HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
I hope you all made it safely from 2004 to 2005. How frightening that it's already 2005, and I still find myself accidentally writing 2003 on things.
I went into the mountains in Villars, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, where six of us had dinner and champagne by the fire in a chalet. We played some I Never (which wasn’t quite as juicy as past rounds I’ve played with RCSers and CLSers, but enlightening, nonetheless), messed around with the PlayStation, and turned in around 3. I lost my lip balm while up there, which many of you will realize is one of the greatest catastrophes that could happen to me, since I need lip balm more often and more desperately than most crack heads need their next fix. Out of sheer desperation, I started using Neosporin, instead, which wasn’t the tastiest thing ever, but it worked until I was able to go buy more of the real thing. I promise that pictures will go up in a day or two, both from Christmas in San Francisco, and from New Year’s here in Switzerland.
So anyways, after ushering in the New Year, I spent the remainder of the weekend in Lausanne. I went for fondue with five other people, and it had been about a month since I last had fondue, which surprised my friend greatly, as he has it every week or so. Keep in mind that when they say they eat fondue here, they are talking about some serious eating. This was the first time I’ve had fondue with a group of people in Switzerland, and they brought out the biggest vat of cheese I’ve ever seen. Take a block of cheese about as big as your head, throw it in a pot, and melt it, and that’s about how much five or six people will eat in one sitting. Remember, if it's made well, it should be stinky, like unwashed socks. By my rough calculations, when we had fondue nights in college, we had about one-quarter as much fondue for twice as many people. Granted, we also had a pot of chocolate fondue, and it was more just to have something to eat while we gossiped and played Taboo, but still… That’s a hell of a lot of cheese. When asked if my family eats fondue at home, I laughed, thinking of my wonderful, but very lactose-intolerant family. I seem to be the only lactose-intolerant person in all of Switzerland.
A few things that puzzle me… in a lot of the older buildings and apartments in Switzerland, they split bathrooms into two rooms. One has the toilet, and the other has the shower or bathtub, which in theory, makes a lot of sense, as it allows people to use both facilities simultaneously, but the strange part is that the sink is in the room with the shower and bathtub. I very rarely come out of the shower and then need to go wash my hands, as I assume that the showering process cleanses them sufficiently. It seems more likely that you would need to wash your hands after using the toilet. So why is the sink in the room with the shower and bathtub, instead of in the room with the toilet?
Switzerland has yet to go smoke-free in public places, and so people still smoke in the train station, in restaurants, and pretty much everywhere. Trains are no exception, although they do make a distinction between smoking compartments and non-smoking compartments. This would be excellent, except that it doesn’t always work. On double-decker trains, some cars have smoking compartments on the first level, with the non-smokers sitting up above, with an open stairwell between the levels. Other trains have cars that are bisected with a non-sealing, saloon-style swinging door, with smokers on one side and non-smokers on the other. Apparently, non-smokers here don’t mind the actual smoke, as the non-smoking compartments are often as smoky as the smoking compartments, it’s just that they don’t want to sit with the actual smokers. I’m not sure if it’s because they think that smoking, like leprosy, is contagious, or that smokers (but not the smoke) are disgusting, or if it’s just sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus style segregation.
And one last oddity: the whole formal-informal distinction. In every job I have had, everyone was always on a first-name basis, regardless of age difference, seniority, gender, and so on. You walk into work, meet your boss, and immediately start calling him Bob. Assuming that his name is Bob. That is not the case here, at all. Colleagues will call each other Mrs. This or Mr. That for years, even if they are 27 years old, and even if they work on the same level. Calling your boss by his or her first name is considered rude and presumptuous, and in most cases, you have to reach a great degree of familiarity before making the daring leap to going on a first-name basis. Especially in German-speaking Switzerland. I heard of one office where two women worked together on a daily basis for ten years, and were quite friendly, whereupon one asked the other if she thought they could switch to calling each other by their first names, and the other responded that she was quite happy with the status quo, and so they continued calling each other Mrs. This or That.
I hope you all made it safely from 2004 to 2005. How frightening that it's already 2005, and I still find myself accidentally writing 2003 on things.
I went into the mountains in Villars, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, where six of us had dinner and champagne by the fire in a chalet. We played some I Never (which wasn’t quite as juicy as past rounds I’ve played with RCSers and CLSers, but enlightening, nonetheless), messed around with the PlayStation, and turned in around 3. I lost my lip balm while up there, which many of you will realize is one of the greatest catastrophes that could happen to me, since I need lip balm more often and more desperately than most crack heads need their next fix. Out of sheer desperation, I started using Neosporin, instead, which wasn’t the tastiest thing ever, but it worked until I was able to go buy more of the real thing. I promise that pictures will go up in a day or two, both from Christmas in San Francisco, and from New Year’s here in Switzerland.
So anyways, after ushering in the New Year, I spent the remainder of the weekend in Lausanne. I went for fondue with five other people, and it had been about a month since I last had fondue, which surprised my friend greatly, as he has it every week or so. Keep in mind that when they say they eat fondue here, they are talking about some serious eating. This was the first time I’ve had fondue with a group of people in Switzerland, and they brought out the biggest vat of cheese I’ve ever seen. Take a block of cheese about as big as your head, throw it in a pot, and melt it, and that’s about how much five or six people will eat in one sitting. Remember, if it's made well, it should be stinky, like unwashed socks. By my rough calculations, when we had fondue nights in college, we had about one-quarter as much fondue for twice as many people. Granted, we also had a pot of chocolate fondue, and it was more just to have something to eat while we gossiped and played Taboo, but still… That’s a hell of a lot of cheese. When asked if my family eats fondue at home, I laughed, thinking of my wonderful, but very lactose-intolerant family. I seem to be the only lactose-intolerant person in all of Switzerland.
A few things that puzzle me… in a lot of the older buildings and apartments in Switzerland, they split bathrooms into two rooms. One has the toilet, and the other has the shower or bathtub, which in theory, makes a lot of sense, as it allows people to use both facilities simultaneously, but the strange part is that the sink is in the room with the shower and bathtub. I very rarely come out of the shower and then need to go wash my hands, as I assume that the showering process cleanses them sufficiently. It seems more likely that you would need to wash your hands after using the toilet. So why is the sink in the room with the shower and bathtub, instead of in the room with the toilet?
Switzerland has yet to go smoke-free in public places, and so people still smoke in the train station, in restaurants, and pretty much everywhere. Trains are no exception, although they do make a distinction between smoking compartments and non-smoking compartments. This would be excellent, except that it doesn’t always work. On double-decker trains, some cars have smoking compartments on the first level, with the non-smokers sitting up above, with an open stairwell between the levels. Other trains have cars that are bisected with a non-sealing, saloon-style swinging door, with smokers on one side and non-smokers on the other. Apparently, non-smokers here don’t mind the actual smoke, as the non-smoking compartments are often as smoky as the smoking compartments, it’s just that they don’t want to sit with the actual smokers. I’m not sure if it’s because they think that smoking, like leprosy, is contagious, or that smokers (but not the smoke) are disgusting, or if it’s just sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus style segregation.
And one last oddity: the whole formal-informal distinction. In every job I have had, everyone was always on a first-name basis, regardless of age difference, seniority, gender, and so on. You walk into work, meet your boss, and immediately start calling him Bob. Assuming that his name is Bob. That is not the case here, at all. Colleagues will call each other Mrs. This or Mr. That for years, even if they are 27 years old, and even if they work on the same level. Calling your boss by his or her first name is considered rude and presumptuous, and in most cases, you have to reach a great degree of familiarity before making the daring leap to going on a first-name basis. Especially in German-speaking Switzerland. I heard of one office where two women worked together on a daily basis for ten years, and were quite friendly, whereupon one asked the other if she thought they could switch to calling each other by their first names, and the other responded that she was quite happy with the status quo, and so they continued calling each other Mrs. This or That.
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