Not here. American football and basketball are kind of hard to come by. There are two English speaking bars here in Geneva that have games on, but it's an expensive outing.
We have opted to not purchase cable in Geneva because:
1. We're not fluent in French, German, Italian, etc.
2. It's expensive.
3. The few English channels that are available don't seem worth it. British humor just doesn't translate to us.
We do have the free public stations that we watch sometimes:
BBC - A hot mess
CNN - I'm sick of it. If I hear Richard Quest's voice anymore, I'll develop an neurotic disorder.
CNBC - I'm confident I can trade stocks and manage hedge funds now. Entertaining, but it gets old.
MTV - It's in French and German...
Animal Channel - It's in French and I'll listen to it when I'm doing stuff around the apartment. Easy French lesson.
25 other channels - We can't understand any of them... at all.
So, how do we try to stay on top of all the happenings in the good ole USA?
Hulu? Nope. Can't get it.
Network websites (ABC, NBC, etc.) to see reruns? Nope. Can't get those either.
ESPN live games? No again.
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| "We're sorry, but the episode you selected is not available in your location." |
We found Slingbox.
I know. It sounds like some sort of medical or torture device. Here's how it works:
That makes it crystal clear right?
1. Bought the Singbox at Best Buy for $300.
2. We found a family member who had a spare bedroom (with power, cable, and internet hookups within a 6 inch radius) and asked if the Slingbox could live with them while we were away.
3. Hook up. Slingbox > Cable & Internet > Slingbox online account > Swiss laptops (or wherever we are) > Our TV if we want. This took no less than 84 hours and a couple phone calls to customer service. We also had to divulge our embarrassing password to customer service.
4. Tested it. Fuzzy, but it's in English and we get the gist. So exciting!
It's a slight pain to setup on the tv, so we don't do it everyday. At least we can access American shows from time to time.. good to know we have it. Also, there is an obvious issue with time. We are six hours ahead of where our Slingbox lives, so most of the games we want to watch air while we're snoozing. There have been a few late nights, but I've found that our dedication to watching most of the games has dwindled. Waking up from 2am - 4am to watch a game isn't that appealing.
And that's how we watch American tv.
Au revoir!
