I experienced a momentary pang of regret yesterday when I realized I wouldn’t be able to watch the Oscars, due to the time difference and the fact that I only get two channels in my apartment, both of which are local Swiss channels that were featuring, I kid you not, accordion music and German puppet shows last night. Then I realized that I never watch the Oscars, anyways. My regret is more that I don’t get to see some of the movies I would like to see here, as not all movies make it over here.
An article in the newspaper today announced that a study had found Swiss movie theatres to be the most expensive. This doesn’t surprise me, since a movie ticket generally costs about $15 or $16, unless you go on Monday, when the tickets are about $10.25. This definitely raises the bar for how good a movie has to be to be worth the ticket price. On the other hand, during intermission, everyone leaves their coats and bags at their seats while they go smoke or have an ice cream, so I have wondered if anyone recovers their ticket money by swiping other people’s personal effects during the break. How trusting is that, to leave your purse in an unguarded room full of strangers? I don’t have that kind of faith in humanity, and so I make a compromise; I leave my coat and hat at my seat, but my wallet, phone, and keys come with me.
I find this phenomenon especially surprising, given that the Swiss tend to carry a lot of cash. Many people eschew credit cards in favor of cash, and so it is not uncommon for people of all ages to carry hundreds of dollars in cash at all times. [Note to self: if lawyering thing doesn't work out, start new career as a pickpocket and petty thief in Switzerland.] Go out to dinner with a bunch of Swiss people, and everyone has cash, so you don’t have to deal with the typical New York dining experience, where you ask the waiter to split the tab between a pile of crumpled bills and four credit cards.
Given that there are more banks and ATMs in Zurich than there are Starbuck’s in Manhattan (based on my unofficial at-a-glance evaluation), I am not sure why they need so much cash to tide them over until the next time they are near an ATM. All of the ATMs look legit, too. I only recently realized that it has been ages since I’ve seen one of those questionable McDonald’s 99-cent ATMs, or the stand-alone $2 ATMs you see in 24-hour corner grocers. ATMs here are affiliated with and usually attached to banks. Period. They don’t show up in all-night stores or dive bars, and they don’t come from sketchy third-party providers. It’s sort of reassuring, actually, and there isn’t any loss in convenience or accessibility caused by eliminating the random ATMs, since every other building here is a bank, anyways.
Anyways… I am endlessly entertained by the issues that come up when people speak a non-native language. When I speak French, I play fast and loose with genders, pronouns, and verb tenses, making me sound dim-witted, and when French speakers speak English, they just sound crazy. Because everything is gendered in French, there is a tendency to carry those genders into English, making the French speaker sound a little delusional. The world comes to life, and the speaker seems to believe that everyday objects have acquired personalities and wills of their own. “My telephone, he is acting a little crazy today.” “My computer, he is not getting along with the internet connection. She is not working so well. I will disconnect her and reboot him and see if they work better afterwards.” Don’t people get thrown in the loony bin for entertaining such delusions? “So, tell me about your friends, Mr. Telephone, Mr. Computer, and Ms. Connection… Do they talk to you? Do they tell you to break things? Do they tell you to kill people??”
One final and completely unrelated item: Eggs. (Wasn’t there a Delicious Dish skit on SNL where the next episode was about eggs? Sorry, random thought. I miss Delicious Dish. And SNL, for that matter). So, eggs, right. You can buy them raw or hard-boiled in the grocery store. If you buy them raw, they have a date stamped on the end, so that you know how old they are. If you buy them hard-boiled, they are dyed, like Easter eggs. I asked my friend why it is done this way, and he said that it was so that you could tell that they are cooked. Although the carton they come in is labelled as such, I suppose this way, the individual eggs are identified, as well. However, I pointed out that they could just stamp the eggs with the word “cooked” (or its equivalent), since they have egg-stamping technology that is used on the raw eggs, and after some hemming and hawing, his only reply was that this way is prettier, and don’t the hard-boiled eggs look nice?
An article in the newspaper today announced that a study had found Swiss movie theatres to be the most expensive. This doesn’t surprise me, since a movie ticket generally costs about $15 or $16, unless you go on Monday, when the tickets are about $10.25. This definitely raises the bar for how good a movie has to be to be worth the ticket price. On the other hand, during intermission, everyone leaves their coats and bags at their seats while they go smoke or have an ice cream, so I have wondered if anyone recovers their ticket money by swiping other people’s personal effects during the break. How trusting is that, to leave your purse in an unguarded room full of strangers? I don’t have that kind of faith in humanity, and so I make a compromise; I leave my coat and hat at my seat, but my wallet, phone, and keys come with me.
I find this phenomenon especially surprising, given that the Swiss tend to carry a lot of cash. Many people eschew credit cards in favor of cash, and so it is not uncommon for people of all ages to carry hundreds of dollars in cash at all times. [Note to self: if lawyering thing doesn't work out, start new career as a pickpocket and petty thief in Switzerland.] Go out to dinner with a bunch of Swiss people, and everyone has cash, so you don’t have to deal with the typical New York dining experience, where you ask the waiter to split the tab between a pile of crumpled bills and four credit cards.
Given that there are more banks and ATMs in Zurich than there are Starbuck’s in Manhattan (based on my unofficial at-a-glance evaluation), I am not sure why they need so much cash to tide them over until the next time they are near an ATM. All of the ATMs look legit, too. I only recently realized that it has been ages since I’ve seen one of those questionable McDonald’s 99-cent ATMs, or the stand-alone $2 ATMs you see in 24-hour corner grocers. ATMs here are affiliated with and usually attached to banks. Period. They don’t show up in all-night stores or dive bars, and they don’t come from sketchy third-party providers. It’s sort of reassuring, actually, and there isn’t any loss in convenience or accessibility caused by eliminating the random ATMs, since every other building here is a bank, anyways.
Anyways… I am endlessly entertained by the issues that come up when people speak a non-native language. When I speak French, I play fast and loose with genders, pronouns, and verb tenses, making me sound dim-witted, and when French speakers speak English, they just sound crazy. Because everything is gendered in French, there is a tendency to carry those genders into English, making the French speaker sound a little delusional. The world comes to life, and the speaker seems to believe that everyday objects have acquired personalities and wills of their own. “My telephone, he is acting a little crazy today.” “My computer, he is not getting along with the internet connection. She is not working so well. I will disconnect her and reboot him and see if they work better afterwards.” Don’t people get thrown in the loony bin for entertaining such delusions? “So, tell me about your friends, Mr. Telephone, Mr. Computer, and Ms. Connection… Do they talk to you? Do they tell you to break things? Do they tell you to kill people??”
One final and completely unrelated item: Eggs. (Wasn’t there a Delicious Dish skit on SNL where the next episode was about eggs? Sorry, random thought. I miss Delicious Dish. And SNL, for that matter). So, eggs, right. You can buy them raw or hard-boiled in the grocery store. If you buy them raw, they have a date stamped on the end, so that you know how old they are. If you buy them hard-boiled, they are dyed, like Easter eggs. I asked my friend why it is done this way, and he said that it was so that you could tell that they are cooked. Although the carton they come in is labelled as such, I suppose this way, the individual eggs are identified, as well. However, I pointed out that they could just stamp the eggs with the word “cooked” (or its equivalent), since they have egg-stamping technology that is used on the raw eggs, and after some hemming and hawing, his only reply was that this way is prettier, and don’t the hard-boiled eggs look nice?
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