The Soul (Sol?) of the Suisse

When I say the words "split personality," of what do you think? Maybe a little mad scientist Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Some mother-internalizing Norman Bates from Psycho, perhaps? Well, I think of something a little less crazy: Switzerland.

No, not Sweden. Not Swaziland. The cozy little country where I will be for two months this summer, nestled against the alps between France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Lichtenstein, may be a little less scary than a crazed killer dressed in his dead mother's clothes, but it is no less confused. Four official languages, 26 self-governing cantons, major industries including banking, chocolate, and watch-making, all in a country barely bigger than New Hampshire and with fewer people than New York City? Sounds a little odd to me. So, I'm investigating.

Investigating country-scale dissociative identity disorder is not my only goal, of course. I'll be working as a research intern in a lab at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland working on developing viral vectors to treat a disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which is basically like multiple sclerosis but often affects a much younger demographic. Because I will be in the French-speaking part of my cute and wonderfully-confused little country, I will also attempt to learn French. Those readers who actually know me know that it is much more likely that I will cure SMA than develop any proficiency in French. But, hey, we all have dreams.

The program in which I will participate at the EPFL is great because I will be able to interact with students from all over the world - around 30 of us are converging on Lausanne from such disparate locales as Colombia, China, the Ukraine, and, yes, Buffalo. Hopefully I will make a lot of fun friends who can help me in my efforts to understand why the Swiss do whatever it is they do. I've also heard that Switzerland is great in the summer - with plenty of sun and great things like mountains and lakes to explore. All of this will be tested and more! As a bonus, in June I will be doing some traveling around the rest of Europe. How do England, Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and Italy compare to Switzerland? I guess only my regular readers will know.

Do the Suisse have a soul? Or do they just have sol (in the summer, at least)? I'll be doing some soul-searching, and soaking up some sol on the way.