SwissWatching

There’s a storefront that I often pass in Renens with a big picture of a pumpkin labeled “ludothèque.” I never gave it much thought, though I guess I would have concluded it was just a store that had closed down some past Halloween. (Jackie thought it was a daycare with a pumpkin theme). Not so! Natalie recently explained what a ludothèque is:

A toy library is a library from which toys, puzzles, and games are lent out, functioning like a lending library. Toy libraries offer play sessions for families and a wide range of toys appropriate for children at different stages in their development. Toy libraries provide children with new toys every week or two, saving parents money and keeping children from getting bored. Popular in the French-speaking world, toy libraries are called ludothèques.

Great idea, right? From what I can gather it’s a very common thing in France, Switzerland, and Quebec (where it’s called a joujouthèque!) It’s obviously good for the environment, and if libraries are already lending CDs and DVDs to big people, why not games, toys, and puzzles for the little ones? It was so great an idea, I decided it needed a Wikipedia page in order to popularize it outside of the Francophonie. So I went ahead and created a page for it, originally calling them “Toybraries” in English (based on the first one I found in the US, Toybrary, because it sort of approximates the construction of ludotheque as “ludo” = play and thèque from bibliothèque. Ludobrary sounds kind of weird I guess. Playbrary?). Eventually after doing research and turning up federations in the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand—all linked on the Wikipedia page, of course—I settled on the blander “Toy library.” The blockquote description above is from Wikipedia, or in other words, I just wrote it.

Of course what’s now needed on the Wikipedia page is a history section. Toy libraries have existed since at least 1935, according to a master’s thesis from 1995 by Julia E. Moore of Kent State University [PDF], when one was set up in Los Angeles. The idea apparently reemerged in the 60s and 70s with Head Start and other legislation. Interesting! Well, it’s back to real work for me (sorting photos from the weekend?) Hopefully a committed Wikipedia-er will pick up where I left off and summarize the 46 page thesis in a section called history, which I’ve just added.

P.S. By the way there’s a Swiss association online. They’re called Ludotheken in German.

In the May issue of the New York Review of Books, Tony Judt writes his thoughts on Switzerland. Read the article here.

I just returned to Switzerland from a week and a half in the United States. Returning to the US was a re-experience of the reverse culture shock of last summer. I got lost in the supermarket, felt motion sick in every car, habitually checked for signs telling me when the T was expected to arrive, couldn’t figure out how to use the change in my wallet, and lamented the long-distance produce. I was like a foreigner with a deceptively American accent. But it was lovely to feel surrounded by friends and familiar places. And to be able to go to the supermarket in pajamas without anyone giving me strange looks.

Back to the Judt piece. Going to the US really makes me re-evaluate Switzerland. I know I complain a lot about Switzerland, and Judt gets it all right. The blandness. The people who would tell you to keep your feet off the seat. The overwhelming expense. The “recidivist chauvinism” as demonstrated by the minaret ban. The difference is, he likes it. He likes that there is nothing to do, that everything is clean and colorful, that it is still surprisingly unchanged and rural, that the trains are the main attraction, the natural beauty, the shared responsibility for public goods. According to him, Switzerland is “the happiest place in the world.”

The truth is, I like many of these characteristics, too. In the US, I pine for the train network, the food from the local farms, the safety, the concern of each person for the public good, the view across the lake to the Alps. When Seth and I return to the US, we will seriously miss a lot about this place. Yet, it is so hard for me to explain what is good about Switzerland to Americans, and so much easier to talk about the frustrations and absurdity of daily life and the hypocrisy and conservatism of much that is Swiss. It is quite difficult to talk about what it is like for us to live here, both in discussions with Swiss and with Americans. Swiss hate to be criticized as only an outsider can criticize, and Americans can’t believe we’re not on a permanent vacation in a Swedish-speaking ski resort. And I think Kathy does a magnificent job discussing the myth of Swiss happiness (read both part I, part II). Switzerland is not paradise, and I cannot see past its problems as, apparently, can Judt. Like everywhere else, there is the good and there is the bad. It is mixed.

Thanks, Judy, for sending me the article.

You probably know about Jackie’s Flickr page, where we post all of our photos. If you haven’t been there recently, check out a few sets we’ve added:

• Engagement
• Scotland
• Leukerbad (and remember, despite appearances, we’re not on a permanent vacation!)

Usually, these are taken with Jackie’s nice, big digital SLR camera. But sometimes they’re taken with my not-so-nice, small digital camera. The big camera is big, so it only goes with us when we’re planning ahead—vacations, day trips, shopping at the market—so it’s rare that the other camera gets use, other than by Jackie for photographing documents from the 1930′s in the League of Nations archives at the United Nations in Geneva. But every once in awhile the little camera captures something, and it takes us awhile to get it on the computer and find it amongst Jackie’s research. So while organizing photos today (a productive use of my time when I should otherwise be doing research or looking for a job) I came across these… Continue Reading »

Jackie is in the U.S. this week, and she says people ask about our life in Switzerland, imagining that we’re on some sort of permanent vacation / honeymoon / fun study abroad experience. They’re clearly not reading our blog, or they’re skipping the posts about laundry. We’ve had some minor victories recently—major in the context of our life in Switzerland—which I thought I’d share.

Books: Jackie is only allowed to check out 15 books total from all of the libraries to which she has access, including the library at her school and the cantonal libraries in Geneva and Vaud. This is a major problem, seeing as she is doing a master’s (now PhD!) in history. So she spends a lot of times shlepping books back and forth to Geneva and strategizing about which books she needs when. Recently, she found out that two books on ancient Egypt had mysteriously appeared as checked out on her account from the cantonal library of Geneva. Needless to say, these were not books she had actually checked out—but how was she going to explain this? And more importantly, since Switzerland is not big on central sources of information, who was she going to explain this to? The short version of the story is that after calling the library, being transferred around a fair amount, finally talking to someone and explaining, she was told that they would look into it. 30 minutes later, she refreshed her account online, et voila! The books had vanished. Jackie 1, Switzerland 0.

Flat tire: I got a nice new (used) bicycle two weeks ago, which I’ve been riding to school on days that it’s not unseasonably cold and windy and rainy (so not this week). After class last week I noticed that my front tire was totally flat. Shoot! I considered taking it on the metro and then walking it back home, or leaving it and returning with tools and supplies (which I would obtain…somewhere?) or taking it on a bus to the bike shop I bought it at. But I vaguely knew that there’s a bike repair place on the EPFL campus (Le Point vélo) . I looked it up, and despite it being past the hours it’s listed as open, I headed over there with my bike. This was a dubious proposition in Switzerland, where I’ve been yelled at for coming into a bakery 5 minutes after closing (after I backed out of it quickly, they locked the door behind me.) But there were a couple very helpful guys working there, who said they’d be happy to help if they could, despite it being closed. Turns out I do not know (m)any bike words in French. It also turns out I do not know how to check for a leak or detach my inner tube and replace it with a totally new one. But I managed, with some help. And twenty minutes later, my hands covered in bike grease, we had determined that the hole was not worth repairing, and we had replaced my inner tube. They only charged me for the inner tube, generously claiming that I was the one who had done the work, not them. Seth 1, Switzerland 0.

Late trains: many months ago Jackie took a train back from Paris which was severely delayed. They gave the passengers claim forms to fill out and hypothetically this was supposed to entitle them to some amount of money. Jackie dutifully filled hers out, sent it off to the French company, and weeks later received a reply that, in fact, this was the responsibility of the Swiss train company, SBB, since the train was going to Switzerland and Jackie had bought her ticket from SBB. Or something. The letter said that her request had been transferred to SBB, and we assumed that was the last we’d hear of it. And then last week a letter arrived with a voucher for 36 CHF from SBB to be used on any train ticket. Wow. Jackie 2, Switzerland 0.

Laundry: Last Monday was our laundry day and after two succsesful loads one of the electronic cards that we use to activate the machines totally stopped working. The other was low on funds. But the one that stopped working was supposed to have a credit of 14 CHF on it. The machine claimed it was broken. So I reinserted it, more gently this time as the super had instructed me. Still broken. More gently, but with a little pressure? Broken. After 20 minutes of this, the machine finally read the card. But there was only 1 franc on it! I tried to transfer this franc to my other card (because combined it would have been enough) and in the process … lost it. Now the card works when inserted into the machine every single time (go figure) but it has 0 francs on it. I called Yuliy, who lives in a house in which there is unlimited (even during lunch?) laundry, told him about my laundry emergency, and biked over to use his laundry machine. Point for Switzerland.

Final score: Us: 3, Switzerland: 1 (+ 10000000000).

We don’t know how many people get their information first-hand from us, second-hand from other friends and family, or second/third-hand from a mailing list that may or may not have correct information, so I thought I’d better give some long overdue updates. First, to dispel rumors due to some sort of event being advertised on some Harvard e-mail lists, I am not, nor do I ever plan to be, a student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. That’d be the Other Seth Flaxman, Columbia BA ’07, Harvard MPP ’11. Confusing, I know. Maybe a reason to change my last name?

Which brings me to announcement #1: Jackie and I are engaged! Here’s a pic to prove it:

And announcement #2: Jackie and I are staying in Switzerland for one more year. Jackie has decided to continue on to her PhD at IHEID. This requires two more semesters on campus. She has the support of a Davis scholarship from the same incredible woman, Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who funded the 100 Projects for Peace (now just called “Davis Projects for Peace” since I guess it’s way more than a hundred) on the occasion of her hundredth birthday. Davis got her PhD from HEI (the institute that turned into IHEID) in 1934. Her husband was the ambassador to Switzerland from 1969 to 1975. More here. After next year, Jackie will be free to go wherever she needs to do archive-based research for her dissertation and to write her dissertation.

Specifically, she’ll be based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA due to announcement #3: I’ve deferred my admission to a new program at Carnegie Mellon University, a joint PhD in Machine Learning and Public Policy. This program is joint with Heinz College, CMU’s public policy (and information) school. So I’ll start in the fall of 2011, and Jackie and I won’t have to do the long-distance thing. (What this really means is that with me at a public policy school, the potential for confusion with the other Seth Flaxman only grows.)

A final word: I was very fortunate to start a PhD this year at EPFL. I’ve really enjoyed my time here, gotten to work on a few hard and interesting problems and hear about the work of many other people on many other such problems. I benefited from the experience greatly. The reason I’m leaving is ultimately because of the CMU program’s unique focus on computer science and public policy. Recently created new conferences like the Artificial Intelligence for Development suggest this is an exciting new area. Like every new application of computer science to other fields (biology, economics, linguistics, epidemiology) it’s really important for the work to be rigorous as far as that other field is concerned, which means an understanding of that field’s particular methods, tools, questions, and formalisms, many (most) of which may be foreign to computer scientists. In particular, I have the chance to take classes in public policy and receive training and a strong grounding in public policy with other doctoral students in public policy, while being part of the world’s best (only?) department of machine learning. I’m excited.

Now, the final question: what am I doing next year? A good question. A very good question. Got a job in Switzerland for me?

…of Loch Lomond:

We were in Scotland for spring break.  We spent an afternoon walking along the edge of the famed Loch Lomond.  We had difficulty not pronouncing it Lac Léman (French name of Lake Geneva).

We spent a day or so each in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and then drove around the Western and Central Highlands for a few more.  Josh drove up from Oxford to chaffeur us around over the weekend, which was awesome, hopefully for him, too.  The weather was gorgeous and the daffodils were in bloom.  I came to like whiskey, and I remembered how much I love good Indian food (every night, except one, saw us in some kind of Indian restaurant).  We had a good time walking around the mountains, forests, and lochs, gazing at sheep, trying to understand the various English dialects in Scotland (uh, it is even more embarrassing to ask English speakers to repeat themselves than to ask French speakers to do so), taking the train from Glasgow to Fort William in the same car as a jolly group of young men on a stag party, going to pubs, and the like.  There was a dour B&B and a nervewracking drive when we got lost in Glasgow, not to mention too many pounds spent for our student budgets, but we had a good time.

Good thing we got out before the volcano in Iceland.

Selected pictures are up on flickr.