The long weekend in Lisbon reminded us of many things we don’t have in Switzerland: fresh seafood, abundant shopping, tank top and flip-flops weather in October, and cheap taxis, as well as panhandlers, flies, and dog poop. We ate, shopped, and squinted at the sun, all while waving flies away from our food and trying to avoid a minefield of canine waste that seemed to be required wherever there was pedestrian traffic. We stuffed ourselves at a Brazilian buffet for prices that are unheard of in both Zurich and New York (where it is pure fantasy to find all you can eat steak for 27 Swiss francs or 22 dollars). In any case, it was a good break, getting away from the prices and gloomy fall weather that plague land-locked Zurich (and it was cool to bring my list of countries visited to 33!!), but it was also good to get back to a city where walking without looking at the ground is not a risky venture.
After returning, I found something in my mailbox. After living in my apartment for over two years, I finally have an engraved plastic nameplate to replace the improvised bit of cardboard I had been using to let the mailman know where to put my mail. Of course, even without the spiffy new nameplate or the now-retired cardboard tag, it’s not difficult to figure out which mailbox is mine, since mine is the only one that is overflowing with junk mail from who knows how long ago.
The other tenants in the building apparently check their mail and clear out the junk on a daily basis. I imagine that they bundle it in with their neat stacks of paper recycling, which I still haven’t mastered, since I don’t know the paper pickup schedule, and can’t tie them into the perfect cubes of paper that are required. And I refuse to spend money to put my grocery store flyers into a regulation garbage bag to throw away with the regular trash. And so I’m reduced to a choice between smuggling junk mail to public trashcans or leaving it in my mailbox. Given my predilection for the option that requires the least effort, it’s not hard to guess which one I picked, and to then figure out why mine is the only mailbox that was vomiting mail this morning.
Although I am not a trash-master, I can say with confidence that I am better than the Swiss (and most other Europeans, other than the British) in one very important skill: waiting in lines. At the gate in the airport, at the train station ticket counter, at concession stands, and basically anywhere that forces people to wait for something they want, the Swiss are unable to grasp the concept of “waiting your turn.” If you’re waiting to get on a plane, or to buy a beer, or to get a ticket to the art museum, take a look around, and there will be at least two people trying to squeeze in front of you. It’s not a question of age or gender, I’ve been line-challenged by old ladies, teenage boys, and middle-aged men alike. The Swiss are unable to form lines, and instead clump up into throngs that push and wiggle their way up to the front.
In some cases, the powers that be have tried to force some semblance of order on the crowd: velvet ropes, numbered tickets, seating by rows. The only ones that work are the ones that say exactly when each particular person is entitled to go next. Other attempts at line management are completely ignored. Airline passengers who wait for their row in the middle of the plane to be called walk onto the plane to find the front rows already fully boarded. Housewives determinedly shove and wriggle their way through the “lines” carved out with ropes and barricades. For a country that likes everything to be orderly and in its logical place, Switzerland is hundreds of years behind in its understanding and enforcement of waiting in line.
After returning, I found something in my mailbox. After living in my apartment for over two years, I finally have an engraved plastic nameplate to replace the improvised bit of cardboard I had been using to let the mailman know where to put my mail. Of course, even without the spiffy new nameplate or the now-retired cardboard tag, it’s not difficult to figure out which mailbox is mine, since mine is the only one that is overflowing with junk mail from who knows how long ago.
The other tenants in the building apparently check their mail and clear out the junk on a daily basis. I imagine that they bundle it in with their neat stacks of paper recycling, which I still haven’t mastered, since I don’t know the paper pickup schedule, and can’t tie them into the perfect cubes of paper that are required. And I refuse to spend money to put my grocery store flyers into a regulation garbage bag to throw away with the regular trash. And so I’m reduced to a choice between smuggling junk mail to public trashcans or leaving it in my mailbox. Given my predilection for the option that requires the least effort, it’s not hard to guess which one I picked, and to then figure out why mine is the only mailbox that was vomiting mail this morning.
Although I am not a trash-master, I can say with confidence that I am better than the Swiss (and most other Europeans, other than the British) in one very important skill: waiting in lines. At the gate in the airport, at the train station ticket counter, at concession stands, and basically anywhere that forces people to wait for something they want, the Swiss are unable to grasp the concept of “waiting your turn.” If you’re waiting to get on a plane, or to buy a beer, or to get a ticket to the art museum, take a look around, and there will be at least two people trying to squeeze in front of you. It’s not a question of age or gender, I’ve been line-challenged by old ladies, teenage boys, and middle-aged men alike. The Swiss are unable to form lines, and instead clump up into throngs that push and wiggle their way up to the front.
In some cases, the powers that be have tried to force some semblance of order on the crowd: velvet ropes, numbered tickets, seating by rows. The only ones that work are the ones that say exactly when each particular person is entitled to go next. Other attempts at line management are completely ignored. Airline passengers who wait for their row in the middle of the plane to be called walk onto the plane to find the front rows already fully boarded. Housewives determinedly shove and wriggle their way through the “lines” carved out with ropes and barricades. For a country that likes everything to be orderly and in its logical place, Switzerland is hundreds of years behind in its understanding and enforcement of waiting in line.
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