Defending the country

Switzerland takes many things seriously, including defending itself and its people. They not only testing the sirens once in a while but they regularly monitoring their airspace. Well, to be honest, they actually kind of do it during office hours and weekdays only. Yes, that's right. Twice a day the planes of the Swiss Air Force take off and go around above the country but finish their work when everyone else does and obviously (?) they are off during the weekends.
The first time I heard the planes I thought there is a plane that was actually crushing into our apartment. It's unbelievably loud as they prepare for landing.
Of course they monitor the country out of office hours from the ground but they do not have planes ready to take off in case something happens.
The next nationwide voting in May includes a question about whether or not Switzerland should buy 22 new fighter jets from Sweden costing billions of franks.

Sirene testing season

Any kind of defense is taken seriously in Switzerland. Among others there are sirens for water and general alert signals and they are tested regularly.
It happened last week when I heard the sirens outside. They were not the regular police, ambulance or any kind of sirens so I figured there must be something else going on. As I looked outside and no one is running anywhere I figured I would just stay where I am and wait. It was over in a minute or two. Afterwards I googled what was going on and indeed, that was a test. Apparently there were TV and radio announcements about that but as we do not own a TV nor listen to the radio we missed the announcements. I usually read the local newspaper to stay informed but obviously I missed this one. Oh, and there is another test coming this Wed.
More information about the testing can be found here and here.