Monday, March 14, 2005

14 March 2005

I was at a birthday party over the weekend, and it struck me yet again how much it sucks to celebrate your birthday in Europe. Birthday parties are great, and Europe is great, but the two just don’t mix if you’re the birthday boy or girl. The custom here is for the birthday girl or boy to either take all of their friends and family out to celebrate, or, if they can’t afford to buy dinner and drinks for a dozen or more people, then they have them over and make dinner for them. So each year on your birthday, you have to decide if you want to pay for all of your friends to go to a restaurant, or spend a whole day in the kitchen preparing dinner for your friends. Isn’t your birthday supposed to be the one day when everyone else buys your dinner and drinks, and you don’t have to do anything at all?

Anyways… one of the first things that struck me when I first moved here, coming from Manhattan, was that Zurich was amazingly devoid of Starbuck’s. I could walk for 10 minutes and not see a Starbuck’s. There were a few here and there, but it wasn’t anything like Starbuck’s Land, I mean, New York, where you could throw bricks through the windows of three Starbuck’s from any given street corner. Not that I would do that. Although I have been tempted. But Starbuck’s is stalking me. Late last year, they moved into the neighborhood where I work, and a few weeks ago, a brand spanking new Starbuck’s opened up within brick-throwing distance of my apartment. As much as I miss certain things about New York, Starbuck’s is not one of them, so obviously it is the only thing that has crossed the Atlantic and taken root in my new city of residence.

The one good thing about Starbuck’s is that it is a non-smoking establishment. Period. Most places here still allow smoking, and you will see people with a fork in one hand and a cigarette in the other, apparently unable to wait long enough to eat before getting their next nicotine hit. I can’t imagine that it does much for the flavor of the food. Other, more “progressive” restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, with no partition between the sections, rendering the distinction about as effective as having talking and non-talking sections in a movie theatre. (No, they don’t do that, but it’s the same idea).

I found out something I found amusing last week. Swiss schoolchildren are graded on cleanliness and organization until they are about ten years old. This means that their teachers will randomly search their desks and book bags for signs of disorder, and assign them grades based upon how clean their desk is, how well-organized their pencil case is, and so on. I suppose if you’re going to raise a country full of OCD cleaners, you have to start young, and you have to enforce it at home and at school, but I can’t imagine having my teachers go through all of my stuff. My parents did it all the time, which was enough of an invasion of privacy, but to have such practices institutionalized and graded? Eek.

Like American schools, Swiss schools also grade their students on penmanship when they are young. Students are only allowed to write in pencil until their handwriting is deemed to be pen-worthy, upon which the teacher presents the student with an official “Your Handwriting Is Good Enough For Pen” pen. Students vie to be the first in their class to write neatly enough to get a pen. It’s the little things in life...

One thing that has been puzzling me: the train system in Switzerland is extensive and efficient. During the day. At night, the trains run infrequently, if at all, and take literally three times as long to cover the same distance. For instance, the train between Zurich and Fribourg takes under an hour and a half when it is running during the day. Around 10 p.m., it starts taking about two hours, and then after midnight, it takes almost six hours to cover the same distance, without any big detours. What is it doing for the extra four hours? Why does it take so much longer? Does it just stop somewhere for four hours, or is it just going extra-slow?

Anyways, I leave Friday to go to Belize, with a stop in New York on the way back, so I will be on a short hiatus, although I may be able to get some bits and pieces in here and there. Yay for going from 30 degree weather to 80 degree weather!! Even more yay for vacation, especially when diving is involved!!

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