to the bottom, but that, in fact, some rain does fall (metaphorically) here in Lausanne. So, a brief rundown of the vacuum of suck that was today. First, I woke up in a great mood. That should have been a worrisome sign as I usually have to drag myself out of bed, but instead I skipped out of my apartment at 8:30 with a smile on my face and a belly full of coffee. The first thing I checked when I got to work was the score of yesterday's Chargers' game. Eight and a half point favorites against an undermanned Carolina team; I had every reason to hope that the Chargers wo...

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 ...

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 ...