Sometimes living in Switzerland is like looking at the back cover of Highlights magazine, where you have two pictures that at first glance look the same, but upon closer examination turn out to have some crucial and sometimes absurd differences. Many of the details of life here resemble things that are part of a normal American life, but only if you don’t look too closely.
I recently saw a poster advertising performances of Hamlet here in Zurich, which seemed normal enough until I considered two things, the first being that Shakespeare isn’t part of the literary and theatrical canon of the German-speaking world, and so live performances of Shakespeare are not as common as they are in, say New York or London. The second was the fact that the poster featured a skull, which may sound normal enough, given Hamlet’s monologue with poor Yorick’s skull. The strange thing in this case, the oddity that would appear in the second version of the poster in Highlights, was that there were bananas coming out of the skull’s eyes. It’s been a while since I’ve read Hamlet, but I don’t remember Hamlet’s speech as “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy, of bananas coming out of his eyes.”
The American Idol phenomenon has popped up in Switzerland in the form of Swiss Music Star. It’s the same idea – normal people auditioning on national TV to get a recording contract. There are judges, live audiences, viewer voting, and interviews. The contestants go through the same dramatic roller coaster ride of anxiety, anticipation, nervousness, and joy or despair. The key difference lies in the quality of the performances. Granted, Switzerland is a small country, so their audition pool is not very broad or deep, but Simon Cowell would have a field day here. Even when the show has narrowed it down to the top six finalists, allegedly the six best singers in Switzerland, the show still resembles clips from the first audition rounds of American Idol, the funny clips of the talentless people who think they can sing but are sadly mistaken.
Driver’s licenses in Switzerland were recently (a few years ago) changed from old-fashioned paper licenses to state-of-the-art, plastic, hologrammed cards. Seems normal, right? Two big differences – one is that the licenses are good for life, and the other is that you bring in your own picture. Unable to think outside the box, I dutifully brought in a passport-sized picture taken at a photo booth that looks like a standard American driver’s license picture – the color is slightly off, and I look like I’ve been doing hard time for a hard crime. Swiss people, however, knowing that they will be stuck with the photo for the rest of their lives, send in glamour shots with mood lighting and camera-ready makeup.
Easter is coming soon, and just as in the States, if you walk into a grocery store here, there are displays hawking Easter-themed products – chocolate bunnies, fuzzy stuffed ducks, placemats that look like Easter eggs, and so on. A second look, however, reveals two important gaps in the Easter lineup – Peeps and jellybeans. I find it hard to believe that an entire country full of people have celebrated Easter their entire lives without having Peeps – those fluorescent, near-radioactive marshmallow-related, sugar-covered treats that vaguely resemble chicks. And the rock-hard “dragon eggs” that they buy at Easter time are no substitute for the squishy delights of jellybeans. True, they’ve avoided the dreaded black licorice jellybeans, and the unpleasant surprise of the buttered popcorn Jelly Belly, but those risks come with the holiday, don’t they? Not in Switzerland, they don’t.
I recently saw a poster advertising performances of Hamlet here in Zurich, which seemed normal enough until I considered two things, the first being that Shakespeare isn’t part of the literary and theatrical canon of the German-speaking world, and so live performances of Shakespeare are not as common as they are in, say New York or London. The second was the fact that the poster featured a skull, which may sound normal enough, given Hamlet’s monologue with poor Yorick’s skull. The strange thing in this case, the oddity that would appear in the second version of the poster in Highlights, was that there were bananas coming out of the skull’s eyes. It’s been a while since I’ve read Hamlet, but I don’t remember Hamlet’s speech as “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy, of bananas coming out of his eyes.”
The American Idol phenomenon has popped up in Switzerland in the form of Swiss Music Star. It’s the same idea – normal people auditioning on national TV to get a recording contract. There are judges, live audiences, viewer voting, and interviews. The contestants go through the same dramatic roller coaster ride of anxiety, anticipation, nervousness, and joy or despair. The key difference lies in the quality of the performances. Granted, Switzerland is a small country, so their audition pool is not very broad or deep, but Simon Cowell would have a field day here. Even when the show has narrowed it down to the top six finalists, allegedly the six best singers in Switzerland, the show still resembles clips from the first audition rounds of American Idol, the funny clips of the talentless people who think they can sing but are sadly mistaken.
Driver’s licenses in Switzerland were recently (a few years ago) changed from old-fashioned paper licenses to state-of-the-art, plastic, hologrammed cards. Seems normal, right? Two big differences – one is that the licenses are good for life, and the other is that you bring in your own picture. Unable to think outside the box, I dutifully brought in a passport-sized picture taken at a photo booth that looks like a standard American driver’s license picture – the color is slightly off, and I look like I’ve been doing hard time for a hard crime. Swiss people, however, knowing that they will be stuck with the photo for the rest of their lives, send in glamour shots with mood lighting and camera-ready makeup.
Easter is coming soon, and just as in the States, if you walk into a grocery store here, there are displays hawking Easter-themed products – chocolate bunnies, fuzzy stuffed ducks, placemats that look like Easter eggs, and so on. A second look, however, reveals two important gaps in the Easter lineup – Peeps and jellybeans. I find it hard to believe that an entire country full of people have celebrated Easter their entire lives without having Peeps – those fluorescent, near-radioactive marshmallow-related, sugar-covered treats that vaguely resemble chicks. And the rock-hard “dragon eggs” that they buy at Easter time are no substitute for the squishy delights of jellybeans. True, they’ve avoided the dreaded black licorice jellybeans, and the unpleasant surprise of the buttered popcorn Jelly Belly, but those risks come with the holiday, don’t they? Not in Switzerland, they don’t.
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