A first blog post.

I hope this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but I moved to Lausanne, Switzerland yesterday. I'll be in Lausanne until December 2008, taking an MBA at IMD, the International Institute of Management Development (and yes, I also wonder where the second "I" is in the acronym.)

I made it to Lausanne a rather roundabout way, via Fernie BC and Kananaskis AB. In Fernie Laura and I went skiing with my family for a week -- Laura wore her new ski suit, a little too fashion-forward for me, but Laura's pretty confident I guess. I was actually really impressed with Laura's skiing: she'd only been on skis for two days before coming to Fernie, and she was totally amazingly good. She pretty much skipped over beginner and went straight to intermediate. Blue runs, top to bottom. Pretty damn good.

Laura and I flew out of Calgary on Friday morning, and after a decidedly sad goodbye in the Toronto airport, I continued on to Zurich. I took a train from the Zurich airport to Lausanne, and arrived just after noon. My trip was relatively uneventful, though definitely set to the harmonious melodies of the tears of children. I watched them unload eight (8) strollers off the plane while I waited for rows 1-35 to gather their personal belongings and stumble off the plane. At around minute-1 of my flight I discovered I'd left the earplugs in Laura's bag... I did however have the other 100 pounds of luggage. My two checked bags actually clocked in at 48.6 and 50.7 pounds, after removing the 3lb Economics of Climate Change ("this book actually causes climate change").

So, I'm here now, and all is well. The apartment is fantastic, although they weren't kidding about the new subway station being built "nearby", as this picture out my kitchen window will attest. The subway station itself is the part with the roof of white dividers in the foreground... if you can see the two circular fans built into the wall just past the station, I'm pretty sure those are for the tracks themselves. Here's to the majority of construction being finished in 2007 -- this would be a really loud place to live otherwise. Then again, perhaps when they start work again tomorrow, after their absurdly long European Christmas vacation, I will get my dose of loud.

I'm living in a part of Lausanne called Ouchy. Ouchy is basically a swank formerly independent village where rich people congregate. That's why they built the business school here, I guess. It's quite picturesque, and my apartment is just across the street from the marina. Ouchy, incidentally, is right across Lac Leman from Evian. As I sit here on the couch writing this, I can see the twinkling lights of France in the distance. The view from my windows is rather spectacular, and this morning the sun was streaming in and it was 8C. There are mountains off to the south-west, Swiss or French Alps I presume. Although they're surely around, I couldn't see any obviously rich people this morning.

Last but not least, I went for a walk around town today, and saw this Christmas tree. It was on a lawn of some civic building, possibly city hall. At a prominent intersection, I might add. I don't really know what to think, say, or write about this particular decoration style.

Enough of this "blogging" for now. Thanks to Laura for suggesting this; it makes me feel a bit more connected to Torontonian. Oh, and I've posted a few pictures of Lausanne on my flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianbrooks).

Ian