How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part IV, Section 1: Swissification; Eating Fondue

Should you eat fondue, here are a few cheats to ensure maximum cheese consumption, thereby avoiding labeling yourself as a foreigner who can't hold his (or her) cheese:

1) Competition is key. Go with enough people that two pots of fondue are necessary, six or more, and you'll feel obligated to do better than the other team. If you're hardcore, you'll also feel obligated to have dessert, to show that you had space.

2) Make sure your potmates are experienced fondue eaters. You're in this together, the fondue pot is communal, and one sub-par eater will increase the amount of cheese the rest of you have to eat in order to finish off the pot.

3) Don't eat any cheese beforehand, don't eat a big lunch, and don't fill up on appetizers. An empty stomach is key, and you don't want to max out your daily cheese quota too early.

4) Break your bread into smaller pieces. Smaller pieces mean more surface area, which means more cheese ingested per cubic centimeter of bread. If you're eating fondue with potatoes (as is done with some kinds of fondue), cut the potatoes into smaller pieces.

5) Dip and stir. Submerge your bread completely in the cheese and stir it around to ensure complete coverage, maximizing the cheese you eat per piece of bread.

6) Cleanse your palate. Feeling overwhelmed by the salty cheese and chewy bread? Is the squishy texture of cheese-soaked bread starting to feel too gooey and heavy? When you start to get cheese-fatigue, have a bite of sweet fruit or a bite of crunchy pickle, and you've bought yourself a little more cheese-eating capacity.

7) Don't give up. Eventually, you'll be eating the whole pot, scraping the burnt cheese off the bottom (the best part of the fondue, according to the Swiss), and waiting impatiently for dessert. And when that time comes, you'll take a quiet sort of pride that you aren't like those other foreigners who can't hold their cheese.

Although native Swiss people probably don't have to use these cheats to ensure their successful consumption of full fondue portions, they have also had a lifetime of training and preparation, so this just levels the playing field to ensure that all people, both Swiss and non-Swiss, can exceed their monthly fat and cholesterol quotas in one sitting.

Editor's Note

Just booked last-minute tickets to go to Paris for the weekend, leaving Friday morning and getting back Sunday night. And then realized that there are riots there. Nothing like a weekend of food, culture, hanging out, and dodging rocks :)

28 March 2006

A friend is staying with me for two weeks while she unwinds from med school, travels around Switzerland, and catches up on her paperbacks. Her family is from Kansas, and she's been living in New York for the past few years. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore, nor are we in New York.

First of all, there's (no) security. Switzerland is not part of the post-9/11 world. When I was telling my friend how to get into my apartment, I said that I'd leave spare keys for her with the jeweler downstairs, and that she could go ask for them there. They take a lunch break, so I told her that if they weren't there when she got in, she could just go to the candy store in the next building, tell them that she knows me, and leave her bags there while she wandered around town. There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then she said, "That's very sketchy," and after I thought about it, I suppose it is a bit sketchy.

That's just how things work here. You can leave your keys with the shop downstairs and ask a shopkeeper to watch your luggage, and you know that jeweler won't break in, and the candy man won't steal your bags, and they in turn trust that you won't break into their shops or leave bombs in your bags with them. I can't remember the last time I went somewhere and had my bag checked by a security guy. I think it may have been in the Vatican, but it's never happened to me here in Switzerland, outside of the airport.

Secondly, there's food. (I don't think I have enough space to address all of the funny things about food in this entry, let alone move onto other Swiss idiosyncrasies, but I'll start). The Swiss have strange ideas regarding what to eat and how much of it is appropriate. Fondue. My visitor is a friend from college, and back in the day, we used to have girls' nights, when eight or ten of us would gather in my room, eat a pot of cheese fondue, a pot of chocolate fondue, and a few bottles of wine, and then we would go to a play or stay in and play Taboo. Not your typical college Friday nights, but then again, we weren't your typical college students, for better or for worse. So I came here thinking that I was ready for fondue. I thought wrong. The fondue here is much stinkier, much richer, and much bigger than any fondue we ever had. The amount we would make for eight to ten people is a two-person serving here. And they don't even do chocolate fondue; I think they see it as an affront to both chocolate and to fondue to merge the two concepts.

Then there's sausage. There is a restaurant that serves traditional Swiss food, and they serve sausage by the meter. They recommend a meter of sausage for every four people. That's ten inches of sausage per person, in addition to the bread, salad, and potatoes that everyone eats. I suppose that's still reasonable for some people, but it still astonishes me that they actually have sausage by the meter. I picture it coiled up on a big spool next to the emergency fire hose. And maybe the Sausage Inspector comes every year to make sure their Emergency Sausage meets regulatory standards. The street vendors also sell sausages (without buns, and not by the meter) and kebabs, rather than hot dogs and gyros, but if you're sick of kebab and sausage, other menu staples are horse, deer, and rabbit (which is sometimes listed as the equivalent of "baby bunny wabbit"). Horse and venison are mostly served in the autumn, though, during hunting season, which makes sense for venison, but less so for horse.

For people with a sweet tooth, candy options are pretty much limited to chocolate and gummy candy. Gummy candy comes in all shapes and flavors: there are gummies that taste like Jägermeister, ginger, and chili peppers, and there are gummies shaped like naked couples having sex. And yes, you can buy them from the man who is watching your luggage.

21 March 2006

Spring is here. The calendar says so: yesterday was the first day of spring, and Switzerland is right on schedule, no surprise. Yesterday, the sun came out and temperatures reached 50 F, prompting crocuses to bloom and people to wear sunglasses. This morning, we had a light shower that was distinctly different from the soggy winter rains, and it washed away the last traces of the salt that was used to counter the snowdrifts from a few weeks ago. Leave it to Swiss weather to carefully observe the proper timing of the seasons. Of course, now that I've said that, winter will come back with a vengeance, for one last spiteful hurrah.

I'm a wimp when it comes to cold weather, and walking around outside, let alone sleeping outside, in below-freezing temperatures has always struck me as one of the worst possible fates (I suppose camping aficionados would disagree). Switzerland has very few homeless people, as their social programs are quite good and the country is quite rich. The only people I have seen sleeping outside are drug addicts who probably have places to go, but are too high to remember them.

One crackhead often sleeps on the doorstep of my apartment building when it's cold. It's one floor up, semi-private, and warmer than most doorsteps, so one of the first signs of winter is that he starts sleeping there more frequently. Despite being high and crazy, he's the most polite homeless drug addict I've ever met (and more polite than many non-homeless non-drug addicts, come to think of it). He apologizes profusely when I have to step over him, and wishes me a good evening. He is sort of like a demented, smelly doorman, greeting me when I come home, questioning people he doesn't recognize when they come to the building, and free-basing when nothing is going on. If you have to have a crackhead sleeping on your doorstep, hope for a Swiss one. Now that it's warmer, he's seldom around, but I'm sure he'll be back come fall.

With spring's warmer temperatures, the ground begins to thaw, which means, that's right, it's time for massive construction projects that weren't practical when the ground was frozen solid. For some reason, they've started ripping up the entire street that runs between my block and the river. They are doing so with remarkable efficiency; the size and number of deep trenches and craters is impressive, given the fact that they've only started digging quite recently, and only dig for 40 hours a week. Unfortunately, some of that remarkable efficiency wakes me up every morning, since the construction workers, being Swiss, always start up every backhoe, jackhammer, and bulldozer at the crack of 7. I have yet to figure out what it is they're doing. Maybe trying to dig a hole to China.

The construction project has necessitated the relocation of the tram stop by about 100 meters. Not a big deal, right? Not being particularly litigious or conscious of such risks, however, they haven't put up huge notices and warnings regarding the change, so that pedestrians blithely cross in front of trams, expecting that they will stop where they have always stopped, whereas the tram drivers keep going full speed for another 100 meters to the new, temporary stop. It's an accident waiting to happen, and I'm sure that once it happens, they'll be well equipped to clean it up very quickly, and hey, they already have lots of big holes to toss the bodies into.

A college friend is coming in town tomorrow and she'll be crashing with me for two weeks. We'll do all of the required things: fondue, sightseeing around Zurich, a weekend trip somewhere, and so on. After living here for almost two years, it's always fun to see the reactions of a newcomer and to re-notice all of the things that have become a part of life. The bells. The clothes. The waiting at crosswalks. The stinky cheese. And above all, last but definitely not least, the Swiss.

14 March 2006

Ah, spring, when law-abiding citizens' thoughts turn to taxes... For Americans, one good thing about living in Switzerland is that we get to take advantage of lower tax rates (someone who pays 40% in the U.S. would pay about 10% in Switzerland). Uncle Sam doesn't give the taxes up without a fight. All American citizens, no matter where they live, what they do, or how much they earn, have to file U.S. income taxes every year. So even if you're living in the middle of the desert, making no money, and eating scorpions and cacti to stay alive, you still have to file.

Doing that requires lots of paperwork and currency conversions. Count the number of days you were in different countries, not a small feat considering the amount of travel that fits into generous Swiss vacation plans. Call five government offices at strange hours to take into account the time difference and government office hours, going through endless voice prompts, heinous hold music, and bored employees to get conflicting opinions on whether a deduction applies. Figure out what documentation will suffice to prove that you made money but that you don't owe any taxes. Spend more time on your taxes than ever before, all for the net effect of not paying any taxes. It's probably worth the extra time and effort, if the endless paperwork doesn't drive you mad first.

Joy of joys, you also have Swiss taxes to deal with. Yes, you're a foreigner, so they tax you at source so you won't bolt without paying your taxes. (They don't trust us, and have all sorts of deposits and security measures built in, because they seem to genuinely suspect that we will leave our jobs, apartments, and bank accounts just to avoid paying our cell phone bills, taxes, and DSL bills). And yes, they are probably over-taxing you. But if you make enough money, they still "invite" you to file taxes, whether or not you want to go to that party (Swiss people only file taxes when "invited," meaning that if they receive a big packet of tax forms, they file taxes within two months, but if not, they don't have to worry about it). The forms are all in different colors, with two copies of each form, and every form is in German, to make taxes even more fun, especially considering that their forms and deductions are different than the ones in the States. There are deductions for clothes, there are deductions for lunch, there are deductions for tram passes. They ask you about your accounts, in Switzerland and elsewhere. They ask you what religion you are, and they take more tax out for your church. And then they ask you for things that just don't really translate between tax systems, and you fill them in and hope for the best.

One strange thing about Swiss tax forms is that there is no final number, no tallying up of figures to see who owes whom. You just send it in, and they eventually tell you who owes whom what. Whoever owes money pays interest, which they calculate carefully, being accounting masters. Oddly enough, despite being so precise and punctual in every other aspect of public regulation, the Swiss IRS are slow. It takes two years to process tax forms, so taxes filed in 2005 for the 2004 tax year won't be done until 2007.

Foreigners moving to Switzerland get an automatic six-month extension on their first tax invitation. The first tax invitation may not be initially due until May, meaning that the extension goes until November. So American expats do their U.S. taxes whenever they're due, and they plow through their Swiss tax forms and hand them in in November with a sigh of relief, then receive their next Swiss tax invitation in January, with a March due date, on top of their next set of American taxes, and feel that it is indeed true that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. Lots of taxes. Well, actually, not as much tax as before, but at the cost of extra frustration and stress, which probably takes years off of your life. Yup, the only sure things are death and taxes. At least you only have to die once.

7 March 2006

This past weekend, we had what was, according to the newspapers, the storm of the century. People who have lived here for a long time agreed that they had never seen anything like it in Zurich. We got almost two feet of snow in about a day and a half, and it accumulated faster than the plows, salters, and sanders could stave it off. Add to that the fact that some of the snow fell on a Sunday, when few Swiss are working, and there was some serious snow. There was also wind with gust speeds of over 100 kmph, so there were lots of trees falling down, either from the wind or from the weight of the snow. The trees downed tram power lines, and the snow iced up the tracks, and the entire tram system shut down on Sunday, which is unheard of.

Not wanting to venture forth in the new Ice Age, I decided to stay home all weekend. My apartment was a mess, so I did some cleaning on Sunday, but never fear, I'm not becoming Swiss, because I cleaned against all of their rules. I did two loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, and vacuumed, all of which are heavily frowned upon on Sundays (in some buildings it is strictly banned). I even took a bag of trash out, even though it was Sunday, and trash collection takes place on Tuesdays and Fridays in my neighborhood. It was still in a regulation trash bag, though. There are limits to even the most extreme forms of rebellion, you see.

Despite the weather, the Swiss were out celebrating Fasnacht, the local equivalent of Mardi Gras or Carneval. It involves lots of costumes, marching bands, drum lines, confetti, and parades. Different cities celebrate Fasnacht at different times, depending on whether they are Catholic or Protestant, and on other factors that I don't quite grasp. Basel's Fasnacht is going on right now, with all-night celebrations for several days. Here in Zurich, Fasnacht was celebrated last weekend, and it was quite something to be trudging through slushy piles of snow, hearing a band of drunk men shouting and yelling, and then looking up and seeing that the men in question are all decked out in matching red dresses, blue aprons, red wigs in pigtails, and other finery. That was perhaps the most startling thing about Fasnacht, seeing normally staid and proper Swiss men wearing ornate gowns with shiny metallic ruffles as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

A few friends and I went to Lucerne (or Luzern, if you prefer the German spelling) to check out their Fasnacht celebration last Tuesday (Mardi Gras). It was cold, and it was a work night, but there were still thousands of people out to celebrate. Performers and spectators alike wore elaborate costumes, many with huge, heavy masks. Costumes included Americans, football players, werewolves, cowboys and Indians, couches, bag-heads, chickens, and all sorts of other strange get-ups that had us double- and triple-taking the whole night. Kids had bags of confetti that they lobbed at strangers in the street. The many marching bands paraded around, playing "Guggenmusik," which sounds like what Sousa would have composed if he had been drunk and living on boat. My friends and I went straight from work, so instead of wearing big, crazy costumes, we went as Americans living in Switzerland, and finished the look off with ski jackets, hats, mittens, cameras, mulled wine, and sausages. OK, so we didn't wear costumes.

In any case, it was quite a spectacle, and it's definitely something to see the Swiss staying out late, wearing gaudy costumes, and making noise well into the night. Back in Zurich, I decided not to go see the Fasnacht festivities, due to the extreme weather. On Sunday, I was taking the trash out (don't tell), and since I was just stepping out for a minute, I was wearing flip-flops instead of real shoes. There was a steel drum band in red wigs playing outside my building, playing calypso music in the steadily falling snow, trudging through the slush, and everyone looked at me like I was the crazy one. Only in Switzerland.

28 February 2006

No matter how long you live abroad, you still retain some connection to where you come from. There is always some mental comparison being drawn between "us" and "them," which sometimes weighs in favor of "us," and sometimes in favor of "them." Your perception of who "us" is and who "they" are may change, but the comparisons are always being made. Even the most well-adjusted expats still retain some ties to their homeland, and it's not always obvious in advance what people will hold onto to remind themselves of where they come from. Just a few examples off the top of my head...

Music. When American bands come through, over half of the audience is American. I went to see Death Cab for Cutie with a few friends, and we heard more American English than Swiss German while we were there. On a side note, Swiss concert-going behavior continues to stump me. After the first couple of songs, the singer, Ben, suggested that a couple right in front of him should get a room, since they seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, and it was really distracting him. Over the course of the concert, he referred to them repeatedly, commenting that they were still making out like they were the only ones in the room, asking how much they spent on Chapstick, wondering if the people behind them were watching them or the band, telling them that they were being disgusting. And yet they continued. I don't know if they didn't understand what he was saying (unlikely, since the Swiss speak good English, especially if they are young), or if they just didn't care. I think most people would be embarrassed enough to stop groping and tongue-jousting, but then again, the Swiss are often shockingly willing to make out with each other in very public places. Park benches, picnic blankets, tram stops, concerts, the city is one big bedroom.

Junk food. Yes, I miss all sorts of good food from New York and from home: Ethiopian food, tapas, Chinese food, sushi, Korean BBQ, but when friends visit, I find myself hoping that they will bring the most random junk stocked by American grocery stores: Kraft Mac & Cheese, Cheetos, pudding mix, red Jell-o, microwave popcorn with lots of butter, sugary cereals, beef jerky, Reese's Miniature Peanut Butter Cups, flavored instant oatmeal, Tang, Fruit Rollups, Pop Tarts... And then there are the things that I wish they could bring that just wouldn't survive the journey: green mint chocolate chip ice cream, cheddar cheese, sourdough bread, and so on. I leave one of the culinary capitals of the world, and most of the things I crave can be found at any truck stop in Nebraska. I live in Cheese Country, and half the foods I crave contain what can only dubiously be described as "processed cheese flavored product."

And then there is the chocolate debate. I grew up on Hershey's. I got it in my plastic pumpkin at Halloween, I bought it at the store, I went to the theme park in Pennsylvania. Hershey's meant chocolate and chocolate meant Hershey's. The Swiss categorically refuse to recognize Hershey's as chocolate, saying that it doesn't taste like the real thing. And it's true that Hershey's isn't like Swiss chocolate. They taste different enough that you wouldn't necessarily think of them as being from the same candy category. But I still eat both. Swiss chocolate lives up to its rep. It is rich and smooth and creamy and decadent, and you feel sick after eating a whole bar, but it's worth it. But Hershey's, well, you can eat two bars without feeling ill, it just isn't that rich. It's no longer entirely synonymous with chocolate in my mind, and maybe it isn't as decadent, but it tastes like home, if the States are home. Swiss chocolate is starting to taste like home, too, if Switzerland is home.

Other people define themselves through politics and language. I define myself through junk food and candy. Mmm... processed cheese flavored product...

21 February 2006

My college roommate came out for a long weekend to check out all there is to see in Zurich. That took about one afternoon, and then we spent the rest of the weekend in Prague. No, seriously, we went around town a bit, hit the Turkish baths, went to two of the main chocolatiers, and went out for fondue (where she discovered, much to her relief, that fondue tastes much better than it smells). Another day to putter around town would have been great, but time waits for no man, and planes wait for no tourists. On to Prague, then.

Our hotel was full, so they had booked us a two-person apartment, instead, for the same price. The two-bedroom apartment had five beds. Five. What would two people need five beds for? The place I stayed at in Rome two weekends ago had the same thing: five beds for two people, and that was just a room, not even an apartment. European hotels have strange ideas regarding the proper person-to-bed-to-room ratio, apparently.

When I first moved to Europe, it was slightly disconcerting to see signs and newspapers all written in a foreign language, but I got used to it pretty quickly, especially since French and German are easily translated into English. What throws me now is going to a country where the language is entirely incomprehensible. I came across that in Budapest last year, and this past weekend in Prague. Czech is almost entirely unrelated to English, and yet we would still try to read the signs. It�s amazing how strong the reading instinct is when you see signs, even if you know that you won�t understand them. They�re there, so you try.

The other thing that happened in both Prague and Budapest was that it was difficult to figure out how much things cost. Most of the traveling I've done since moving here has been within the EU, Switzerland, England, or the States, so I've gotten used to keeping track of what things should cost in euros, francs, pounds, or dollars, but Hungary and the Czech Republic are still on their own currencies (forints and crowns, respectively), and the exchange rates are odd (something like 23 crowns per dollar, or 17 per franc). Add to that the fact that I think half in dollars and half in francs, being in expat currency-consciousness limbo, and I spent half the time trying to figure out if things were expensive or not.

In any case, I�d heard that Prague has succumbed to the tourist industry in the past ten or fifteen years, but I wasn�t prepared for the extent to which the city is overrun by and run for tourists. Every store, every restaurant, every square was full of tourists and the people trying to get the tourists' money. February is cold and in the middle of low season, so I shudder to imagine what high season is like, and how many tourists must flood Prague in June. We heard more Brits and Americans than Czechs while we were there, and had to remind ourselves that we were in a foreign country, mostly by trying to read street signs.

One day, my friend and I were sitting in a caf�, conversing (as we always do, it being our native tongue) in American English. A man sitting at the next table over, probably about 50 years old, leaned over and apologized for interrupting, but he wanted to know where we were from. He was American, and also spoke with an American accent. We told him that we were American, and he said, �Oh, that explains it. It is nearly impossible for non-native speakers to speak such good English.� Um. I guess I�m relieved that I can speak English like a native, despite my yellow skin and slanty eyes. It was more excusable that a few Czech people we met were surprised and shocked that two Asian girls could come from the States, but to have an American listen to our American English and be surprised that we�re American? People like that remind me why Bush is president and why Americans have a reputation for being ignorant.

And one random note: My webstats broke 20,000, so that means that my random blabbering is somewhat amusing to you guys. Or that you�re very bored and need something to read at work that isn�t porn. Thanks for reading.

14 February 2006

So. Happy Valentine's Day. I had forgotten that it was that time of year until after I had already scheduled a personal fitness assessment at my gym, so I will be spending the evening being weighed, measured, and put through my paces. My gym buddy told me that it's cool, though, they tell you how much fat and muscle you have in each limb and on your torso, not just overall, and she evidently has 400g (almost a pound) more muscle on one leg than the other. It must be because that's the leg she uses to run around and kick people all the time. If I had known the assessment would be so detailed, I would have made a special effort to only work out one muscle group for a couple weeks in advance, to see how much I could skew the results. Yes, other people are having romantic dinners, giving flowers and cards, and doing other woo-natured things, and I'm wishing that I had had the foresight to work out my left buttock.

I came into work on Sunday in order to be extra-productive, and I thought back on the weekends I used to work when I was at the firm in New York. And then I realized that it was the first Sunday I've worked since coming here (Swiss employment law really protects employees' personal time), and felt rather smug about the fact that I'm getting a comp day in exchange for the Sunday at work. Happy employees make productive employees, in my opinion, and Swiss law seems to support that mindset.

At some point on Sunday, I went to use the restroom, and noticed that something was very different. It wasn't freezing cold. The windows were closed. For some reason, a lot of companies, stores, bars, and restaurants in Switzerland like to keep their bathroom windows open. It's fine in the summertime, but when it's snowing and cold outside, there is nothing pleasant about walking into the restroom and realizing that you should have brought your coat and hat. Switzerland has a good shot at winning the award for Coldest Bathrooms in the World. It gives me flashbacks to Girl Scout camp, and using the latrines at night. Yes, there's a ceiling over your head, but it's cold, and the chill in the air only hints at the coldness that is yet to come when you sit down. You wash your hands, and the water sucks any remaining warmth from your fingers, and then you go back to your desk and try to warm your hands up on your dog so that you can type again. It's very odd. They have heat, they have ventilation, so why do they open the windows and turn the bathrooms into walk-in meat lockers?

So today, the front page of the newspaper that everyone reads had an article about the snowstorm that has hit the Northeast, with a picture of people cross-country skiing through Times Square. The article is continued on the second page, where there is another article whose headline says in German, "Three Swiss Flights Cancelled," and goes on to say that Swiss Airlines has cancelled three flights due to the snowstorm, leaving 235 Swiss passengers stranded. This is top news here, folks. A snowstorm in another country that caused three flight cancellations. It's sort of relaxing to have those kinds of headlines, instead of headlines about wiretaps, roadside bombs, and murder-suicides.

My college roommate is coming in for the weekend, assuming that flights have gone back to normal by tomorrow night. She gets in Thursday morning, and I'll take her on the grand tour of Zurich, which will take about an hour, then we'll go to the Turkish baths, have some fondue, and get a good night's rest before heading off to Prague for the weekend. Neither of us has ever been to Prague, and it's been almost a year and a half since we've seen each other, so good times will be had by all. Except for the people who aren't going with us, which is... all of you. After a long weekend of awesomeness, she takes off Monday morning. Watch this space next week for deep thoughts and reliable observations on the Czech people.

7 February 2006

Life is hard. I spent the weekend in Rome, seeing the sights, enjoying warm weather, eating good food, and hanging out. Anyways, it had been just over a year since my first trip to Rome, and my friend had never been there before, so we went. She takes life as seriously as I do, so our pictures are mostly of us making fools of ourselves in front of a few Italians and a million other tourists.

Based on my extensive (two) experiences, I can authoritatively say that Romans don�t believe in heat or absorbent towels. Last time, my hotel room had a radiator that was firmly in the �off� position, even though daytime highs were 40F (4C). Same thing this time, which was slightly more forgivable, given that daytime highs were 60F (15C), but the lows were still cold enough that heat would have been appreciated. I think Italians are in denial. They believe so strongly in their Mediterranean climate that they don�t want to cave in and use heat. The towels were once again made out of material more suitable for tablecloths, and I felt silly trying to towel off and dry my hair using something that probably would be sold to a restaurant once it was no longer white enough to be foisted on hotel guests.

Our room had a bidet. The first time I saw a bidet, I was in Milan, on summer tour with my college choir. A friend came out of the bathroom, saying, "Italian couples must be really close. They have his and hers toilets so they don�t have to go to the bathroom separately.� I explained to her that the second one wasn�t a toilet, but it was sort of a sink for your butt. I never really understood the appeal of bidets. How much mess is there that you need a butt sink? And if it were that messy, wouldn�t hosing yourself down make things worse by turning a mess into a diluted mess spread over a larger area? Ick. And then there was a smaller towel (or tablecloth) hanging behind the bidet. Does everyone use the same bidet towel? That�s as appealing as recycling communal toilet paper. Bidets never made it big in the States, and I don�t feel like we lost out in that regard.

Rome is the The Place To Be for Catholics. You�ve got the Pope, the world�s biggest cathedral, a bajillion churches, tons of relics (including, apparently, pieces of the actual cross, and thorns from Jesus�s crown, don�t ask me who ran up and grabbed those), and tons of famous religious art. If Rome isn�t Catholic enough, then Vatican City, a country in its own right, is an entire nation (albeit a small one) smack in the middle of Rome, dedicated to Catholicism. Seems odd to have a country inside a city, rather than vice versa, but then we have D.C., which isn�t part of a state, but is inside one, anyways. Anyways, I think of nuns as being predominantly older and white. My friend had the same impression. So it was a bit mind-blowing to see young nuns of every race milling around Rome. Chinese nuns. Indian nuns. African nuns. How does a twenty-year-old woman in a village in India, Ghana, or China decide that she wants to be a Catholic nun and then end up in Rome? A mystery for the ages.

We saw Brokeback Mountain, which isn�t out in Switzerland, and realized that we are more Swiss than we care to admit. It was strange not having assigned seats. It was odd that there were no snacks or restrooms. It was surprising to see the couple next to us eating the whole pizza that they brought with them. It was frustrating that people talked throughout the movie and didn�t turn off their cell phones. But we are not entirely Swiss: the movie was shown without intermission, and for that we were grateful.

One other thing that we realized that we really miss: random banter. People in the street, shopkeepers, waiters, locals, tourists, everyone talks to you. They joke with you and smile, going beyond the polite formality observed in Switzerland. To the waiter who gave us free pastries and asked us to come back, to the punks who tried saying hello in every language they could think of, to the hotel clerk who told us we could sleep in past the check-out time, please come to Switzerland. We need people like you here.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note: Taking a last-minute trip to Rome this weekend! Good, cheap food, another stamp in my passport, triple miles, hanging out with a good friend, what's not to love?

31 January 2006

Happy Chinese New Year!! On Sunday, some friends and I decided to go out for dinner, so I called for a reservation. Only in Zurich would a Chinese restaurant be closed on Chinese New Year, one of the most popular (and lucrative) days of the year for Chinese restaurants. We went, instead, to one of those ubiquitous “pan-Asian” restaurants that serves pseudo-Asian cuisine of dubious origin. The upside was that it was one of the few smoke-free restaurants in Zurich. They say that the way you spend New Year’s is the way you’ll spend the rest of the year (not sure if that applies to Chinese New Year), so I’d like to think that this means I'll spend the year blissfully removed from second-hand smoke. Like most hopes harbored at the beginning of each year, I am sure that it will quickly be denied and forgotten.

Speaking of fine cuisine, I made a quick stop at McDonald’s last week before running to the movies, and realized that even the most American of institutions changes its character depending on the surroundings. One of the first things I noticed about McDonald’s when I moved here (which is the first thing I check out at foreign McDonald’s) is that the apple pies are still deep-fried, which in my opinion is the only food item served at McDonald’s that should be eaten for its deliciousness rather than its cheapness and convenience.

But there are other differences. When going to McDonald’s in the States, you have to be careful when asking for ketchup, and say, “Could I get two packets of ketchup, please,” or risk ending up with about 23 packets of ketchup. Sometimes they even start tossing fistfuls of ketchup into your bag before you’ve even asked for ketchup. Not here. You only get ketchup if you ask for it, and even then, you only get as many as you pay for. Yes, they charge you for packets of ketchup here, about 16 cents a packet. Everything on the menu here is more expensive than at American McDonald’s, so I’m not sure why it’s necessary to squeeze that last bit out on the ketchup, but maybe they just do it because other Swiss restaurants also charge for ketchup.

Another difference stems from the fact that the Swiss use the metric system, and Americans don’t. There is no quarter-pounder here, I’m guessing because no one would know what a pound is. Instead, they have a burger called the 280. 280 what? Calories? Grams? If it’s 280 calories, I don’t believe it, because nothing at McDonald’s has only 280 calories. If it’s grams, I’m hoping it includes the bun and the pickles and the paper wrapper, because 280 grams is more than half a pound.

I often express amazement at the, er, fashion scene in Zurich, especially the clothes worn by Swiss men. Summertime is odd enough, with capri pants, tight jeans, and high-waisted, pleated pants. Wintertime brings with it a whole other set of fashion choices: outerwear. Few days pass when I don’t see at least one grave-looking businessman wearing a pink plaid scarf or an eggplant purple wool coat. I often see macho beefcakes wearing nylon warm-up jackets in fuchsia and teal patterns favored by big-haired women in the 80’s. You'd think that by now, I'd be desensitized and wouldn’t notice them anymore. But I’m not, and I do.

I had an awkward moment the other week at the gym, when I spotted someone wearing a Harvard Law School t-shirt. I figured he was probably an expat and that he must have gone to HLS, and since I did my undergrad there, and have lots of friends who went to HLS, I said hi. Turns out that he was Swiss and had no affiliation with HLS whatsoever. He was visiting Harvard and bought the shirt. Who buys a law school shirt as a souvenir? Tourists buy the shirt for the university, and students buy the shirt for the school they went to. That’s my assumption, and I think it’s reasonable. He seemed quite taken aback that I would assume he was affiliated with Harvard just because he was wearing an HLS shirt. OK, so I was wrong, but do you really have to look at me like I’m crazy because I thought you went to the school that you’re wearing across your chest?

Editor's Note

Editor's Note: Happy Chinese New Year!! January 29 marks the beginning of 4703, the Year of the Dog. If you get a chance, have some noodles (long life), oranges (good fortune), or dumplings (wealth).

24 January 2006

One of the strange things about living abroad is that you forget that life goes on back home. My parents are immigrants, and when they visit old friends in Taiwan, they come back talking about how much has changed since they left 40 years ago, and how their friends tease them for using old-fashioned Chinese. I suppose it would be the equivalent of going to the US and saying “groovy” or “neato.” It doesn’t take 40 years for things to change, though.

After living overseas for less than two years, I already notice that things aren’t the way they used to be. People change jobs, they move apartments, they break up and get together, they have babies, they move to other cities, in other words, they live their lives, and then you go back expecting things to be the way they were when you left, and all those gradual changes hit you all at once so it seems like the entire place has transformed, and it's not quite home but not quite foreign. Since when did your kid start talking? Didn’t there used to be a diner there? And when did all the scaffolding get taken down? I have no idea what you just said, is that a new slang word? What are these unfamiliar songs on the radio? What happened to my favorite bartender, does he not work here anymore? Why does the nickel look all weird now? And since when does the paper money have strange colors and huge faces on it? It costs how much to mail a letter now? When did you move to Brooklyn? Who is the stranger who lives in my old apartment? Didn’t anyone think to check with me before changing everything?

It’s strange to realize that life goes on, and that life changes, even when you’re not there, and that life as you knew it isn’t the same as the life that is still to come. You assume that you’ll one day go back and pick up where you left off, forgetting the fact that life isn’t something you can put down and pick up again.

And then there are the things that you wish you never had to put down in the first place. Like American holidays. Although the Swiss holiday system is more than generous, and I have more time off here than I ever had in the States, there is something that is supremely annoying about working on days that you have always thought of as holidays. Martin Luther King Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving come to mind. Veterans’ Day and Columbus Day, as well. Even though I get more days off per year here, it still feels strange and somehow wrong to be in the office on those days. On the other hand, it feels quite right to not come into the office on Swiss National Day, St. Stephen’s Day, Whit Monday, Ascension, and other holidays that are recognized here but not in the States. What can I say, I’m very open-minded when it comes to observing holidays, whether they are Swiss or American!

Life here changes, as well. The “smoke-free” movement has finally started making some headway in Switzerland. Most restaurants are smoking establishments, and those with non-smoking tables often have them directly beside smoking tables (and you know what they say, having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool). There are smoking areas in airports that aren’t glassed in like the smoking fishbowls in the States. But progress is progress. Baby steps. My office building has finally gone smoke-free, and there are some public areas that are doing the same: the underground portions of the train station, Starbuck’s, and entire trains! I feel like I’ve gone back in time to witness the non-smoking revolution all over again.

And now for something completely different. You may recall my friend whose apartment burned down in November. He was telling his story to a group of new business associates, and one of them turned to him and said, “Hey, I read about that on someone’s blog.” The expat community here is small, incestuous, and more interconnected than we realize. I have never met this man, and neither had my friend, but somehow he ended up on my website, read about my friend, and recognized his story in the re-telling. As they say in Disneyland, “It’s a small world, after all.”

17 January 2006

In a rare spate of motivation, I have been going to the gym quite regularly as of late. In fact, my workout buddy and I have been going every other day since getting back from the States. Granted, our workouts are generally about 20 minutes long, and involve as much talking as actual working out, but it's the thought that counts, right? Also, we have to do something to combat the cheese fondue and chocolate mousse with heavy cream that dominate the Swiss winter diet. Plus, we need an excuse to justify our frequent trips to the Turkish baths at the gym, where we spend much more than 20 minutes, and probably get almost as much exercise scrubbing ourselves and walking from sauna to sauna as we do when we work out.

In any case, the Swiss gym experience, much like the Swiss experience in general, is quite unique. First of all, there is the question of attire. In American gyms, I have seen signs requesting that people not wear black-soled dress shoes in the gym, which made sense, as they tend to mark up wooden floors. Here, the gym requests that you not wear any shoes that you have worn outdoors. Only indoor shoes are allowed at the gym. I was rather baffled by this request. Do they think that I'll wear my gym clothes and my outdoor trainers to the gym, then change into my indoor trainers there? Actually, do they think I even have indoor trainers? Do the Swiss all have indoor trainers? Maybe it's best not to know.

The clothes that people wear to the gym here can be quite astonishing. Whether they're wearing indoor or outdoor shoes, the Swiss often wear black socks pulled all the way up, possibly to cover up some of their legs, since their shorts are often on the skimpy side. Men show up in ultra-short shorts, or shorts that are not quite tight, not quite loose, but that uncomfortable in-between territory. We saw one man working out in his boxers. Other men wear pants in colors that should be reserved for sherbet: orange, pink, mauve, lime green. We saw one man yesterday wearing what I can only describe as Hammer pants (you remember Hammer pants, don't you? Fitted at the waist and ankles, and poufy in between?). His Hammer pants were bright yellow with black pinstripes, and his shoes (because the shoes have to match) were bright yellow with black trim. From waist up, he was a macho beefcake, and from waist down, he was the lovechild of a has-been rapper and Bozo the Clown.

There is one woman in particular that I keep an eye out for whenever we go to the gym. She is at least 50 years old, and she always wears black tights with a fitted black t-shirt, a thong leotard, and matching legwarmers. Sometimes she wears knee-high legwarmers, sometimes thigh-high, and sometimes knee-highs over thigh-highs. She is always coordinated: turquoise thong leotard with turquoise knee-high legwarmers; pink thong leotard with pink thigh-high legwarmers; teal thong leotard with charcoal-grey thigh-high legwarmers with teal pinstripes layered under knee-high teal legwarmers. Our gym is heated. You can work up a sweat in a t-shirt and shorts, even in winter, so she can't be cold. My only explanation is that she wears the gear for aesthetic reasons. I never thought that double legwarmers and thong leotards on middle-aged women would be associated with an aesthetic preference.

One final Swiss gym observation: during a quick stint on the elliptical machine, I glanced around and saw the usual assortment of people with water bottles, MP3 players, and magazines. But the man next to me had what appeared to be a large bottle of milk in his cup holder. (I suppose it could also have been a protein shake, but that's almost as strange, since those aren't exactly refreshing, either). Who drinks milk while working out? Yes, it does a body good, but it's not the drink of choice for a workout. You don't see football teams drinking coolers of milk and pouring it over their heads. They don't hand marathon runners cups of milk along the way. Only in Switzerland...

10 January 2006

Is it really 2006? I realized that part of what helps me to mentally mark the passing of each year is the holiday season, which in the States is marked with an overabundance of red and green decorations, Christmas carols blaring in every store, and huge signs and advertisements touting holiday sales. They don’t really do any of that here, and having been here for the lead up to two holiday seasons, I don’t feel as if 2004 and 2005 really ended, and it definitely doesn’t feel like it’s 2006. Coming from the ultimate consumer culture, where retailers and advertisers tell you what time of year it is and what holiday is up next, how else are Americans supposed to mark the passage of time?

The price of stamps is going up again in the U.S., and at first I was shocked, since the price has increased pretty steadily, and the postal service itself has stayed about the same (well, with the exception of the admission from the Bush administration that they’ve been reading our mail since 9/11� Between that, the wiretaps, and the email monitoring, I’m waiting for them to �fess up that they also have video cameras installed in toilets and Victoria’s Secret changing rooms, for national security purposes, you know). Swiss postage has stayed the same for the time I’ve been here, and everything takes a day to get anywhere else in the country. Then I realized that: (1) Swiss domestic postage costs as much as American airmail, and (2) Switzerland has fewer people than New York City and if it were a state, it would rank 42nd in area, so what with the higher price we pay for postage and the smaller number of people and shorter distances, Swiss post had better be faster than American post.

Last week marked another random holiday observed in Switzerland but not in the U.S., Three Kings’ Day. It’s not a day off, but people celebrate by baking a cake that has a tiny figure of a king hidden inside. Everyone eats a slice, and whoever finds the little king is king for the day and wears a paper crown. It is especially popular with children, although offices often have a cake. Two thoughts: first of all, isn’t that a choking hazard, especially since it’s geared towards children? And second of all, I think the kings are made of plastic. Wouldn’t they melt or leach unhealthy chemicals into the cake? I guess a third thought would be that I’m American and a lawyer, and these aren’t the kinds of things that the Swiss worry about. You know, hazards, torts, accidental injuries and deaths.

As I walked to work last week, I saw something that blew my mind, even after living here for a year and a half. A man parked his car, got out, leaving the engine running and the door open, then went into a store on the other side of the street, presumably only for a short time, but still… I’ve seen people leave their cars unlocked while running quick errands before, but this was five steps further, to leave the door open with the engine running. I was half-tempted to drive his car halfway around the block so that he would come back and realize that he shouldn’t leave his car that way, but then I remembered that the last time I drove a car was in Australia in 2003, so I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn't crash it. Plus, it was probably stick shift, and I definitely don’t know how to drive stick.

I went to see Jarhead Sunday night, and my bafflement with Swiss movie theaters continues. Knowing that the main level of the theater had reverse stadium seating, where every row is higher than the row behind it, I opted for a seat in the front row of the balcony. Problem solved, right? I thought I was guaranteed an unobstructed view. Not so. The railing at the front of the balcony was high enough that if I sat back in my seat, the railing ran across the bottom of the screen. I’m not terribly short, so this can’t be an isolated occurrence, and you would think that they would have foreseen the possibility that non-giants would want to sit back while watching movies, and they would have positioned the railing six inches lower. I ended up using my jacket as a booster seat and leaving the theater once again stunned by the Swiss movie industry.

3 January 2006

Happy New Year!! Hope you are safe, healthy, happy, and recovered from whatever festivities you participated in. My trip to San Francisco was short but sweet. I hung out with the fam, including my two-and-a-half year old nephew Kazu (a.k.a. the Kaz or the Kazinator) and my five-month old niece Mika (a.k.a. Mikatroid, Mikacheeks, or Mikachu), my sister and her husband, and my parents. Saw some extended family, including my 99-year-old grandfather. And I ate most of the things I wanted to eat while I was there, including Fruit Rollups, Chinese pork roast, sushi, and tapas, but realized (much to my chagrin) that I didn’t have green mint chocolate chip ice cream, and since most countries are less open to radioactively-colored foods, it will have to wait until my next trip back. Artificial flavoring is also less prevalent here, so I stocked up on 80 packets of instant oatmeal.

Although I brought very little with me to the States and half-emptied my single bag once I got there, since I brought gifts, on the way back my suitcase was full, as was an additional duffel bag. Presents, a new computer, and two trips to the drug store will do that. Shampoo, toothpaste, contact solution, oatmeal, mouthwash, Tylenol, hydrocortisone, Robitussin, hair elastics, beef jerky, I got ‘em all!! My muscles have almost forgiven me for making them carry it all back.

One gift that I got, I left in the States. On purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, five years ago, the gods of television gave us Tivo, which allowed us to record programs and watch them at our leisure, skipping commercials and pausing live TV. At that time, I proclaimed it the greatest thing to happen to television since color and cable. 2005 brought us Slingbox, which I now solemnly declare to be the best thing to happen to television since Tivo, at least for expats. Using Slingbox, I can now watch whatever is on TV in San Francisco on my computer in Zurich. TV here is in Swiss German, and I don’t even get TV in my apartment, so this is the equivalent of going from the pre-wheel stages of transportation to intergalactic tourism. It’s good to know that there are brilliant minds creating essential things to better the human condition.

I arrived in Zurich the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. After a nap, a friend come over (everyone else was still scattered around the world), and we had champagne, watched DVDs, and listened to the pouring rain. A little before midnight, we went out on my roof terrace to watch the fireworks. The bells had been going off intermittently in anticipation of the New Year, but at midnight, they went ballistic. My friend and I had been expecting some sort of collective shout or song, the Swiss equivalent of “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!” and “For Auld Lang Syne,” but no such thing. There was some screaming, but out of the super-conformist and organized Swiss, I expected more in the way of group coordination. The public fireworks, instead of going off in a midnight frenzy, were sparsely meted out over 45 minutes, so that every couple of minutes, there would be a few fireworks, not the orgiastic display you’d expect. I think they would have been better off using all of them in 10 minutes, instead of spreading them so thinly over 45 minutes.

Not to worry. Private citizens set off their own fireworks to compensate. From my terrace, we could see people on rooftops setting off rockets. To our surprise, however, there were also people inside their apartments setting off fireworks. Inside. I’m not talking about sparklers or snakes, or other super-safe pseudo-fireworks. These were Roman candles, big tubes that spout a huge fountain of sparks and exploding stars, that you are supposed to set on the ground, light, and step back ten feet. It seemed as safe as taking an industrial blowtorch, turning it on, and setting it down on the carpet next to the curtains. Especially since the Swiss aren’t big into fire extinguishers or fire escapes. We did hear a few sirens during the night; maybe they were responding to indoor fireworks-related conflagrations. In any case, my apartment stayed fire-free. Here’s hoping yours did, too.

20 December 2005

Four days until I go to San Francisco for a week, and I’m already trying to figure out how I can fit in everything that I want to do, buy, and eat while I’m there. Conversations in expat circles resemble the conversations that polar explorers or refugees must have, in that they are fervent and absurd in their detailed enumeration of things that they miss, and those things usually revolve around food.

As for me, I’m looking forward to several very specific things that give a clear culinary picture of my Asian-American roots. I can’t wait to have my mom’s skin-on, bone-in Chinese pork roast (tipang, for those of you who speak Chinese). They don’t sell that particular cut of meat here, because it’s too fatty and the Swiss don’t like the skin. I’ll snack on chocolate chip cookies or cheddar cheese melted on toasted San Francisco sourdough. We might do sushi handrolls one night. I’ll have assorted breakfast cereals at all hours of the day, with lactose-free skim milk. I may even make some Kraft Mac and Cheese, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, made with Wonder bread, with the crusts cut off. Meanwhile, I’m sure the Swiss who are working abroad are fantasizing about veal sausages and roasted potatoes.

One thing that was overwhelming when I went back to visit last year was the sheer abundance of variety and space, both at the store and at home. I walked into a suburban supermarket and realized that I had forgotten how big stores are, how many products they sell, and how many types of each product they sell. Every product comes in ten brands, and each brand makes multiple versions: reduced fat, low salt, high fiber, lactose free, sugar free, fat free, family size, kiddie portion, and so on. So you buy all the things you need, and you bring them home, and your fridge, freezer, and cabinets are huge, so you can actually fit everything you bought, and you don’t have to go to the grocery store for another week. Living in Switzerland is an exercise in organized scavenging. Without much fridge, freezer, or cabinet space, I have to go to the grocery store often, buying strategically to make sure that I always have something to eat, but not so much that I don’t have space for it. I’m bad at that game, so I end up eating whatever I happen to have around, which usually includes a side of gummy candy.

Having visitors come to visit Switzerland is often a double bonus: you get to see your friends, and you get to import whatever it is that you’re missing. When friends visit, I routinely ask them to load up on instant oatmeal, over-the-counter drugs, toothpaste or other toiletries, and I also order various clothes, books, CDs, and other things to be delivered to them, so that they can bring them over for me. Other expat friends tell their visitors that they have to bring Skippy peanut butter and Kraft Mac and Cheese.

Speaking of peanut butter, recently, one of my Australian friends brought a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups back from a trip to the States. My American friends and I pounced on them, then noticed that he wasn’t having any, and neither were any of the other non-Americans. When pressed, they admitted that they thought that the combination of peanut butter with chocolate was strange. Upon further questioning, they also said that peanut butter and jelly is also off-limits. In the non-American opinion, peanut butter is categorized as a salty food, and not a sweet one, and so you can put it on toast or crackers, but not with anything sweet. On the other hand, you can’t really trust the Brits and the Aussies when it comes to appropriate toppings for bread, since the Aussies like Vegemite, and the Brits eat sandwiches filled with cheese and chutney.

I’ll be in San Francisco next week, so the next update will probably be January 3 or 4, so HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! See you next year. In the mean time, stay safe and be in touch. :)

13 December 2005

Another week, another trip. It has gotten to the point where if I don’t leave the country at least once a month, I start to feel restless, and yet I can vaguely remember a time when I would go for a month without going to the East Side, much less venturing outside of Manhattan. There were entire seasons when I didn’t leave the state. On the other hand, living in Manhattan, I had Ethiopian food, Barnes and Noble delivery, sushi, the New York Public Library, Central Park, tapas, Fresh Direct, and True Religion jeans right in my neighborhood, so there were fewer reasons to be restless.

The Swiss aversion to noise is so deeply ingrained that they will go to great lengths to avoid any unnecessary sounds, no matter how trivial. On several flights, I have noticed that flight attendants, when making their final check of the cabin before takeoff, will carefully lift the latches on the overhead bins when closing them, so that they don’t make the characteristic clicking noise when closing. While this does eliminate that tiny bit of noise, it also makes me a bit wary, since the click is always what signals to me that the bin above my head is indeed closed, and that the luggage inside won’t come tumbling out onto my head. But better to have falling suitcases than unnecessary noise, right?

In the Zurich airport, they still have a few of those electric carts for passengers who aren’t very mobile, but otherwise, airport employees get between distant gates on airport bicycles. It makes sense: bikes use less energy, take less space, and (my secret theory is that this is the most important reason) make less noise. But it’s still rather disorienting to be indoors at an airport, and to see airport personnel careening through the terminal on bicycles.

Anyways. I recently went to see the new Harry Potter movie here in Zurich. I was prepared for some Swiss oddities, like assigned seats and intermission, but was not expecting to see two cigarette commercials, a beer commercial, and a very sexual jewelry ad before the previews came on. The ads are fairly standard for the movie theaters here, but it just seemed a bit incongruous to air adult ads for a theater full of grade school kids, unless they’re just trying to get them hooked early.

Another movie theater foible that confused me recently was the phenomenon of reverse stadium seating. We’re all familiar with stadium seating, where every row is higher than the row in front of it, so that everyone has a clear view of the screen. Well, in this theater, every row was lower than the row in front of it, so unless you were seated behind a midget, their head was right in your line of vision. Who had that brilliant idea when designing the theater, and who approved the brilliant idea when building the theater?

Zurich is a very international city, and most movies are shown in their original language, with German and French subtitles. This usually works out wonderfully for English-speaking expats, except when the movie was originally in, say Japanese or Spanish. Watching a movie in English can be frustrating, as well, although for different reasons. Because most of the people in the audience are reading the German subtitles and only half-listening to the English dialogue, they tend to react to jokes or dramatic statements before they are actually said, meaning that if you are listening to the movie, rather than reading it, you may miss the punch line or dramatic moment, since the audience laughs or groans too early, and the sound is not turned up very high (since it’s a Swiss theater, and we wouldn’t want the movie to be loud, now, would we?) As much as I like my peace and quiet, there are certain times when I wish life were a bit louder here.

6 December 2005

Christmas is coming, and you can tell by the lights decorating the streets, the faux pine garlands bedecked with red ribbons that frame shop doors, the tram drivers dressed as Santa Claus, and the stores that are open on Sundays in a yearly exception to the “no shopping on Sundays” laws. Last weekend I was walking down the busiest, poshest street in Zurich, tagging along with a friend who was actually shopping, and realized that there were two Bactrian (two-humped) camels and a burro standing in the street. They were accompanied by Swiss people wearing what they imagine camel- and burro-tenders to wear, and stood there calmly eating hay, while people scurried around buying their Louis Vuitton bags and Hermes scarves, pausing only to snap pictures of the wildlife with their camera phones. Next thing you know, there will be elephants and tapirs on Fifth Avenue.

But I described a lot about Swiss Christmas last year, and the stuff I’ve learned this year that has thrown me for a loop is about Christmas in England. Although I would have expected Switzerland to have different Christmas traditions from the States, I would have thought that Christmas in the UK would be pretty much the same as Christmas in the States, but apparently it is not.

Last night I had rehearsal with my choir, in preparation for a carols service we’ll be singing next week. A big tradition in the Anglican church is to have carols services involving 7 or 8 readings from the Bible, which give a Cliff’s Notes approach to the birth of Christ, interspersed with lots of carols. I figured it would be an easy rehearsal, as I noted some familiar carols: “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Away in a Manger,” and so on. And then I realized that although the carols have the same lyrics as the ones I grew up on, the music was entirely different.

English Christmas carols exist in an alternate universe, where the words are the same, but the melodies are completely changed. How did that happen? Our Christmas traditions are rooted in theirs, the words for our carols came from theirs, so how did we end up with a completely different set of carols? “Silent Night” was originally a German carol, and we translated the words into English, but otherwise, it’s the same song, so what happened? And how many Brits and Yanks are running around thinking that the carols bearing the same titles are actually the same songs? And what if this phenomenon is more widespread, and it turns out that Beethoven’s 9th, “Rock Around the Clock,” and “Hit Me Baby One More Time” also have alternate versions for people on opposite sides of the Atlantic? The possibilities are mind-blowing.

One line from a Christmas carol fascinated me as a young child: “Now bring us some figgy pudding.” I sat there pondering what that could mean. I knew that figs were fruit, although I wasn’t sure what they looked like and imagined them to be something like raisins, and my experience with pudding was limited to that of the chocolate, vanilla, and tapioca variety. So I wondered why on earth you would go out into the cold, knock on someone’s door, and sing for them to bring you a bowl of tapioca pudding with raisins, and why on earth they would actually have that ready to offer to you. I wondered what to give people if they demanded figgy pudding, and could only come up with leftover Easter or Halloween candy, and a lame excuse that we were fresh out of pudding of any kind.

As I later found out, pudding in this case refers to the dense cake-like dessert that never really made it big in the New World. I recently found out a more disturbing tidbit about Christmas pudding: it is often prepared months in advance, put in a cloth, and hung from the ceiling until it’s eaten. Prior to serving, it’s doused in brandy and set on fire, partly for the spectacle, and partly to burn off anything that shouldn’t be eaten that may have accumulated after several months of sitting around. Mmm… nothing says delicious holiday tradition better than month-old burning cake, which just moments earlier was molding in an old bag in the basement.

29 November 2005

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.

22 November 2005

Late Wednesday night, my friend, who lives about a five-minute walk from my place, was sleeping. We live in the old part of town, where the streets are cobblestone, the churches are numerous, and the buildings are kept in their original state (read: made out of wood). At about 3 a.m., he heard a big explosion that shook his building, but in his sleep-induced haze, he assumed it was rowdy Swiss people setting off fireworks in celebration of Switzerland’s soccer win earlier that evening.

As it turns out, the explosion was actually in the first floor of his building, and the flames quickly spread upwards. Unable to go out his front door because of the smoke and flames, and unable to go down the fire escape, as there never was a fire escape, my friend grabbed his computer, iPod, cell phone, and passport (the four most important things in the expat existence), jumped up on the roof, climbed over to the next building, crawled in a window and went down their stairs. Other tenants jumped out their windows into nets held by firemen waiting below. The story made all of the local papers, along with the soccer news.

My friend’s building is uninhabitable, due to fire and water damage in the lower stories, and smoke and soot damage in the upper floors, yet his landlord is reluctant to let him out of his lease. It seems self-evident that if a building is nearly destroyed by fire, you can’t really expect people to live there, but apparently it’s not so simple. The landlord did an apartment inspection and started complaining that my friend had damaged the apartment by letting his candles drip wax on the floor! My friend pointed out that the wax was inconsequential in comparison to the soot and smoke that had destroyed all of his belongings and the fire and water damage that had nearly ruined the building and left him homeless. The landlord considered this and then acknowledged that they had all had a difficult day, and that she had been awake since 7 a.m. (whereas my friend had been awake since 3 a.m., when he was awakened by an explosion and had to scramble for his life out of a burning building). Only in the mind of a Swiss landlord would wax drippings and a long day be equivalent to nearly losing your life in a fire.

People make fun of Americans for being so quick to notice potential liability and fire hazards, but honestly, who wouldn’t think “fire hazard” when confronted with a wooden apartment building with no smoke detectors, no sprinklers, no fire extinguishers, no fire alarms, no fire escapes, and doors that lock you in unless you have a key? This describes many Swiss buildings, although the newer buildings aren’t made of wood. If you’re lucky enough to wake up, since there are no smoke detectors or fire alarms, you still have to figure out how to get out, since your only exits are through the window, which can make for an unpleasant fall, or through the front door, if it isn’t blocked, and if you remember to bring your keys. I am fairly certain that if I’m running out of my apartment in a panic, I will forget my keys, and end up locked in the building, unable to get out. Hopefully a Swiss neighbor will have the presence of mind to bring keys, and will be able to let both of us out.

The Swiss are risk-averse and plan against all possible mishaps, to the extent that they have detailed plans in the event of nuclear war, with every household having a fully stocked bomb shelter. I would have thought that if you plan for Armageddon that you would also take a few precautionary measures for things like fires, which cause much more damage on a yearly basis than the end of the world, which will only happen once.

On the same day that the fire made the papers, another headline announced that two pickpockets stole a woman’s purse. I had to laugh at that, as where else in the world would a petty theft be newsworthy? Imagine how thick the New York Times would be if every mugging, pick-pocketing, theft, and other minor crime made the papers!

15 November 2005

Two friends and I ventured to London for the weekend, primarily to see the beautiful Ewan McGregor live on stage in Guys and Dolls, but also to catch up with friends, hang out, and eat (what other reasons are there to travel?) Mr. McGregor lived up to all expectations, and we couldn’t help but pity his successor, who takes the stage in early December, and will have to struggle to charm the audience as easily as Ewan did.

It’s flu season, and countries around the world, especially in Europe, are urging citizens to get flu shots, both to prevent the regular flu, and to avoid unnecessary paranoia about bird flu in the event of a normal flu outbreak. In London, there are posters advertising free “flu jabs.” I don’t know if “jab” is supposed to sound less threatening or frightening than “shot,” but I don’t think it’s the best choice of words, as it really emphasizes the stabbing motion involved in getting a shot. Try again...

It was cold while we were there, and we were wearing sweaters, coats, hats, and scarves. However, the locals weren’t quite so bundled up; there were guys wearing t-shirts, and girls wearing miniskirts and tank tops, with nary a coat to be seen. When it’s summertime, a coat might not be necessary, even if the evening is a bit breezy, but if it’s November and the evening temperatures are below 40F, there is no way that it’s comfortable or healthy to wear a miniskirt and tank top without anything else. If you argue that it’s for aesthetic reasons, that, too, is fallacious, as there is little that is attractive about shivering, goose-bump-covered flesh that is usually sickly pale, but in the cold turns sickly blue.

After a late dinner on Saturday, we tried to catch a cab to my friend’s apartment, to no avail, and ended up waiting and walking for an hour. We ate in a central location, and my friend lives in a central location, so there really is no excuse for the lack of cabs. What kind of large city has neither official cabs nor gypsy cabs (or minicabs, as they call them in London) when there is a clear demand for late night transportation? The Tube shuts down early, and no one drives, so cabs and buses (which run on a sparse late night schedule) are the only options. I felt sorry for myself, walking home in the cold, and then felt sorrier for all the Londoners who didn't wear coats, and must have frozen solid en route. Notice to Londoners: get a free flu jab and wear a coat, especially if you stay out past midnight.

This past Sunday was Remembrance Sunday in England, commemorating the two World Wars. All of the major streets were shut down for a parade, and it was surreal walking through Parliament Square near Westminster without hundreds of cars zooming through the roundabouts. It was also an eye-opener to see how seriously they take the holiday, perhaps because the Wars were partly fought in English airspace and waters. I’ve never seen such mass public support for veterans of wars long gone, but then again, I come from a country that hasn’t fought a domestic battle in over two centuries. In the U.S., Memorial Day means cookouts and beaches, and Veterans Day is a random day off in November. We learn about wars in class, but we never acknowledge them in real life. In London, there were thousands of people wearing poppies that symbolize hope in the face of devastation (poppies bloomed in Flanders even during the heaviest fighting in WWI), shaking the hands of old veterans, leaving flowers, and generally showing that they care.

I am by no means a warmonger, and disapprove of all the monging of war that is going on these days, but I did find it touching to see how much people still cared about these men who, sixty years ago, were in the idealistic but bloody business of saving the world. Americans are brash, sarcastic, and future-minded, which often serves us well, but in some cases, in some situations, I think that it might serve us equally well to look to the past and have a little heart. We can still have cookouts on the beach, of course.

9 November 2005

I spent a long weekend in Dublin hanging out with an Irish friend and his three siblings. It was his younger sister’s birthday, so that was the main reason for celebration (although I think there would have been a celebration regardless of whether there was a reason or not, simply because it’s Ireland and it was the weekend). I have to say that it was something of an eye-opener. In my family, at least, blood and alcohol don’t mix. You can hang out with your family, or you can go for a crazy night on the town, but you can’t do both. While I’m sure most American families are less rigid than mine, I am also pretty sure that few American families are quite as crazy as the Irish.

While I was there, my friends recounted some of their craziest nights out, and I must say that they seem to take things to a level far beyond even that which I saw in New York. For instance, they were recounting one night where a few friends were tossing pint glasses full of beer or water on each other in a pub, and then one friend went into the corner of the pub and starting pissing in empty pint glasses and tossing those, instead. On another night, one of their friends tossed a pint of beer on my friend, who responded by tossing a pint of water back. The guy punched him twice in the face, thinking that the pint was full of beer, and had ruined his clothes (keep in mind that this was after he had thrown a pint of beer first), and then apologized when he realized it was water (and they’re still friends). Another guy started picking a fight with one of their friends, who pretended to shrug it off and walk away, but later stood next to the guy at the bar and calmly urinated into the guy’s pants pocket. Other nights involved stripping buck-naked in the middle of a crowded pub, falling off bridges, crashing into parked cars, breaking backs and noses, and other over-the-top hijinks. Perhaps it is no coincidence that one of the most insane nights I witnessed in New York came after my friend had had four or five Irish car bombs. It must be something in the Guinness.

The day after a heavy night out can be a somewhat incongruous experience, as well. After having watched the siblings drinking and smoking up a storm the night before, dancing and shouting and having a wild time, it was rather amusing to see them sitting on the couch like senior citizens, drinking endless cups of tea, complaining about the amount of sugar and milk, commenting on the flavor of the tea, debating over which cookies, or "biscuits," rather, would best complement the tea. (One of the brothers, who spent the previous night drinking and dancing like any twenty-something, enthusiastically recommended the website nicecupofteaandasitdown.com, as it provides detailed analysis of various teas and recommends a Biscuit of the Week). I thought my parents drank a lot of tea in having a couple cups after dinner at night, but apparently the average Irish person drinks eleven cups of tea per day, perhaps to balance out the eleven thousand drinks they had the night before.

Even more so than Britain and the U.S., Ireland and the U.S. are separated by a common language. When speaking one on one with an Irish person, I know most of what’s going on, with a few questions here and there as to what a particular slang term means, but get a few Irish people together, especially if they are from the same city, and the slang flies fast and furious. “Lamp the gatch on ‘im” translates into “Look at the way that guy walks.” “Woke up with a minger of a mouth” means “I had awful morning breath when I got up.” No restrooms, just the “jacks.” And words like “berries,” “business,” and “savage” all refer to things that in various regions of the U.S. would be “awesome,” “wicked,” or “rocking.” It’s a funny sensation, going to an English-speaking country, and still feeling like I need to learn the language.

Heading off to London this weekend with two friends, and we’re going to catch Ewan McGregor live on stage in Guys and Dolls.

1 November 2005

This past weekend was spent in two ways: singing a couple of concerts with my local choir and celebrating Halloween with my fellow expats. With respect to the concerts, my choir is comprised of twelve people, mostly older, half Swiss and half Anglophone expats, and we sing a variety of music, with a focus on Renaissance music from England. Our concerts were in two churches in nearby towns, and given the narrow focus of our repertoire, it was impressive that the German-speaking Swiss audiences were sufficiently interested to come hear a random choir sing predominantly English music from hundreds of years ago. Even more astonishing was that a fair number of parents brought their young children, ranging from toddlers to kindergarteners. From what I remember of being five years old, sitting through an 75-minute concert of classical music in a language I didn’t understand wasn’t very high on my list of things to do, yet these children sat quietly and listened without a fuss. My only explanation is that they were possessed by aliens, or they were actually robots, because little kids are not meant to sit still and listen to stuffy music for more than two minutes at a time. Or maybe it’s because they’re Swiss. Aliens, robots, Swiss, same thing, right?

In any case, my friends and I did indeed dress up, to various degrees, for Halloween, and we ventured forth to go dancing while in costume. The expected amused looks, double takes, and bemused questions took place, and a good time was had by all. Well, except for one guy who made the mistake of accosting me as I walked home from the club at around three in the morning. After trying several times to step around him, and after politely telling him several times exactly what he should do with himself in response to his lewd comments, I was somewhat annoyed and frustrated. When he reached out to grab my arm, however, that was the last straw, and so I hit him and kept walking. Yes, he was male, and therefore obnoxious at 3 a.m., but on the other hand, he was Swiss, and could therefore only stand in utter shock that someone would be anything but passive and polite in the face of his rudeness.

Last night, we went to check out Zurich’s version of Oktoberfest. The better-known celebration in Munich lasts two weeks at the end of September, but Zurich celebrates Oktoberfest for a month, which this year is from October 6 until November 6. We arrived at 7 p.m. on a Monday evening and it was already crowded. Once the oompah band started up with the greatest hits of German polka, the crowd sang along with great gusto, drinking out of liter jugs of beer and wearing floppy felt hats. For the more popular numbers, the Swiss, young and old alike, would stand on their tables, roaring along with a rough approximation of rhythm and pitch. Upon reflection, I don’t think there are any equivalent songs in the U.S., traditional songs from a hundred or more years ago that, when played in a public place, would result in 20-, 40-, and 60-year-olds jumping up on their chairs to jubilantly scream along. My friends and I joined in when the oompah band inexplicably played an oompah version of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

As you might imagine, when people start drinking beer out of liter mugs right after work, there are some seriously inebriated people wandering around by 10 p.m. Friends staggered around, holding each other up (or dragging each other down), while other friends and strangers watched with detached amusement. There was no tsk-tsk’ing by the elder Swiss, as I imagine they have been in the same state in years past. An EMT stood by to check on the more seriously drunk people to make sure that someone would get them home safely, but in general, the atmosphere strongly encouraged public drunkenness and revelry, and several people who had celebrated a little too hard were carried out by their friends as everyone, including the EMT, chuckled and hoped that they would still have control over their own legs when it was their turn to leave.

Off to Dublin for a long weekend, so next update may be on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.