We’ve added a rich list of events and other information for the holidays to our events page. Be sure to check there to find out about late shopping hours in Geneva, Nyon and Lausanne, how to find the Christmas concert that suits your tastes, and more!

Helena Bachmann, who lives in the Lake Geneva region, has written a good overview for Time magazine on assisted suicide and Switzerland’s efforts to rein in death tourism. She reminds us that the current law dates back to 1942 and brings us up to 2009, with the Swiss government saying the law is now too lax and must be rewritten. Bachmann includes an interesting interview with maxillofacial surgeon Jerome Sobel in Lausanne, who is the president of French-speaking Switzerland’s Exit office (Dignitas is the other main organization that offers suicide assistance). As with so many issues, this one is not as black and white as we might like it to be and her article explores some of the gray areas. Recommended reading.

Stories not making front page headlines but that are worth a moment’s reflection:

The US Justice Department says crimes by girls have been rising and by 2004 girls’ crimes were 30 percent of the total by juvenile delinquents. Little research has been done in this area, so no one seems to know why crimes by girls are increasing, although one part of the answer could be changes to the justice system in the US.

Meanwhile, in Copenhagen where the IOC (International Olympic Committee) just awarded the 2016 Games to Rio de Janeiro, the sports group also adopted a number of recommendations. One of these is the challenging Recommendation 66: “The Olympic Movement should strengthen its partnership with the computer game industry in order to explore opportunities to encourage physical activity, and the practice and understanding of sport among the diverse population of computer game users.” (good luck!) Olympic Congress Recommendations in full

And, in a peculiarly American news approach, both Bloomberg and Associated Press have now managed to put Roman Polanski (sex crime escapee) and tax cheats (IRS tax dodgers) into bed together with a lovely duvet-style Swiss feather cover over them (read that: Switzerland and Swiss neutrality = haven for all crimes committed by right-thinking Americans, which indicates editorial confusion).

After this dubious snuggle-down, what comes out is that a) Switzerland is “no longer” a haven, which implies that it has been, for all crimes, while forgetting completely about accurate reporting and b) that Switzerland, tut-tut, will have to live like the rest of the world, which is a sign that the writers, or more probably their editors, haven’t budged since 1980. Switzerland may not be a member of the European Union, but it has adopted much of the legislation, for a start and, frankly, the days when Switzerland was an island of oddity are over. Now Switzerland is as odd as any other country around. Back in 1980 all Swiss stories published in the US had to include gold under the streets of Zurich, cheese with holes, chocolate and cuckoo clocks, even though the Swiss have tried for years to point out that cuckoo clocks are Austrian, not Swiss. As for the other three, my editors at three major US news publications all told me this, at one point or another during the early 1980s. It made for some slightly skewered reporting at the time.

Looks like some things never change, but I’m not talking about the Swiss, who have.

Last night I attended a talk in Lausanne on climate change and sustainability given by Lynette Thorstensen to Executives International at the Palace Hotel. Anyone who has ever gone to the hotel from the train station knows you either hike three blocks or so steeply uphill (and do NOT wear heels, sheer hell on uphill cobblestones) or you take the wimpy option and pay for a taxi. That’s all in the past, I discovered last night. A train ticket includes a Mobilis ticket for an hour, which covers public transport. And that includes the marvel of Lausanne, the newish M2 Metro. Two minutes, no sweat, no extra money and I was at the Palace.

More on the the presentation tomorrow. Meanwhile, check out the GenevaLunch Travel Guide details for Lausanne, especially if you haven’t visited the city for a few months.

We have just added information to the Cheerful traveler guides, on traveling to and around in Basel, Bern and Zurich. They’re designed for people who live in the Lake Geneva region and travel to other Swiss cities for business or pleasure, but visitors to Switzerland will also find them helpful.

We’re in the process of updating two of our other guides, so be sure to revisit these pages in the next few days.

I was hunting for US presidential election night events in Lausanne and Google brought up such an odd and fascinating bit of Lausanne history that I must share it: the story from Time magazine, 3 April 1964, of the murder of Marjorie Winifred Bird, an American of substantial wealth whose doctor was accused of murdering her with massive doses of barbiturates. And her “consort” who was accused of being cahoots with the doctor and stealing $200,000 worth of jewels. I read the fascinating if sordid tale right to the end looking for a possible link to the 2008 elections. Only at the end did I realize it was at the beginning. The victim had, it seemed, hoped the US would become a monarchy.

I doubt she would have appreciated this election.