Welcome.

Welcome to our blog that we created to document our two years in Lausanne, Switzerland. Lausanne is in the canton of Vaud (similar to a US state), situated on the northern shore of Lake Geneva, across from the French town of Evian, the home of the well-known bottled water company. So at least we'll have good water going for us. According to Wikipedia, the city is 31 miles from Geneva. It is the 5th largest city in Switzerland and is also the headquaters of the International Olympic Committee.

Today I finally purchased the item that is the namesake for our blog, a slingbox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlingBox). I included a link to what a slingbox actually is that you can read on your own as I have bored many of you these past weeks talking about how this device works. Essentially it \will help us remain 'mericans while overseas as it gives us access to US television (for me sports, for Ashley some dorky show called "The Big Bang Theory"...).

A brief history lesson...the official name of Switzerland is "Confederation Helvetica", which is in Latin so that no preference is shown to any of the 4 languages spoken in the country. In order of dominance the languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh (very small %). We are in the French speaking area. It's kind of remarkable the country has survived unified since the different parts of the country cannot even understand each other. The German side speaks some distorted version of that language that nobody outside Switzerland speaks, even the Germans can't understand them. The German side insists on speaking their language during the legislative sessions which is why many people say Switzerland has a relatively high level of individual freedoms as the politicians can't understand each other enough to pass any legislation.

Switzerland has been officially neutral since 1648, which is not to say the Swiss are wimps or cowards. They have a high reputation as skilled soldiers dating back to their founding, which is the reason why the Pope in Vatican City uses the Swiss Guard. Every Swiss male between certain ages (18 -35, I think) is required to attend something like a month of military training every year. He is also required to maintain a rifle with ammunition, a uniform, a gas mask, and other military items in his household at all times so that the military can mobilize within a very short period. Also, all of the bridges and tunnels into Switzerland can be blown up with the push of a button, effectively isolating the country from attackers (also see: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/27/world/swiss-ready-to-face-armageddon-in-comfort.html - yes, we've been informed that any aparment we have will have a bomb shelter). One last fact, Switzerland frequently fields one of the top teams for the America's Cup and has one the event in the past. This is unusual because the America's Cup is a race to determine the fastest in ocean navigation and, at last check, Switzerland does not have easy access to an ocean.

Stay tuned when we ACTUALLY make the trip across the Atlantic and settle in (please refrain from calling the Atlantic "the pond"...). We will include pictures in the future, too.