30 May 2007

I spent a long weekend in Vilnius, but that will have to wait. So much travel, so little blog-space! St. Petersburg is many things that Zurich is not – it’s big, it’s chaotic, it’s noisy, and it’s dirty. The population of St. Petersburg is almost two-thirds of the entire population of Switzerland. It’s not as populous as New York, but I’ve been Swissified, so it was a bit overwhelming, but very exciting.

St. Petersburg is huge – the subway is unfathomably deep underground, and the trains go for long stretches at high speed between stops – unlike in Zurich, there’s no debate between walking or waiting for the next train. You never know exactly when the train will come – there is no set schedule, and although there are timers on the platforms, they only tell you when the last train left. The trains run very frequently, though, so you don’t have to stand there for too long thinking, “If only I hadn’t stopped tie my shoe, I would have caught the train.”

Another strange thing is that a lot of the subway stations have safety doors instead of platforms, so you wait in what appears to be a hallway with heavy-duty elevator doors every few meters. When a train arrives, you don’t see it, but the safety doors open. You hop in as quickly as possible once the train doors open, because the safety doors slam shut with enough force to make you question their usefulness as “safety” doors. Once you’re in the train, you often can’t see the stations for more than a few seconds (because of the safety doors), and all of the station names are in Cyrillic, so it can be quite, er, exciting trying to get where you want to go.

There are hundreds of buses that run on tangled routes. The drivers speak only Russian, you get in, pass them some money, and they hurtle through city streets unfamiliar to confused travelers like me. Where does bus K-113 go? I have no idea, I just hope it’s going in roughly the same direction I want to go. And then there’s the practice that my friend and I dubbed “hitchcabbing,” which we did once while we were there. Basically, if you stick your hand out, palm down, while standing next to the street, somebody will stop. It’s usually not a cab. A lot of people in St. Petersburg earn some extra cash by picking up random people and driving them where they want to go. You get a car to stop, pop your head in, tell them where you’re going, negotiate a price, get in, and hope you didn’t just make a huge mistake.

There are tons of museums, some beautiful, some bizarre – one even has a collection of babies with birth defects, preserved for display. Yes, they have pickled, deformed babies in jars. That was less disturbing, however, than the stern warnings we read about drinking the tap water. Apparently, the tap water in St. Petersburg is so full of heavy metals and critters that even the locals don’t drink it. We were warned to use bottled water, even for brushing our teeth, for fear of catching a fun little parasite that is impervious to antibiotics, can withstand being boiled for up to ten minutes, and which can remain active for years after the initial infection. Eek.

There were many things that we could hardly fathom – the universal use of nylons and stockings by all women, regardless of whether they were wearing shorts, skirts, sandals, or flip-flops; the use of Russian dressing on foods ranging from pizza to sandwiches; the fact that we walked over 35 miles (56 km), despite having taken trams, subways, and buses for the “long” stretches; the strange feeling of watching the sun set at 11:30 p.m. – and many things I didn’t even mention here. It was an amazing weekend, and worth the angst over getting our Russian visas, which only arrived the morning of our flight out of Zurich.

Editor's Note

Still tired from Vilnius, so for now, there are pictures up from St. Petersburg, and I'll post on Wednesday :)

23 May 2007

Where to even begin? I don’t think the extra-long weekend in Helsinki and St. Petersburg will fit in one entry, so it will have to be at least a two-part special. Let’s start with Helsinki, since that’s where we went first. We stayed at a Finnish friend’s apartment, and arrived there late at night. We opened the door to her apartment, which led to… another door, about 18 inches in from the first door. This door-in-a-door thing seemed odd, but it showed up in our hotel in St. Petersburg, as well, so maybe it’s a regional quirk, intended for storing wet shoes, umbrellas, or sleds (which is what our friend’s subletter was keeping in the inter-door space).

We closed the curtains to keep out the light (very important, since at this time of year in Helsinki, it’s light past 11 p.m. and it gets light again at 4 a.m., and summer solstice is still a month away), and went to sleep. We got up the next morning to find our way to a salon (haircuts rank high on the list of things to do outside of Switzerland, due to the astronomical cost and high probability of getting a charming mullet at Swiss salons), and as we made our way there, we noticed that the vast majority of the population in Helsinki is blond. Naturally blond.

This observation was confirmed by our hair stylist, who told me that my dark hair was very exotic and unusual (tell that to the billions of people with black or brown hair, and to the millions of them who dye their “exotic” hair blond). After we left the salon, we noticed that many people in Helsinki had “backwards” roots – their hair was dyed brown or black, and the roots were coming in blond. I spent the remaining time in Finland feeling very special and unique, indeed, until we reached Russia, where, as in the other places I’ve been, blondes supposedly have more fun.

Finnish is apparently one of the most difficult languages in the world – they have all sorts of declensions and conjugations, and they use so many umlauts and repeated letters that it seems like they’re just trying to make it more impenetrable to the rest of the world. A sample phrase in Finnish will show you what I mean: “ja käyttää saatuja tuloksia tukena päätettäessä ravintolakilpailutuksesta.”

Finland’s population is well under six million, so all Finns learn additional languages in order to communicate with the rest of the non-Finnish world. The first foreign language that they learn (which is also used on all of their signs, underneath the Finnish) is Swedish, a very judicious choice, seeing as Sweden has a population of over nine million, meaning that a Swedish-speaking Finn can communicate with almost fifteen million people, about a quarter of a percent of the world’s population! To be fair, Sweden and Finland are neighbors, so I suppose Swedish is quite useful for many Finns. After Swedish, most Finns learn English, which allows them to talk to a larger percentage of the world’s non-blond population.

One of my favorite things to do in a new country is to browse for unusual products. The tourist bureau had brochures advertising a necklace that was commissioned to commemorate the historic win of Finland’s heavy metal monster group Lordi in Eurovision 2006. Have you seen Lordi? The three best products for sale in the Finnish grocery store we went to were Lordi gummy candy, instant strawberry soup (just add hot water) and canned braised reindeer. We later saw canned bear and canned elk, as well. Our Finnish friend says that such unconventional (by American norms) meats are standard fare – her family freezes half of a reindeer or half of an elk every year to eat during the winter months.

15 May 2007

When I lived in New York, and before that, when I sang in college and did international tours, my friends and I used to blow of steam every once in a while by imposing ourselves on a poor, unsuspecting karaoke bar. Because of the nature of karaoke in New York (and apparently also in Toronto), everyone cheered and sang along when we would do a screaming, jumping, heartfelt rendition of “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and no one really minded that we were standing on our chairs and sounding like a pack of rabid animals. That’s what you do at karaoke, right? You go with friends, pick the loudest songs from your youth, and howl them out in a show of friendly bonding.

Not in Switzerland. The Swiss take their karaoke seriously. Unless you go to karaoke at an expat-dominated bar, the mike is dominated by people who favor Celine Dion ballads to show off their vocal prowess. I went to one karaoke night when “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and the Titanic song were each sung twice. At Swiss karaoke nights, one person earnestly belts it out into the microphone while the rest of the bar politely listens. Although the singers are sometimes impressive, it’s not the rowdy bonding experience that I’m used to.

This past Friday, a few friends and I decided to go to karaoke night at an expat bar, so our audience was decidedly less staid than the patrons of the more Swiss karaoke bars, but even so, I think they were a bit taken aback by our, how should I put it, enthusiasm. We had at least two people on each of the three mikes for every song, and we ran around trying to get the less stunned-looking members of the crowd to join in. Near the end of the evening, one fellow karaoke participant, searching for something nice to say, complimented our English (keep in mind that we were all American or Canadian), and another singer said that he admired our "energy."

The next night, I watched the Eurovision finals for the first time. Eurovision is sort of like Star Search for all of Europe. Every country sends one group or singer, their top pick, to compete, and the top 24 countries make it to the finals. People vote by phone or SMS, and then each country then submits its people’s votes in a strange quasi- electoral college voting system. After having watched the contest, I have to say that I have no idea why they get so serious about their karaoke here, because the performers on Eurovision, their countries’ best, were mostly exceptional only for their "energy."

My favorites, for your viewing pleasure, were the Ukraine (which came in second in spite of, or perhaps because of the cross-dressing Elton John-type singer and his knee-socked go-go boys), Sweden (note the lead singer’s flashy necklace and the guitar player’s 1980’s mother-of-the-bride shirt), France (that black thing around the guy’s neck is a stuffed cat), and Greece (he shimmies better than Ricky Martin).

After much fuss and angst, we finally secured our visas to go to Russia! They arrived this morning, just in time for our evening departure. Whew. The people at the Russian embassy and consulate in Switzerland rarely answer their phone, and they are rather hostile and unhelpful (independently confirmed by my dentist, who also happens to be going there this month, and who had similar difficulties getting a visa). Everything I’ve ever heard about Russian bureaucracy and efficiency has been proven in our dealings with the hotel and the embassy, but I’m hoping that all the amazing things I’ve heard about Russia are equally true. We leave today for Helsinki, Finland, and then spend the weekend in St. Petersburg!

8 May 2007

This past weekend, my friend (who is from Kentucky) hosted a Kentucky Derby party. He served Southern food and mint juleps, and we used my TiVo and Slingbox to watch the race (I picked the 2nd and 3rd place finishers, so I came out about $5 ahead).

It seemed that half the conversations involved explanations of the Kentucky Derby, TiVo, and Slingbox, so that throughout the evening, you would hear snippets of conversation, “it’s the most important horse race in the U.S.,” “Have you heard of Secretariat?” or “it’s a box that streams live TV to your computer.” Strange to think that such an established event in the States is virtually unknown here – a German friend asked me if it involved chickens, which confused me until I realized his only point of reference was Kentucky Fried Chicken. A significant number of conversations also involved an explanation of grits, “Well, it’s sort of like polenta, I guess?”

Anyways, a friend and I are going to Helsinki and St. Petersburg next week. Well, at least we hope we’re going. It all depends on the Russian embassy. We tried repeatedly calling them in Bern, only to get busy signals every time. We had assumed that, since their website was in English, that someone in the office would speak English. When my friend finally got through to the office in Bern, the man only spoke Russian and German, no English, and he refused to answer any of her questions, asking her instead whether she had looked at the website. The official embassy website didn’t have the information we were looking for (although it did have choice sections like “What is Russian Visa”), but I guess there was no way for the man to know, since it was in English. I called their consulate in Geneva, and was able to get the necessary information in French.

With dubious hope, we wired money to the account she had specified, and mailed our passports, visa invitations (from the hotel), itineraries, pictures, and visa applications to them, and will just have to hope that they return them in time for our departure next week. The Russian visa application for Americans is quite extensive, asking, among other things, for a list of all countries visited in the last ten years, and the dates of the visits. For me, that’s 28 countries, and there’s no way it was going to fit in the space provided. They also asked whether we had any special training in explosives or nuclear devices. I’m guessing the right answers to those questions would be “No.”

This trip was planned to use up one of the Swiss holiday weekends, which are front-loaded, so that we have lots of vacations built into the first half of the year. Although I fully appreciate the abundance of long weekends, it does make travel planning a bit frantic, since this year, May has three long weekends. The first was spent in Strasbourg, the second will be spent in St. Petersburg (assuming we get our passports and visas back in time) and Helsinki, and the third was unplanned until recently. Decent fares are hard to come by on holiday weekends, since everyone scrambles to head out for a break.

But we found one. Vilnius, Lithuania.

We knew very little about the place before booking, other than the fact that we had never been there and the tickets were reasonably priced. Some quick research has turned up the fact that it is home to the only statue in the world honoring Frank Zappa. Not to be outdone, St. Petersburg boasts a collection of pickled babies in jars. This is going to be an interesting month.

2 May 2007

Sorry for the delay, I took a last-minute trip to France, because it was a long weekend, and it looked like rain in Switzerland. How’s that for an excuse, eh? In any case, after spending the entire afternoon and evening outdoors on Saturday, three friends and I decided to rent a car on Sunday to go to Italy. Sunday morning, we decided that the town we were going to go to in Italy wasn’t very convenient, so we went to France, instead. Strasbourg, to be precise.

We packed the car with four people, a dog, four backpacks, three cameras, enough snacks to supply an entire kindergarten class. I considered picking up a package of trail mix, not because I had any particular desire to eat trail mix, but because the German term for it has always amused me – literally translated, it’s called “student feed,” the food you give students, just like “chicken feed” is the food you give chickens. Upon further reflection, I bought cookies, instead. We had no maps; instead, we put our faith in the GPS system installed in the rental car. The GPS woman proved to be quite stubborn and difficult to work with, and very vocal about her opinions, but in the end, we followed her instructions. She was all we had. But, it worked out, we made it.

Given all the hubbub in the States about passports and crossing borders and so on, it’s remarkable how lax the borders are in Europe. Border patrol between EU countries is almost non-existent. The border police aren’t allowed to stop vehicles unless they have a particular reason – such as an international manhunt, I guess. When we crossed from Germany into France, there wasn’t even a person manning the booth.

Between Switzerland and the EU (non-Europeans often forget that Switzerland is its own little island in the middle of an EU sea), border control seems to be purely for show. As we crossed from Switzerland to Germany, a man in a military beret glanced at the car and waved us on. We could have been illegal immigrants, and he wouldn’t have known. We could have had a bazooka, ten migrant workers, three terrorists, four kilos of crack, (and a partridge in a pear tree) and he wouldn’t have cared. On the way back into Switzerland, they were just as uninterested in checking our passports, human or canine.

Yes, dogs have passports in Europe, so that they can cross borders without being quarantined. Dogs also do all kinds of other things that are usually reserved for humans, at least in the States. Fiver comes to work with me almost every day, and he came to France and stayed in the hotel (the desk clerk seemed surprised when I asked whether dogs were allowed). In restaurants in Switzerland, waiters sometimes bring him water before I’ve even had a chance to order a drink for myself. Last week, I took him to a restaurant where the waiter even brought out a bowl of dog food so that Fiver could eat dinner at the table like the rest of us.

And finally, an “only in Switzerland” moment for your entertainment. Recently, Zurich has been installing lots of 24-hour garbage drop-off points around town, which are basically underground reservoirs topped with lidded metal tubes. You lift the lid, drop in a trash bag, and it drops down the tube into the reservoir. A kid fell into one of the trash reservoirs, and was extracted with minimal fuss, because, being Swiss, the garbage authorities had anticipated the fact that a kid would eventually fall in, and had conducted drills and exercises to ensure that they could quickly and efficiently get the kid out of a garbage chute once it happened. There won’t be a Baby Jessica story in Zurich any time soon.

24 April 2007

It’s 2007, and Zurich has finally decided to cave in and open up a shopping mall. This is a country where, until a few years ago, it was illegal to have discounts or sales outside of certain government-regulated time periods, for fear of having unfair price competition, and where it is still illegal to have stores open on Sundays (except for in airports and train stations, or except for three specified Sundays each year, for those stores not located in a train station or airport). And now there’s a mall. Swiss style. Apparently, it was so mind-boggling that when it first opened a month ago, it was impossible to actually shop at the mall, because it was so crowded with people who went just to stand and stare.

The stores in the new mall close at 8 p.m. (most stores close even earlier), and are closed on Sundays. And as is practically required in every gathering of stores here, there is a large branch of one of the two major grocery stores. There is also a church, because we all know that that’s why people go to the mall – to pray for good deals and short lines. There’s a library for those who don’t want to buy anything, and a hotel for people who want to live at the mall. There’s a movie theatre with nine screens (which is quite large, considering that the main downtown theatre has four screens). For those patrons who feel that 8 p.m. is just too early to call it a night at the mall, there’s a nightclub.

Summer time is concert time in Switzerland. Although it’s a country of only six-odd million people, Switzerland has numerous music festivals in the summer, attracting all kinds of musicians of varying levels of international fame. I’ve seen Sigur Ros, Jose Gonzalez, Death Cab for Cutie, Royksopp, and Metric here, and I’ll probably see Bjork, Damien Rice, David Gray, Arcade Fire, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah this summer. Not bad.

What puzzles me about the summer music festivals is their nomenclature. For instance, the most famous summer festival is the Montreux Jazz Festival, which is where I saw Sigur Ros last year, where the Chemical Brothers, the Beastie Boys, the B-52’s, and the Pet Shop Boys are playing this year. My knowledge of jazz is pretty basic, mostly covering Monk, Ella, Billie, Louis, and Duke, but I’m pretty sure that “Sabotage” and “Time Warp” don’t get played regularly in jazz clubs. Maybe it should be called the Montreux Not-Necessarily-Jazz Festival?

Another big music festival is held in Lucerne. Van Morrison played there a couple years ago. David Gray will be there this year. It’s a well-known venue for established artists. And it’s called the Blue Balls Festival. Seriously.

Anyways, speaking of summer plans, a friend and I will be taking a trip to Helsinki and St. Petersburg soon. We found out that in order to get Russian visas, we have to give the government our flight and hotel information, our hotel needs to invite us to come to Russia as tourists, and then we can get our visas, after we’ve already booked our tickets and paid for our hotel. Sounds a bit suspect to me, especially since it involves lots of websites that end in “.ru,” which in any other context would make me think I was being scammed. I emailed a few hotels (in English, since my Russian is non-existent) to try to get a reservation. One hotel emailed me back in Russian. I translated their response online, and it’s clear that they understood my English inquiry, since they responded appropriately, so I’m just wondering why they responded in Russian. Or maybe they’re using online translations, as well, and we’ll show up and find out that we’ve ordered two ducks and an armchair, instead of three nights in a hotel room. Wish us luck.

18 April 2007

I got back Monday evening from my trip to San Francisco, where I indulged in everything I miss out on here in Zurich – family, old friends, food, shopping, and speaking fast English to anyone who will listen. I got back to Zurich just in time to catch the tail end of Sechselaüten, the Swiss semi-equivalent of Groundhog Day, which, as I’ve described before, involves a gasoline-soaked, explosive-stuffed snowman effigy, costumed men throwing fish, apples, and rolls, fake Arabs in brown-face, and (like every good Swiss celebration) a parade with enough marching bands to populate a small country (I’ve come to believe that all Swiss men, in addition to having a military-issue rifle under their bed, also have a brass instrument tucked away in their closet).

After dropping my stuff off at my apartment, I stopped at my friends’ place to say hi to my local crew, who were celebrating the fact that the head of the Böögg (the burning snowman) exploded in just over twelve minutes, which supposedly means that we’ll have a warm summer. I handed out a few American goodies that various people had requested I bring back for them – contact lens solution, soy chips, and toilet bowl cleaner (I also brought back vast quantities of candy, beef jerky, dried mangoes, and cereal).

Then, I proceeded to instill envy in all of them as I regaled them with my doings during my ten days in the States. “I went to Costco! I went to Safeway and Walgreen’s! I had two Cinnabons! I went to Banana Republic and Old Navy, and the salespeople were so friendly! I ate all kinds of food – Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Mexican, French, mint chocolate chip ice cream! Everything was so cheap! I used the icemaker in my sister’s freezer! The washing machine was so big that I couldn’t even fill it!” Sometimes I wonder if I live in Switzerland or an alien planet.

My ticket was booked using some of my dad’s frequent flyer miles, and because coach was booked out by the time I bought my ticket, I flew business. I know this is obvious, but it’s a different world in front of that curtain – seats that recline more than three inches, so much leg room that it’s nearly impossible to kick the seat in front of you, warmed nuts, ice cream, eight movies, steak, complimentary toothpaste and booties, extra baggage allowance, priority seating, and the assurance that your bags will come within five minutes of deplaning. If all seats were business class, I’d fly a lot more.

It’s probably a good thing they aren’t all business class, because I’m not sure I really should be flying any more than I already am. I sat down and calculated all the flights I’ve taken since the day I started work in Zurich, and they total up to approximately 120,000 miles, which is equal to roughly fifteen trips around the world, one weekend at a time, in less than three years. Al Gore probably doesn’t approve of me.

Speaking of Al Gore, when I got back to Zurich, my friends informed me that for the previous week, it had been unseasonably warm, with temperatures going as high as 78 F (25 C). Keep in mind that Zurich is not a particularly hot town, and we usually only have a couple weeks each year where sleeping without air conditioning is actually uncomfortable. To be pushing 80 degrees in early April is a pretty good sign that I really ought to be flying less, or at least buying some carbon offsets to assuage the climate gods. Just don’t tell them about the trip I’ve got planned to Helsinki and St. Petersburg in May, or about the fact that I’m trying to decide what to do with my next two long weekends. Greece looks tempting.

4 April 2007

I went to the bank to pull out some dollars in preparation for my upcoming trip back to the States, and while I was waiting in line, I started thinking about Swiss banks. Swiss banks really make quite a business of holding onto your money, moving your money, converting your money, and making money off of your money.

Unlike American banks, which only accept foreign currency in bills, Swiss banks also accept coins. Money is money, and change adds up, especially if they skim off a percentage on the exchange. Swiss banks also keep an impressive array of foreign currencies on hand, so that you can walk into a bank and immediately withdraw money not only in francs, dollars, and pounds, but also in baht, forint, and lira. Euros are even easier, since they are dispensed at ATMs just like Swiss francs. It’s great for last-minute people like me, since American banks typically require a week’s notice for ordering foreign currency.

Although there are the usual hurdles for opening a new account at a Swiss bank, the usual forms and identification verification sort of stuff, once you’re a customer at a bank, they make it ridiculously simple to open additional accounts. I walked into the bank one day to inquire about opening an account in dollars, to make it easier to transfer money from Switzerland back to the US without dealing with fluctuating exchange rates. I expected to fill out at least one form. Instead, the man at the counter swiped my ATM card, had me enter my PIN, typed a few things, then looked up and said that the new account was ready and waiting, just like that. And, of course, that it would incur a small monthly fee.

Ah, yes, the fees that come with Swiss banking. “Free checking” and credit cards with no annual fee are foreign concepts here. Free online banking? Nope. Looking at how much money I’m charged in fees here, I have to wonder how American banks can compete, if they’re giving everything away for free.

Then again, maybe it’s a cultural thing – if America is the land of the free, then Switzerland is the land of the surcharge. Even customer hotlines for orders, complaints, questions, or service are toll lines. That’s right, you have to pay to listen to hold music while you wait to order a computer, or if you have trouble with the computer and need to get it serviced. That doesn’t really add up for me – why charge people by the minute for the privilege of buying your product? And if you have a customer who is dissatisfied with a malfunctioning product and needs service, do you think that charging them byt he minute to listen to Muzak is going to make them any happier?

Anyways, back to the banks. One thing that always impresses me is that the bank tellers always speak at least three languages, if not more. How many bank tellers in the States can speak anything other than English? I think there are some American tellers that I’ve come across who didn’t even speak English all that well. It’s sobering to realize that I don’t even have the qualifications for one of the most basic jobs here. That holds true for a lot of people working in public positions in Zurich – the people running security at the airport, the ticket sellers for the tram, the police – most of them speak two, three, or four languages pretty fluently, even though their jobs aren’t necessarily the ones that are generally thought of as requiring a lot of education.

I leave Friday morning for San Francisco, where I’ll stay for a week and a half, so the next update will be in about two weeks.

27 March 2007

Even after being here for almost three years, I am still amazed by some of the things that are done here. Just when I think that I’ve seen it all, I’ll come across something that makes me do a quadruple-take. Last Tuesday evening, I was on my way to have a drink with friends, and there was a man playing the piano at the tram stop. The outdoor tram stop. It was cold, it was dark, and he had somehow brought his own piano to the tram stop to play the blues. In other cities, people bring their own saxophone or guitar to play for spare change. Here, there’s a guy who apparently wheels his piano over the cobblestones and tram tracks to bring his music to the people. I was tempted to stay longer to see if his fingers would get cold, or if he would decide to take his piano elsewhere, but it’s a good thing I didn’t, since he was still playing his heart out when I was on my way home, three hours later.

I met about a dozen friends at the bar that night for drinks, and we ordered an assortment of food and beverages, which were shared in various combinations. One thing that always amazes me here is the absolute willingness of waiters and waitresses to divide the bill for a large party into separate checks – you can eat dinner with ten friends, and the waiter will go from person to person, totaling up their individual tabs and making change for each one.

This also holds true in bars. At the end of the evening, the waitress patiently figured out each person’s share based on what they told her they had had: “Half an order of meatballs, one-fifth of a pitcher of margaritas, and a glass of wine,” “one bottle of beer, one draft beer, one-third of an order of nachos,” “one Coke, one glass of wine, one-third of an order of nachos, and half an order of meatballs.” Their forbearance is even more astonishing when you take into consideration the fact that tipping is completely optional in Switzerland (on the other hand, waitstaff actually make a living wage here, so it probably it all evens out in the end).

Spring is finally here – the first day of spring was last week, which the Swiss weather gods observed by sending down a big, slushy snowstorm that lasted two days. The Swiss are usually very good about clearing snow and slush from the streets and keeping everything running on time, but for some reason, perhaps because the Swiss people were unable to comprehend and counteract a snow storm in the spring, everything was running in chaos (for Zurich). The first morning of the storm, I waited for the tram for almost half an hour, despite the fact that the tram is supposed to come precisely every seven minutes! I finally reached the office in a state of Swissified shock. Daylight Saving Time started this past weekend, and the weather finally decided to act more appropriately, much to everyone’s relief.

I’m leaving for California in less than two weeks, and my brain has woken up and started reminding me of all things American that I’ve been missing out on that I need to cram in while I’m there. I’ll go to Costco and load up on beef jerky, kettle corn, Twizzlers, Reese's Cups, and instant oatmeal. I’ll go to Dunkin Donuts and have chocolate-covered donuts. I’ll make my friends here jealous by eating an entire box of Girl Scout cookies. And I’ll go to Cinnabon and have a big, goopy cinnamon roll with a tub of extra frosting.

I checked into the possibility of getting a Cinnabon here, actually, and there are a fair number of Cinnabon stores around the world, but none of them are in Switzerland. Iraq and Oman have Cinnabon, but Switzerland doesn’t. There is no justice in this world.

20 March 2007

I’ve been to Italy seven times now, in all four seasons and in seven different cities, and I still have never had to use an umbrella while I’ve been there. Regardless of the season, coming back to Zurich from Italy usually entails putting on an extra layer or three of clothing and having an umbrella or rain jacket handy. This weekend was no exception. In Rome, we wore sunglasses and t-shirts, but after getting off the plane in Zurich, we put on rain jackets and heavy sweaters. It’s snowing today, that special Zurich brand of slushy snow that never accumulates more than a couple of inches and makes unfortunate splashes whenever you trudge through the streets. It’s not just an Italy vs. Switzerland thing, though, even the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland enjoys a warmer and sunnier climate than the German-speaking region, which makes me think that the weather gods, if there are any, must prefer pasta to potatoes.

It seems as if there are almost as many churches in Rome as there are Starbucks in New York, and we went into a few of them over the weekend. One church boasts that it has the heads of Peter and Paul, other churches have fingers, arms, pieces of skin, and other scraps of various people, long dead. Further research shows that another church in Italy has almost the entire hide of Bartholomew, who was skinned alive. Other churches around Europe claim to have other pieces of the unfortunate Bartholomew.

Assuming that all of these body parts are as advertised, it’s a bit crazy to imagine how it all happened. Take our friend Bartholomew. After he died, someone thought, "He was a great guy, I'm going to keep him." Back then, without walk-in meat lockers, Bart’s remains probably started rotting pretty quickly. Yet this person kept them until he had a talk with some other folks, and then they chopped the body up into little pieces and carried or sent them to their eventual destinations? Alternatively, were the remains all kept in one place until much later, when some priest decided to ship Bart bits to other churches to keep his memory alive? I can’t imagine anyone doing that today. Was Mother Teresa divvied up in anticipation of her possible future sainthood, or will that happen later?

We also went to the Capuchin crypt, which is made up of five rooms decorated with the bones of 4,000 Capuchin monks who died between the 1500s and the 1800s. They didn't just pile the bones up, which is what I had been expecting, they decorated with the bones. It was as if they had run out of ornate wallpaper with scrollwork and flowers, so they made the patterns with ribs, jawbones, and vertebrae, instead. It was like walking into someone’s grandmother’s apartment gone seriously morbid. The bones had originally been buried, but were dug up, cleaned off, pulled apart, and arranged. If those 4,000 monks had been told that one day, their ribs would become 3-D wallpaper, and their femurs would be stacked into peaked arches interspersed with their skulls, would they have changed careers?

On the way back, we realized just how accustomed we’ve grown to the Swiss way of life. We frantically boarded the train to the Rome airport, afraid that we would miss it, and were taken aback when it left five minutes late. Upon our arrival at the airport an hour before our flight (which would have been more than enough time in Zurich), we saw something very strange – a forty-minute line to go through security, and another line to get through passport control! We were flabbergasted, and would have missed our flight, had we not, with much begging, cut in front of hundreds of other people.

13 March 2007

It’s March, which means that it’s tax time in Switzerland. Lucky American expats like myself get to file taxes twice a year: once with Switzerland and once with the IRS. The only thing more annoying than shuffling through pages of fine print about deductions and exclusions is shuffling through pages of fine print about deductions and exclusions twice, once in a language you can hardly handle in its everyday form, much less in its tax legalese form.

Some Swiss companies deduct tax at source, meaning that your take-home paycheck roughly reflects the actual breakdown of money that you get to keep and money that you have to give to the government. That’s the system I was accustomed to in the States. Many Swiss companies, however, decide not to take out tax at source, or to only take a small amount of tax at source, and instead opt to give a thirteenth salary payment, which is then supposed to be used to pay the taxes once they are due. Sort of an odd idea, to have your monthly salary quoted to you, and then realize that you get thirteen months of salary per twelve-month year.

While I'm on the subject of salary, there’s a proposal up for general vote now that would centralize the health care system here, so that everyone would be covered under the same government provider, and insurance premiums would be prorated according to salary. I don’t see how they’ll convince anyone to vote for it. So what they're proposing is, “Let’s make everything less efficient and more expensive by removing all the competition, and let’s charge rich, influential people more money for the same level of government-provided care as everyone else.” Somehow I doubt that will fly.

On the other hand, one thing that does seem quite practical is that in Switzerland, traffic fines are tied to salary, the theory being that when you punish someone for speeding, you want them to actually feel punished, and a rich person has to pay a bigger fine before he feels as punished as a poor person. Of course, I may also be more satisfied with this application of pro-rated payments because I am never in any danger of getting a speeding ticket, given the fact that I don’t drive in Switzerland. I do, however, have to have health insurance. So I await the outcome of the law with bated breath (and bank account), since I am unable to vote here.

It’s a strange feeling, to live somewhere long enough that you know all sorts of minutiae about the place, but to have no official voice or influence. I know when the garbage is collected, I know how often the trams run, I know what day Santa comes to town, I know where to get the best fondue, I know when my favorite summer time bar is open to the public without a cover charge, but I can’t vote for a local representative or have an impact (however small) on elections regarding health insurance or speeding tickets. Taxation without representation, I should start a revolution. On the other hand, it’s not like my interests are being well represented in the States, as evidenced by the fact that expat taxes were hiked up this year, thank you, Dubya.

The last couple of years, I’ve been absurdly pleased that Europe started Daylight Savings Time a week before the States, giving us a week with more sun, but this year, the States started two weeks before us, leaving us with a fortnight of relative darkness. In retaliation, a few friends and I are heading to Rome this weekend, hoping to get some Mediterranean sun and food. To all my friends who are Stateside, you can have your two weeks of sunshine, I'll console myself over gelato at the Colosseum.

6 March 2007

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.

27 February 2007

When I was working at the law firm in New York, new associates shared offices with one other associate for a few months before graduating to our own private offices. These spaces, though small and identical, were our own, and we all felt entitled to have them all to ourselves. It was a bit of a surprise, then, when I came to Switzerland and discovered that like most other offices in Switzerland, my office put several people in each (admittedly larger) room. I did some scouting and found out that other friends - engineers, bankers, and consultants – sat in open-plan spaces, sometimes with over a dozen other people.

So I figured, when in (a much cleaner and smaller version of) Rome, do as the Romans (or Swiss) do. I’ve gotten used to sharing office space. When my officemate is sick or on vacation, I have the entire office to myself (well, to myself and my dog, if he’s at work that day), a fact that I much appreciated during the adjustment period. Now, though, it almost gives me the heebie-jeebies. After sharing an office here for almost three years, at one point with three other people, it feels very strange to be alone in the room. Whatever I end up doing next, if it involves my own office and no dogs, it will feel quite foreign, even though that describes pretty much every job I ever pictured myself taking before I moved here.

Speaking of Swiss offices, one strange thing that I’ve learned is that most people working in Swiss offices bring their own personal mug to store in the cabinet in the communal office kitchen. It can be anything, a Starbuck’s mug, a mug with the person’s name on it, a plain mug, but somehow it is clear that no one else should touch that mug. My office, being very international, only partially follows that policy – some people bring in their own mugs, and some people just lay claim to mugs that don’t seem to belong to anyone in particular. In other offices, however, the Rule of the Mug is taken very seriously.

One of my friends, shortly after starting her job at a Swiss company, used a mug from the kitchen cabinet during coffee break, not knowing that that mug belonged to someone. That someone quickly confronted her (and here we thought that the Swiss were so placid, so non-confrontational, so… neutral), and berated her for using his mug. In fact, he continued to berate her even after several apologies and promises never to violate his God-given mug rights again.

As you probably know, last Tuesday was Mardi Gras, which is celebrated and called Fasnacht in the Catholic parts of Switzerland. The typical Fasnacht celebration is family-friendly, and involves marching bands, costumes, and confetti, and, while quite a spectacle, would probably be a bit of a disappointment to beer-guzzling frat boys picturing a live version of Girls Gone Wild.

The Swiss, ever practical, stagger their Fasnacht celebrations by city, so that the major Fasnacht parades and parties don’t conflict with each other. Basel, for instance, is having its big Fasnacht parade tonight, a week after Mardi Gras, when true Catholics are supposed to be done partying and firmly in the midst of Lenten self-deprivation. No other way to do it though, until they find a way for several dozen marching bands to be in multiple places at the same time.

Zurich celebrated Fasnacht last weekend, so my apartment, which is situated in prime parade territory, was, er, serenaded all weekend with the discordant strains of Guggenmusik (what the marching bands play for Fasnacht, which is probably Swiss German for "Oh my God, do they really call that music?") played, at one point, by people dressed as large yellow chickens.

20 February 2007

Had a quick weekend in Paris, and even though it was still the middle of February, it was sunny and warm (high of about 15 C / 60 F). I love Paris in the (global warming-induced) springtime. It was one of those little collisions of worlds. There was a friend from high school, a friend from law school, an ex-expat I had met in Zurich, and a coworker. Everyone seemed to get along well, and as far as I know, no blood was shed, nor were any terrible secrets revealed.

We got to our hotel on Friday night, and were informed that our room was on the fifth floor (in America it would be called the sixth floor). We headed for the elevator, and if there is a prize for Smallest Elevator in the World, I think our hotel has a good shot. When I first moved to Zurich, I thought that the elevator in my apartment building was very small. It fits three people, or maybe four, if none of them are overweight, and if they are wearing deodorant and don’t mind full-body sardine-style contact with the other passengers. Then I saw some of the other elevators around town that fit only three people in a tight squeeze. But our hotel’s elevator barely fit two of us with our overnight bags. The placard in the elevator warned us not to load it with more than three people or 240 kg (528 lbs.), but I have no idea where it might suggest we could put a third person or extra weight, unless we were to carry him curled up on a platter above our heads.

We unfolded ourselves out of the elevator on the fifth (sixth) floor to look for our room. It seemed a bit odd that Room 13 would be anywhere but the first floor, but we had faith in the desk clerk’s instructions. We lost some of that faith, however, when we noticed the numbers on the doors in the hallway: 40, 39, 38… We almost turned around to look elsewhere before we looked next door to Room 38, and lo and behold, there was Room 13. Quite inexplicable, and completely unlike anything you would see in the precisely organized German-speaking region of Switzerland.

At dinner with some friends, I was asked to translate some of the menu, and upon seeing some of the more exotic items on offer, I was sorely tempted to give fake translations in hopes of inducing them to order the wrong thing. I was merciful, however, and my friends decided against ordering the “pork groin, ear, foot, and tail,” and the “calf head with brains.” I’m sure the dishes are both quite delicious, as French food didn’t get its elite reputation by accident, but we made less adventurous choices, at least this time around. We only had one weekend away from the somewhat bland restaurant scene in Zurich, so I wanted to make the most of it, and pork groin didn’t seem to be the best way to do it.

Did some shopping and got my hair cut over the weekend, in order to save money. I always end up spending money in order to save it, but I would argue that it’s absolutely necessary when you live in a city as expensive as Zurich. For instance, I got a haircut that cost 30 euros (about $40), which in Switzerland would have cost 100 Swiss Francs (about $80). Even more importantly, the stylist didn’t give me a mullet, which is a favorite among stylists here in Zurich.

Sunday was Chinese New Year, and as I walked around Paris, I realized that Paris actually has a large enough Asian population to make the holiday slightly relevant. It was strange seeing Asian men around Paris – the small Asian population of Zurich is overwhelmingly female, mostly Southeast Asian women who married Swiss men. On the same note, it was strange to see Asian (particularly East Asian) women who appeared to be single, professional, and non-mail-order.

13 February 2007

I came down with a nasty cough for the second time since moving here, and have come to the conclusion that Swiss doctors have a nice little racket going. Both times that I’ve had a horrible cough (not just a polite, ladylike cough, a big, hacking, phlegm-filled cough that keeps me up all night), I’ve gone to the doctor after a week of misery. Both times, the doctors have listened to my cough, told me that they weren’t sure if it was viral or bacterial, and told me to wait a week to see. If the cough was still there a week later, then it was probably bacterial and would therefore warrant treatment. So basically, I paid the doctors to tell me that they weren’t going to do anything about my horrendous cough, and to say that they would happily take more of my money if I came in again for the same cough.

The first time, I went back a week later, still with a miserable cough, and the doctor then decided I had proven my need for antibiotics by (barely) surviving two weeks of people treating me like I had the plague. This time, I’ve accepted the fact that the doctor sent me home with a cheerful recommendation of extra fluids and ginger, and perhaps a repeat visit, but have been carefully (over)-dosing myself with Nyquil, Robitussin, Sudafed, Tylenol, Advil, and whatever other American OTC drugs I have on hand. I have a stash of antibiotics, and I’ll take those if the second week passes without any improvement, and the good doctor can keep his fluids and ginger.

Before I came down with tuberculosis, or whatever this affliction is, I decided I wanted to clean up my apartment a bit. Those of you who know me or have ever been to my apartment know that I am not the most meticulous of housekeepers. To be honest, I’m a slob, even by American standards, which means that by Swiss standards, I am about as respectable a housekeeper as an adolescent chimpanzee. This explains why, after living here for over two years, I still did not own a mop. I have one of those wet Swiffers, but not a serious mop.

I decided to go pick one up at a big grocery store at lunch. I checked my wallet, and I had 45 Swiss Francs (about $36), and I figured that that would be more than enough to get a basic mop and a sandwich. How much could a mop possibly cost? I figured that in the States, a basic mop would maybe cost fifteen bucks (a completely wild guess, since I’ve never bought one before). Double that to account for Swiss prices, toss in a few bucks for a sandwich, and I’d be fine, right? Wrong. The cheapest mop in the store cost, you guessed it, 45 Swiss Francs. I decided I needed a sandwich more than I needed a mop, dirty floors be damned. I later found a somewhat cheaper mop at another store, but was still flabbergasted – who would pay that much for a thing that you dunk in a bucket and smear around on your floor? I guess the Swiss would. Elsewhere in the world, cleanliness is next to godliness, but I’m convinced that here in Switzerland, it’s the other way around.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and Sunday is Chinese New Year (Happy Year of the Pig!!), so I’m heading to Paris for the weekend to celebrate – get some good food, do some shopping and sightseeing, visit some old friends. Two other friends are supposed to go skiing this weekend, but are unsure whether that will happen. It has been an unusually warm winter here, with very little snow, much to the chagrin of the general Swiss population, who revel in skiing and snowboarding. Looks like upstate New York stole all of the snow from the Alps this year, over ten feet in eight days! They can keep it, if it means I don’t have to be cold and miserable while I’m coughing my lungs out on the way to work.

Editor's Note

Sick sick sick... will update when I'm better.

30 January 2007

You know you’ve been living abroad for too long when your own mother can no longer recognize you in pictures. My family sends out an annual letter (it used to be a Christmas letter, then it became a New Year’s letter, and now, well, it’s the end of January, so I guess it’s just a letter). I wrote the letter and emailed Mom the text, and she picked some pictures to go with the letter. When she emailed the final version that is being sent out to my parents’ several hundred friends and relatives, I noticed that one of the pictures that she had included of “me” was of a random woman on my boat in the Maldives. I had sent her pictures, but she decided she liked that one more. It’s a good picture, besides the fact that the woman in it isn’t part of our family.

People always say that the American lifestyle is what makes Americans so fat. American food, American laziness, it all adds up to widespread obesity. And if you look around, it seems to be true. In a contest for The Country Most Likely to Be Mistaken for a Manatee Preserve, America would almost certainly take the gold medal.

My personal experience, however, has been completely the opposite. Something about living in New York kept me ridiculously underweight. (The stress? The walk to work? The skipped meals? The hasty meal substitutes?) Since moving to Switzerland, however, my BMI has crept up into the lower end of the “normal” range for the first time that I can remember. After some reflection, I have a few ideas as to why I’ve gained weight since leaving Cheeto-land for Heidi-land.

Cheese. Fondue, raclette, cheese sandwiches, and so on. Butter on everything that doesn’t have cheese, and butter on some things that do have cheese. Cream and whole milk in anything that doesn’t have butter or cheese.

Meat and potatoes. Meat here is exceedingly expensive, and they only recently introduced ground turkey into the standard supermarket fare. Partly because of the high price of meat, and partly because of an apparently genetic national love of starch, potatoes come with everything, in every guise. This is not Atkins country. Plus it's all cooked with extra butter, cheese, and cream.

Door-to-door public transportation. Sure, I don’t drive everywhere like people do in suburban America, but the trams do a pretty good job of picking me up and dropping me off with a minimum of walking. The tram stops are so close that if a tram is going in relatively straight line, you can see the tram coming from several stops away while you wait for it to come to you .

Weather. If there’s no sun (which is sometimes the case for weeks in a row in the winter), I conserve energy by making no unnecessary movements, not even to go to the gym (which charges as much as an exclusive Manhattan gym, but without air conditioning, headphone jacks, and individual TVs). Even a trip to the bathroom becomes a carefully considered decision. When the weather is decent, on the other hand, who wants to go to the gym, just in case the sun disappears again for another two weeks?

I went to the gym twice last week, but I think that my best exercise was actually doing a hard day of cardio, I mean, shopping in sunnier Milan. Maybe I should cancel my gym membership and spend the money shopping, instead. Sounds like a good fitness plan to me - all the exercise without the agony, and you spend the money you would have spent at the gym (and then some) on a brand-new wardrobe for the brand-new you! (Of course, after that, your own mom won’t be able to pick you out of a lineup, but then again, that’s already happened to some of us).

24 January 2007

“The early bird gets the worm” is a proverb that must be dear to the heart of any good Swiss person. Zurich is a city full of morning people, and on that point, I am definitely a fish out of water with no chance of getting the worm, especially not if I continue mixing my metaphors. In any case, I was always one of those people who worked best late at night - I wrote my senior thesis in sundown-to-sunrise spurts, and much of my Bar exam prep was done without the help of sunlight.

Imagine my chagrin, then, upon discovering that it is perfectly routine to schedule deliveries and appointments as early as 7 a.m. here, and upon learning that my office’s start time of 9 a.m., which would have been early for a New York firm, is considered unusually late for Switzerland. Try to sleep in past 7 on a weekday, and lie in bed, silently (or not so silently) cursing the church bells and construction workers who take over the city, right on time, every day. Make an early morning appointment with a plumber or electrician, and he’ll come five minutes early. Take the tram before 8:30 a.m., and it’s packed.

Even on weekends, the Swiss are morning people. The church bells let you sleep in until 9 (mind you, they still chime every quarter hour, and tick off the appropriate number of BONGs every hour, I’m just counting when the first fifteen-minute-long run of bells goes off), which in my book doesn’t count as sleeping in, at all (then again, I spent much of the year between college and law school waking up just in time for dinner). Shops close particularly early on Saturday, and are closed all day Sunday, so the best bet for shopping is to flock to the stores early and en masse, which the Swiss do with great gusto. Shopping on weekends here is like taking a leisurely stroll through a cattle stampede. I’ve only witnessed it a few times, since I sleep in on Saturday to remind myself that weekends and weekdays are different.

You would think that vacation is a time to kick back and relax, but even in leisure-related matters, the Swiss are always on the lookout for ways to be early. Most flights (even international flights) out of Switzerland allow you to check in up to 24 hours in advance, which you can do online or by telephone if you’re not checking any bags, or at a train station (yes, you can check-in for your flight at the train station, and they’ll deliver your bags to the airport, and then the airline puts them on the plane) or airport if you want to check bags. It’s handy when you have big bags full of dive gear, and have to go straight to the airport from work to catch your flight and don’t want to be running to catch your train with 80 pounds of dive gear. In such cases, it’s worth the extra trip.

If you go for early check-in, though, which is done at certain counters at certain times, you can expect a much longer wait than if you check-in right before your flight. Only in Switzerland would they allow you to check in so far in advance, and only in Switzerland is the super-early check-in line twenty times longer than the normal check-in line. For weekend trips, I show up at the airport about 45 minutes before my flight, and am always surprised if there is anyone in front of me waiting to check-in. I guess it’s because everyone already checked in the night before at early check-in.

After a couple weeks of disturbingly warm weather (daytime highs over 50 F or 10 C, maybe Swiss spring decided to make an early entrance), we’ve had a sudden cold snap following the big storm that swept Europe. All of the trees and flowers that budded and bloomed must be completely confused by the snow that has been falling since last night. I’m definitely confused, so I’m going to take refuge in the warmer temperatures and winter sales in Milan this weekend.

16 January 2007

Back from London. These weekend trips have become a way of life for us, but in our former lives, it would have been unheard of to set (and attain) a goal of “leaving the country once a month,” which is what I try to do here. The shorter distances and travel times are key, as are the predictable Swiss working hours.

A trip to London is an opportunity to speak English without a sense of expat guilt, and we read signs, billboards, posters, and ads greedily, hoping for reminders of home, before remembering that the English spoken in England is distinctly British, rather than American. We “mind the gap” when taking the “Tube,” and take the “lift” up to our friends’ “flats.” Not as foreign as Swiss German, but not as familiar as American English. If we feel like aliens living in Swiss German country, then American expats in London must feel like undercover aliens in British English territory.

Speaking of flats, I visited a friend who now lives in London, and found out that the rent for his gorgeous, huge apartment in central London is about $2,000, a bit less than my rent in New York or Zurich. Then I found out that the housing market in London has one important peculiarity. They quote rent by the week, and not by the month. My friend’s place is admittedly amazing, but his rent is four times what I paid in Manhattan for a one-bedroom in a doorman building near Central Park, or what I pay now for the top two floors (with roof terrace) of a building in the center of the old town! He then said something about buying real estate in England, and how very few properties can be bought outright, but can only be bought for 60 or 80 years. I'm puzzled as to how you can buy something for 60 years. Sounds like a long-term rental.

Speaking of ways to spend money, we went out for Lebanese food, and while we were eating, a few belly dancers wriggled their way from table to table. One particularly skilled dancer had £20 notes (each one worth about $40) tucked between her breasts by some apparently very appreciative diners. In the US, observers have the option to tip dancers as little as $1, assuming that they stick with bills, since shoving a handful of change down someone’s underwear is probably a faux pas. In England, the smallest bill is a £5 note, or about $10. While it means that whatever tips the dancers get will be pretty generous, I would think that their overall haul would be lower, since all of the “novelty tippers” who just want the fun of shoving a bill in someone else’s underwear would not leave a tip, since they can't shell out less than $10 at a time.

They say that time is money, and if that’s the case, then London is expensive in every way. Getting around the city requires advance planning. In Zurich, the city is small enough and the public transport is efficient enough that you can get anywhere in the main part of the city, door-to-door, in 30 minutes or less. Getting from A to B in central London can take over 45 minutes (and is sometimes faster on foot). Getting to the airport is also an uncertain venture. With four people, we opted for a cab, since it would be cheaper and easier (we thought) than taking the Tube and then the Heathrow Express. It took an hour and fifteen minutes of stop-and-go traffic to get to the airport, which felt like an eternity when we compared it to our five-minute tram and ten-minute train to the Zurich airport.

Zurich can be under-exciting and over-expensive, but it was good to leave the even more outrageous prices of London and take a quick train back into town. I envy the quantity and quality of the food and shopping there, but it's only a quick train and plane ride away.