Would you like to relive great Olympic moments? Feel the pulse of the champions? Discover the creative flair of the host cities?
The world of the Games with its many facets is now open up to you at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. If you haven’t visited the museum since it was closed for renovations just over a year ago, then now is the time to see it. With a major new temporary exhibition opening on 19th February 2015, entitled The Olympic Games: Behind the Screen, visitors now have the unique opportunity to find out what goes on behind the scenes, when images from the Olympic Games are broadcast all around the world.
New temporary exhibition, The Olympic Games: Behind The Screen
19.02.2015 – 26.01.2016
Every edition of the Olympic Games has its innovations and unique aesthetic. The temporary exhibitions at the Museum are designed to show the Games in all their diversity – and the latest exhibition, The Olympic Games: Behind The Screen, is no exception.
Sanjeev Bhuttan, co-found of Spordy
A new website has been launched in Switzerland, with the aim of bringing sports enthusiasts together in a single, dedicated online community.
Called Spordy, the new online platform offers a range of services focusing on health and fitness for amateur sports enthusiasts, professional trainers and sports coaches, as well as sports clubs in Switzerland. These include:
- Find a buddy: A great way to connect with people to practice sport or for general fitness purposes.
- Find a trainer (coming soon): A quick way to find fitness trainers or sports coaches based on a user's location and purpose.
- Find a club: A handy tool for researching information about local sports and fitness clubs in Switzerland.
- Groups: A useful service, enabling members to join or create any sporting group of their interest. Within the groups, members can post group activities, have discussions, and post photos.
- Events: Lots of information on sporting events where people can see at a glance which events are happening in Switzerland.
- Members' blog: A helpful platform where members can discuss anything and everything to do with health, fitness and sports. From nutritional tips to the best skiing resorts in Europe, Spordy actively encourages members to engage in such discussions.
If you are looking for an interesting activity to do with family and friends at the weekend, then a trip to La Maison du Gruyère may be just what you had in mind.
Every Sunday between the 21 December 2014 and 29 March 2015, this popular cheese-making dairy (fromagerie) in Pringy, famous for producing Gruyère AOP, will demonstrate how cheese can be made using a wood-burning fire located within one of its outbulidings, the Chalet de la Confrérie. The public will have a chance to see all steps in the production process, right from the moment milk is poured into a cauldron, through to its final transformation into cheese more than two hours later.
Taking place between 12h30 and 15h00, the free demonstration will also provide visitors, both young and old, with a wonderful opportunity to taste “le petit lait”, “le cailler”, and the delicious Gruyère AOP cheese in its most popular forms: doux, mi-salé and salé. In very cold weather conditions, the cheese-making process may not be able to take place, so you are advised to ring the dairy before leaving home to check.
There are many services in this region designed to help expats integrate within their local communities – indeed many of them are listed in our Know-it-all passport guidebook! Networking groups, for example, provide a wonderful opportunity for people to meet others and make the most of their time living in this region as expats.
One networking organization, which is benefiting from the global popularity of social media platforms is InterNations. Set up in 2007 with the sole aim of making life easier for expats, InterNations now claims to be the largest expat social media platform in the world. With 1.4 million users, InterNations communities can be found in 390 cities across more than 195 countries – with 9 cities in Switzerland, including Geneva (about 15,000 members) and Lausanne (about 5,600 members). France also has a number of communities of which the two closest are in Lyon and Grenoble.
The best way to capture what InterNations does for expats is to give a brief overview of the services it provides for its members:
An opportunity to meet new people, be creative and learn a new skill has just arrived in Geneva, at the Galerie Branca in Eaux Vives.
Founded by local entrepreneur, Olivia Johnson Hilton, Meet & Make chic craft classes and workshops include short courses teaching a new skill such as sewing, knitting or fabric printing, as well as individual workshops focusing on customizing readymade objects. Open to those with all levels of craft experience, the workshops are designed around completing a specific project so that participants can meet new people, discover new skills, and take home something beautiful at the end.
Asked where she got the idea for her new creative classes, Olivia told knowitall.ch, "I first developed the concept for chic craft classes in London with my popular bachelorette party sessions, Pimp Your Pants, where participants would customise lingerie using rosettes and ribbons. Adapting the concept to Geneva, I have now decided to focus on a more family-oriented market with projects for 'your home, your little ones and yourself'. The aim of the workshops is also more evenly split between making, creating and meeting, with the transitional nature of Geneva expat life in mind."
