Thanksgiving came and went with little fanfare, other than various expat gatherings. I attended one dinner that had the full, traditional Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey, and had a smaller one with friends, sans turkey, because none of us felt like trying to find and cook a turkey. "But you can't have Thanksgiving without turkey?!" Right, and you're not supposed to have Thanksgiving on Saturday, which we did, and apparently, Peking duck doesn't count as Thanksgiving fare, but that's what I grew up on. I figure everyone else is busily upholding tradition, so if I don't, there are millions of others who will make sure that Thanksgiving is properly observed.
I went to catch a Röyksopp concert here in Zurich on Sunday night, and it was a different concert experience than I am accustomed to. The tickets said that the doors opened at 8 pm, which in the States would mean that by 7:30, there would be a big line of people hoping to get spots near the front, and that once the doors opened, people would charge in to reserve their standing room. Instead, my friend and I walked in at 8, and the only line was for the coat check. Everyone waited to check their coats before trying to get into the club. Once inside, people were milling around, getting beers, and making no perceivable effort to get up front, and so my friend and I, despite having walked in after at least 100 other people, ended up in the front row.
In the States, once a show starts, the crowd presses up to the front, to the point that you can almost rest your entire weight on the people squished up against you, and sometimes necessitating the artful use of elbows and heels to get some breathing room. Not the case here, where even the people in the front row (read: my friend and I) had space not only to breathe, but also to dance. Despite the fact that there were hundreds of people drinking beer, smoking pot, and cheering the band, there were only two bouncers who sat on the steps at the front of the room, one of whom was phenomenally bored, and the other of whom smoked his cigarette and grooved along with the music. That has to be a cushy job, being a security guy in a country of well-behaved people.
At the end of a concert in the States, people scream and clap in order to bring the band back on for an encore, and that seemed to be the same pattern in Switzerland, until the last 20 seconds before the band actually came on. Somehow, the Swiss know when the band is about to re-take the stage, and they all stick out their right hands at shoulder-level, wiggle their fingers, and say, in unison, “Ohhhh,” and when the band actually walks on, they raise their arms, fingers still wiggling, and the “Ohhhh” then rises in pitch and tails off. It sounds strange, but, believe me, watching hundreds of people do it in unison is even stranger. The concert ended by 11, the earliest of any concert I’ve been to, in plenty of time for everyone to catch a tram home and go to sleep early enough to get up by 7 the next day.
Not all Swiss are so proper. A couple weeks ago, a pack of about 20 guys in their early 20s got on a tram, drinking beer (acceptable in public) and smoking cigarettes (also acceptable in public, but not on trams), and making a lot of noise (not acceptable in public). They were chanting, “Hurrah, hurrah, die Zürcherin sind da” (shouted with much rolling of the Rs, it means “Hurrah, hurrah, the Zurichers are there”), and “Scheisse, scheisse, FZW” (a highbrow chant meaning “Sh*t, sh*t, FZW”), evidently out of drunken pride in a local team. They congregated at one end of the tram, jumping up and down, making it rock, and shouting, “Fike the police,” apparently a call to action that falls somewhere between “fighting” and “f*cking” the local police authorities. The conductor announced that if they didn’t leave, the police would come. I perked up, anticipating the spectacle of the fiking of said police, but their true Swiss natures prevailed. They immediately exited and ran away, but not without dealing their extremely rebellious parting blow: they tripped the emergency switches. Fike the power.
I went to catch a Röyksopp concert here in Zurich on Sunday night, and it was a different concert experience than I am accustomed to. The tickets said that the doors opened at 8 pm, which in the States would mean that by 7:30, there would be a big line of people hoping to get spots near the front, and that once the doors opened, people would charge in to reserve their standing room. Instead, my friend and I walked in at 8, and the only line was for the coat check. Everyone waited to check their coats before trying to get into the club. Once inside, people were milling around, getting beers, and making no perceivable effort to get up front, and so my friend and I, despite having walked in after at least 100 other people, ended up in the front row.
In the States, once a show starts, the crowd presses up to the front, to the point that you can almost rest your entire weight on the people squished up against you, and sometimes necessitating the artful use of elbows and heels to get some breathing room. Not the case here, where even the people in the front row (read: my friend and I) had space not only to breathe, but also to dance. Despite the fact that there were hundreds of people drinking beer, smoking pot, and cheering the band, there were only two bouncers who sat on the steps at the front of the room, one of whom was phenomenally bored, and the other of whom smoked his cigarette and grooved along with the music. That has to be a cushy job, being a security guy in a country of well-behaved people.
At the end of a concert in the States, people scream and clap in order to bring the band back on for an encore, and that seemed to be the same pattern in Switzerland, until the last 20 seconds before the band actually came on. Somehow, the Swiss know when the band is about to re-take the stage, and they all stick out their right hands at shoulder-level, wiggle their fingers, and say, in unison, “Ohhhh,” and when the band actually walks on, they raise their arms, fingers still wiggling, and the “Ohhhh” then rises in pitch and tails off. It sounds strange, but, believe me, watching hundreds of people do it in unison is even stranger. The concert ended by 11, the earliest of any concert I’ve been to, in plenty of time for everyone to catch a tram home and go to sleep early enough to get up by 7 the next day.
Not all Swiss are so proper. A couple weeks ago, a pack of about 20 guys in their early 20s got on a tram, drinking beer (acceptable in public) and smoking cigarettes (also acceptable in public, but not on trams), and making a lot of noise (not acceptable in public). They were chanting, “Hurrah, hurrah, die Zürcherin sind da” (shouted with much rolling of the Rs, it means “Hurrah, hurrah, the Zurichers are there”), and “Scheisse, scheisse, FZW” (a highbrow chant meaning “Sh*t, sh*t, FZW”), evidently out of drunken pride in a local team. They congregated at one end of the tram, jumping up and down, making it rock, and shouting, “Fike the police,” apparently a call to action that falls somewhere between “fighting” and “f*cking” the local police authorities. The conductor announced that if they didn’t leave, the police would come. I perked up, anticipating the spectacle of the fiking of said police, but their true Swiss natures prevailed. They immediately exited and ran away, but not without dealing their extremely rebellious parting blow: they tripped the emergency switches. Fike the power.
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