How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part III, Section 1: Living in Switzerland; Products

So you’re living in Switzerland! Congratulations!! If you’re not a Swiss citizen already, then that means that you’ve managed to get one of the hard-to-get work visas for foreigners, that you’re wealthy and retired (and have obtained government permission to buy Swiss property, despite your non-citizen status), that you’ve married a Swiss citizen and are hoping to apply for a passport in five years, or that you snuck in illegally and will soon be kicked out. Hopefully it’s one of the first three, and if it’s the second, please contact me as soon as possible, as I would be interested in loafing around on your new couch in your new home.

I see that you’re curious as to what you should bring with you, what you can leave behind, what you can buy here, and what is hard to find. Assuming that you are able to get to the shops when they are open, your shopping experiences here will be quite different from those you are accustomed to. While I won't go into every similarity and difference, here are a few for you to chew on. Let’s start with what you will find here in great quantities and with the utmost ease. Cheese, chocolate, and kitchen appliances exist in hundreds of shapes, sizes, and prices. The first two, I’m sure you expected, but kitchen appliances? Yes, my friend, if you were a housewife from the 1950’s, Switzerland would seem like a futuristic utopia of automation and culinary gadgets. Here, we have a special machine that hard-boils eggs. Next to it, feast your eyes on the little grill for potatoes and cheese. You needed a hotdog cooker with a bun warmer? Look no further. The list goes on, and whatever it is that you’re looking to do, there is sure to be a machine to do it, and it is also certain that the machine will have no other useful functions. (If you love your George Foreman grill, however, you should bring that, as it’s too multi-functional to have market appeal here).

Bring medications in large quantities, if you are the kind to take them, as the pharmacies, and only the pharmacies, are allowed to dispense such highly dangerous substances as Tylenol and Advil, and only 10 or 20 pills at a time. Vitamins are available in bottles of 60 pills, but those, too, are dispensed by the pharmacist, who, I’m sure, is checking you out to make sure you’re not one of those vitamin-junkies looking for your next fix.

Say goodbye to Skippy, Jif, and Peter Pan, and say hello to mini-jars of generic peanut butter, which are strangely gritty and oily. Cereal comes in flakes or puffs, plain or chocolate, so bid a fond farewell to the silly rabbit, Lucky, Count Chocula, Cap’n Crunch, Fred and Barney, and all of your other cereal friends. If you are a lover of fresh vegetables, seafood, and herbs, you will change them in for salad greens, canned veggies, frozen fish, and mostly dried herbs. Your red meat will be doled out by the gram instead of the pound, and your milk will come in room-temperature boxes, with all of the original milk fat included. Your eggs will come in fours or tens, but never by the dozen. Goodbye, Wonder Bread, and hello to bakery bread that is delicious for an hour, before it turns into an excellent “large, blunt object” used to commit unsolved murders. Drink your last Dr. Pepper and root beer, and savor the plenitude of Sprite, ginger ale, and Diet Coke, then prepare to spend your meals sipping tiny glasses of iced tea, Coke Light, Fanta, and Schweppes Bitter Lemon.

25 October 2004

So on Saturday, I put Fiver in one bag and my camera in another, and took a 94-minute train ride across the country, ending up in the town of Fribourg, population 30,000. It was sunny and unseasonably warm, about 70 degrees, and my friend Jon met Fiver and me at the train station. We then headed to Gruyeres and had a fondue before wandering around Gruyeres a bit. (Yes, I finally had fondue in Switzerland, and I had forgotten both how much I like fondue and how much cheese is involved). Gruyeres is the kind of town that makes you think of Heidi and the Sound of Music, all at once. It is a Technicolor green kind of place, complete with Disney-esque cobblestones, painted backdrop mountains, woolly little sheep, and placid cows. It was gorgeous. And then, strangely, there was a little museum in the midst of this quaint town, celebrating the creator of the creature from the Alien movies. The museum is in a pretty little building with a cobblestone courtyard, and has statues and greenery like every other building, but the statues just happen to be of aliens. We then headed back to Fribourg and wandered around there a little bit. It’s a very hilly town with narrow, crooked streets and old buildings perched precariously on the steep slopes that tumble down to the river. One particularly high bridge is the suicide point of choice, and apparently some of the recently departed end up in the backyards of the people living by the water, which I imagine must cause much consternation.

Yesterday was again warm and sunny, and since it was Sunday, everything was closed, so Fiver and I took it easy, reading and napping on the terrace, wandering around town taking pictures of some of the details of the city that lend Zurich its charm.

An interesting tidbit learned over the weekend: The official hours for practicing an instrument, according to the Swiss civil code, are between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., except on Sundays, when no practicing is permitted. If you practice outside of those allotted times, your neighbors can call the police and have you stopped. If only that had been the case in the U.S. when I was young, I would have just stalled and stalled until 7 p.m., after which my parents would have been breaking the law by making me practice piano!!

So, the average Swiss person eats about 11 kilograms (about 24 pounds) of chocolate per year. I, however, have never been one to settle for being just average, and seem certain to far outpace the average Swiss when it comes to amount of chocolate consumed this year. If you think about it, 24 pounds of chocolate, when spread out over an entire year, isn’t that much. That’s just 10 “fun-size” candy bars per week, not even the full-size or king-size bars!! After realizing that eating a full-size chocolate bar every day would bring me in at about 80 pounds of chocolate per year, I decided to make a slight effort to curb my habit. After all, I’m happy to be in the 99^th percentile for chocolate consumption, but there is no need to be in the 99.999^th percentile. So last week, I bought about 5-1/2 pounds of chocolate of various types (all on sale, I might add), but was careful to buy it in smaller packaging, in the hopes that I would eat the same number of bars per day, but less chocolate, since the bars are smaller. Nothing doing, I just eat more bars per day to maintain my breakneck chocolate consumption pace. I am leaving the rest of the country in the dust, and I haven’t even had a lifetime of Swiss-chocolate-consumption training; imagine how good I would be if I had grown up here and developed a disciplined eating program. Next areas of focus for out-Swissing the Swiss will be maintaining neutrality, laundering money, and yodelling.

In my defense, I would like to point out that I chose healthy chocolate. At least that’s what the packaging proclaims. This particular chocolate is aimed at parents buying snacks for their children, and the kind I chose is fortified with extra milk, so that if I eat a mere 250g per day, or about 12 or 13 fun-size bars, I can meet my calcium requirements! This would only require eating about 200 pounds of chocolate per year! (Now that I think about it, 200 pounds isn’t *that* much. It’s less than twice my weight, after all… I think that would be a good rule of thumb to go with ones we already have: never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear; never put marbles up your nose; never eat more than twice your weight in chocolate per year.) The same brand makes chocolate that has 5 different kinds of grain in it. Apparently, instead of having cereal and milk in the morning, I could have chocolate and chocolate.

NEWS FLASH – 18 October 2004

So I lost my hat on the tram yesterday morning, and didn’t realize it until much later. Now, when such things have happened in the past, I’ve written items off as lost causes: I’ve had hats, gloves, scarves, wallets, and a cell phone swallowed whole by the abyss of the world, and in some cases, have even been in contact with the person who had the item (cell phone), and could not get them back. This being Switzerland, however, I went by the city lost-and-found today. It was a small, very well organized office with keys hanging on a pegboard, bags and briefcases on shelves, coats and sweaters on hangers, and hats, scarves, and gloves in a bin. It looked like the neatest thrift shop you’ve ever seen, or a good-sized coat check room. I located my hat in about 7 seconds, in perfect condition, neatly tied up with string with a blue identification tag on it. I signed and paid a 5 franc fee, and walked out completely amazed, first that everything makes it there, and second that it isn’t abused. Hundreds of people find things, and instead of keeping them, throwing the away, or ignoring them, they turn them into the nearest police office, tram driver, or store owner, who then take it to the police or tram depot, who then take it to the lost-and-found, who then sort and index them for return to their owners. Apparently, no one feels it worthwhile to go in and say, “I lost my coat, hat, scarf, shoes, and handbag,” pay 25 francs, and walk out with like-new clothing and accessories. Crazy.

Since I’m already writing, I might as well add that the latest trends below the knees are as follows: guys like to wear white socks pulled up over their pants, and girls like to wear gaudy knee socks with their pointy, high-heeled shoes. Whenever I see someone sporting such foot fashion, I cannot tear my eyes away, and rubberneck as if it were the biggest train wreck ever.

18 October 2004

I realize that I am turning into one of Those Dog People. Fiver parades around my office and apartment with impunity, defending his territory from evil and demanding a tithe from the people protected. He wears coats and sweaters when it’s cold out, because he has so little fur and shivers pathetically without them. He has had really dry, itchy skin since coming here, which has gotten much worse over the past few weeks, and so I have bought humidifiers, applied hydrocortisone, filed his nails, given him special baths, and have now reached a new high (or low, depending on how you feel about Dog People). Last week, I researched hypoallergenic diets, went grocery shopping, chopped, boiled, mixed, and packaged two weeks’ worth of rice, chicken, olive oil, and carrots for him, and he eats this new diet twice a day. I’m trying to see if he has a food allergy, and if it turns out that he does, I will have to find a new brand of dog food. In the meantime, he thinks that this is a permanent thing, and gets quite impatient when it’s mealtime. The hypoallergenic diet he is on is pretty good; I tried some of it!!

Anyways, if summertime is street festival season in Switzerland (I went to four in three months), then fall seems to be weird parade season. Last week there was the cows-coming-home parade, and this past weekend, as I was walking home along the river, I see hundreds of people lining the street. Being a sheep, I obligingly went to the side of the road to see what was happening. As it turns out, there was a parade celebrating the past 100 years of transportation in Zurich. Representing the first few decades were old bikes with 2, 3, or 4 wooden, rubber, and metal wheels of various shapes and sizes, ridden by happy Zurichers in period costume. Soon came old motorbikes and strange cars, each of a completely different look, since they were the pioneering models made before anything became standardized: side view mirrors sprouted at all angles, headlights were cross-eyed, spare tires were attached haphazardly, car horns mooed like cows or growled like broken sirens, leather trunks were strapped onto the backs of squared-off cars (is that why we call it a trunk now?) It was quite amazing that such a small city has so many antique car aficionados, and that they are so dedicated to their hobby that they even have period costume to go with their carefully maintained and highly polished vehicles. But then it got cold, so I went home as the 1940’s were rolling by.

How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part II, Section 3: Acting Swiss; Consumer Culture

In the U.S., the customer is always right. In Switzerland, the customer is lucky to consume, and the stores will dictate what the customer can buy, as well as when and where it is allowed. Want to buy something on a Sunday? Nothing is open, unless you’re hoping to go to church. Some shops are open in the main train station and the airport, but otherwise, expect a ghost town. What about evening shopping? Not if it’s after 6 p.m. for most stores, although a few stores keep their doors open until 8 p.m. This seems to be the trend with most establishments: open 5 or 6 days a week, but only during hours when everyone is at work!! It may be a scheme to induce saving, since no one is able to actually go out and spend money if all of the shops are closed.

What about food? Surely food is available at all hours? Not as much as one would expect. Some places that sell lunch food in business areas not only close on Mondays, but they also close for lunch every day, so that people wishing to buy lunch from these establishments must buy their lunch ahead of time, or be confounded by a locked glass door, with the shopkeeper visible inside, watching TV, eating his lunch, and ignoring potential customers.

There is a time and place for everything. Contrary to popular belief, fondue is not a year-round Swiss specialty. It is only to be eaten in the winter, and it is never made out of chocolate. Cheese fondue is happily eaten during the wintertime, and the rest of the year, it is seen as a tourist-y gimmick. The same goes for sausage: sausage is only a summertime food, so when it’s warm, revel in the unforgettable image of big Swiss men in tight jeans chomping away on 9-inch sausages in the street, because after summer is gone, the sausages go into hibernation until the next year. Until recently there was even a particular kind of bread that was only available once a year, which was wildly popular, and it took decades until some canny baker realized that this ultra-popular bread would generate some profits if sold more often. So it is now available once a week.

Choice is over-rated. Why have 5 brands to choose from when there could be two? Why have 10 trends, when one would suffice? Why have ten colors or flavors, when three would be enough? Why offer bed sheets in cotton, silk, satin, and flannel, when clearly, people would be much happier to have a choice of bed sheets made out of t0shirt material, and bed sheets made out of towel material? Granted, these aren’t seen as traditional bed sheet material, but those will be the only ones available. T-shirt or towel, flat or fitted, take it or leave it.

Self-promotion is still in its early stages, and companies are still trying to figure out how to portray themselves in the most favorable light without trying to seem as if they were doing so. 20 Minuten, a short newspaper available for free at every tram stop, recently trumpeted its own status as the most widely read newspaper in Zurich, carefully ignoring the fact that the other newspapers are not free, and are not given out at every tram stop in the morning.

12 October 2004

An addendum to yesterday’s entry. So after going to the top of Titlis, I took the gondola back down, and I kept hearing bells. They weren’t church bells, but cowbells. You can imagine how many cowbells have to be ringing so that an entire valley is echoing with the sound of cowbells. Upon arriving at the bottom, I saw that there was a sort of parade in progress. A parade of cows!! Apparently, Swiss cows spend their summers in the Alps, and they return to their winter stables on appointed days, and on those days, their owners put flowers, embroidered harnesses, and cowbells as big as my head on their favourite bovine friends. They then walk them all the way down the mountain to much noise and fanfare. In New York, we have parades for cancer awareness, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Easter, and so on, and in Switzerland, they have them for cows.

In any case, these cows, being cows, poop as they walk, sullying the footpaths. My friend had opted to take a scooter down instead of the gondola, and had to ride through the muck, which was kicked up all over his pants and jacket, much to the chagrin of his clean Swiss sensibilities. The best (worst?) part of it was that it was only partway through the day, and he had to sport his poo-pants and poo-coat for the rest of the day.

11 October 2004

So those of you who know me may have to sit down for this one, as I have gone and done something that is completely out of character. I am a little bit ashamed to admit this, but it’s true. I’ve gone and joined a gym. Wait! Before you jump to any conclusions about some newfound desire to exercise and stay in shape, let me clarify. I joined the gym, but I have no intention of using the gym facilities, lifting weights, taking courses, or any other such silliness. I joined the gym in order to have access to the hot tubs, saunas, swimming pools, Turkish baths, and other “wellness facilities,” as they are called here. You will note that all of those amenities involve me sitting on my ass and relaxing, so if you were about to go into shock, rest assured that I am standing firm by my long-standing policy of minimal exercise, recently amended to make a small exception for diving-related activities that involve hauling tanks and swimming.

Confession aside, I have to say that the gym is pretty nifty. I have no idea how they work in the US, never having been to one, but at my gym (a phrase I never thought I would use), we get these chips on wristbands that give us entry and exit, and also serve to lock and unlock the lockers in the locker room – you can use a different locker every time, and the chip becomes the key for whichever one you choose! You can also use the chip to charge snacks, drinks, massage, and so on to your account, so that you don’t have to carry your money around with you, and they scan it when you leave and you pay as you go out the door. It’s tech-y, organized, and efficient, in a Big Brother sort of way.

Side note: so I have kept a New York landline here in Switzerland, which has been “soo-pah,” as they say here, as it cuts down on phone bills and eliminates international dialling confusion. One very annoying pitfall that I had not foreseen, however, was that telemarketers and customer service people make calls until about 8 or 9 p.m., EST, which means that I get “special offers” as late as 3 a.m. Yes, I am on the Do Not Call Registry, but some of the calls are from my credit card company, and others, I don’t know who is calling, because I’m so groggy at the time that I don’t pay much attention, and just tell the person to stop talking, I’m not interested, take me off every list, and let me go back to sleep, because I am 6 hours ahead of New York time.

I must now make mention of the weekend, which will make this entry rather long, but it is quite necessary. I went to Titlis, which is the highest Alp in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and also to Lucerne. In general terms, it was as to be expected: the mountains were tall and pointy, with snow, the glacier (on the mountain) was big and icy, and Lucerne was charming and picturesque. In specific terms, some items of note: “Titlis” means “little tits” in Swiss German, although I’m guessing that that is not where the name of the mountain comes from. There were large tour groups from India and China there, mixed in with the mostly Swiss skiers and snowboarders. The Indian tourists were gravely under-dressed, wearing lightweight saris on a glacier and snow-covered mountain, and the Cantonese tourists were gravely tourist-y, posing for pictures in from of everything: picnic tables, ski lifts, and welcome signs, and expressing much delight upon discovering some skis on a snowdrift. They then proceeded to take turns posing for photos while standing backwards on the skis. I will repeat the key word there, in case you missed it: backwards. In Lucerne, we went to one of the most astonishing museums I’ve ever seen, and I only wish that more had been there to witness the wonders therein with me. http://www.gletschergarten.ch/ This museum was built around a “glacier garden,” an area with traces of glacial activity from the last Ice Age, but also featured very related exhibits such as a replica of the living room of a Swiss historical figure, a room about lions, a house of mirrors, a room about reindeer, and so on. Each doorway was a portal into an equally baffling and unexpected exhibit. I have to say that it was highly amusing and much more interesting (in a quirky, trippy sort of way) than if the museum had stuck to its original intention of being about glaciers and glacial activity.

How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part II, Section 2: Acting Swiss; Public Places, Private Spaces

So how do the Swiss act in public? Conformity is the safest path, whether it is expressed through following the rules, or doing what everyone else does. Be predictable! If you are at a club, dress like a Swiss person (see Part I, Sections 1 and 2), and then take the Charlie Brown Christmas approach to dancing. This means that you should pick one specific movement that lasts at most one second, and repeat that movement over and over again. This is your dance move, and you cannot vary from it. Possible motions include: shaking your hand in time to the music; turning your head from side to side; alternately shrugging your shoulders; alternately swinging your elbows forward and back; pelvic thrusts; and the always-classic side-to-side shuffle. Stick to what you know. If someone approaches you to talk, and you don’t know them, dismiss them with a wave of the hand. Sure, you came to the bar or club to meet people, but not new people.

Be openly shocked by everything you don’t know or expect. Is the tram one minute late? Something must have happened! Has someone tipped over a trashcan? How shocking, tell the police immediately!

What about at home? Well, your apartment was in like-new condition when you moved in. Any existing flaws or damage were carefully noted to the smallest detail on your lease after a lengthy inspection with your landlord (“small chip on rear base of toilet basin,” “three paint flecks, about 1 mm across, at top of stairs,” “wall underneath bathroom sink cabinet not tiled” are representative examples), and your duty is to keep the place in exactly the same condition during your stay. For a Swiss person, this means doing the equivalent of spring cleaning once a week: mop the floors, wipe down the walls, scrub the kitchen and bathroom, vacuum the rugs, and clean and tidy everything else. Good thing you only work forty hours a week, or else who knows when you would have time to do all of this, what with your strict laundry schedule, quiet times, and day of rest on Sunday!

5 October 2004

My friend Liz Aston was in town for a long weekend, and we managed to get out and about a bit, but mostly we just missed buses and trains, because everything runs exactly on time here, and we were always about 30 seconds late. There is little more annoying than trying to get on the train, seeing smug Swiss passengers smirking out at you, and watching the train pull away. We missed our train out to my co-worker’s dinner party, and we missed the train back. We missed a train out to Basel, and then had to wait ages to get a bus out to Weil am Rhein in Germany. But in between missing our transport, we ate, drank, and made merry, and also looked at lots of chairs and buildings (at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein).

I can’t think of anywhere else that you can take a local city bus that will then take you out of the city and across an international border into another city for the regular fare. I also can’t think of anywhere else that has such friendly, helpful people. I asked the driver on our Swiss local bus to Germany which stop was closest to the museum, and when the stop came, he turned around, looked for me, then gave me detailed instructions on how to go once we got off the bus. The ticket seller at the museum noticed that we weren’t in the tour group as it was about to start, so he came to the gift shop (in another building), found us, and brought us back into the fold. The tour guide, on finding out that we had come over from Switzerland, drove us back to a stop on the Basel tram system, so that we wouldn’t have to make bus connections again.

Back in Zurich, we took a little boat ride around the lake, then spent a couple of hours at the Turkish baths in my neighborhood, which I highly recommend, not only for the gross-out factor of seeing how much dead skin you can scrub off of yourself, but also because it’s damn relaxing… On a completely unrelated note, for some reason, I find this to be really funny: http://newyork.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/41999656.html

How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part II, Section 1: Acting Swiss; Following the Rules

“Rules were meant to be broken” is not an expression that has many (any?) followers in Switzerland. Rules are rules, and are not to be questioned. This explains much of Swiss behavior, and can greatly aid an outsider’s effort to blend in among the Swiss, assuming that said outsider also knows the rules, which is highly unlikely. At any given moment, even if you are following one rule, you are probably breaking another. But for starters, let’s just get the basics. You need to register everything here. When you move into an apartment, you need to register your new address. If you have a dog, register him. Cell phone? That, too. Health insurance policy? Big Brother needs to know. Everything needs to be registered, and each thing needs to be registered at a different office. Those offices generally open at the buttcrack of dawn (“BCOD”), close for an extended lunch break, and then close again before you leave work. All registration should therefore take place either on a day off, or at the BCOD.

Noise is the enemy. Don’t flush your toilet or take showers after 10 at night, unless your building allows it. No loud talking, walking around, radio, or TV after 10 p.m., either, if your neighbors might hear it. If your neighbors engage in insane behavior such as the activities listed above, you can complain to your landlord, and they will be dealt with forthwith. Noise at the BCOD is OK, since everyone gets up by 7, anyways.

At a crosswalk (because that is the only place you can cross the street), don’t look at the street to see if there are cars. Look to see if there is a green man on the crossing sign. If he’s there, then cross. If there is a red man, wait until the green man comes up, even if there are no cars within sight. But you probably don’t know if there are any cars, because you are only looking to see if the little man is green or red.

Remember how we had the honor system in grade school, which quickly degenerated into every man for himself, lock anything that opens, and bolt everything to the ground? The honor system is a mainstay of Swiss society, as there aren’t many policemen wandering the streets. The ticket police rarely board trams, buses, or local trains to check if people have valid tickets, but everyone buys them anyways. You can ride every day for months, and no one will check. But if you are truly trying to assume a Swiss identity, you’d better have a valid ticket, and be ready to whip it out a couple times a year, when you actually happen to get checked. And taking things “just for the hell of it?” Nope. Street signs, giant chess pieces, chairs, signboards, construction lights, and other favorite prey that end up in American college dorms all remain safely where they are left, free from molestation and theft. Is that a wallet lying on the ground in front of you? Did someone leave their purse on their seat? You didn’t see it, so keep moving. Leave it there, and the original owner will come back to find it, or it will decompose naturally, fertilizing the soil, before someone will take it.

NEWS FLASH -- 1 October 2004

I finally have bed slats, and I now sleep on a bed, instead of a mattress on the floor!!!! I don't think anyone has ever been so thrilled to have acquired a bunch of wooden boards attached together by strips of cloth... I still maintain that they should have come with the bed.

27 September 2004

Scene: a group of Swiss and Americans, sitting on my terrace. One of the Swiss guys has brought a small water gun upstairs, and is shooting his friends, then decides that he wants to shoot some of the Americans.

Swiss guy (turning to one of the American guys): Can I make your girlfriend wet?
Americans: (laughter)

Scene: 12:59 p.m. in the checkout line at the grocery store. Lunch comes with a free drink after 1 p.m.

Customer: Can I get my drink for free?
Cashier: No, it’s not 1 o’clock yet, you have to wait.
Customer: Come on, it’s 1 already.
Cashier: No, you still have one minute
Second customer: Are you kidding?
Cashier: Just wait.
(They wait one minute.)
(Cashier rings customer up and gives him the free drink.)

Scene: daytime in the street in Zurich. Feeling too lazy to put it in a trashcan, a pedestrian throws a piece of paper trash on the ground.

Passerby (picking up the trash and handing it back to the first pedestrian): Sir, you dropped this!!
Littering pedestrian: Oh… uh, thanks.

A few things to think about: imagine trying to explain the following...

1) Who is Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and why is he so damn funny?
2) What do you mean when you call someone a punk?
3) Why would anyone in their right mind vote for Bush? (This one is the hardest).

How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part I, Section 2: Appearance for Women

Women, here is your guide to looking like a proper Swiss person. First and foremost, think extreme in all cases. Don’t do anything by halves, or you’re only making half of a statement. Let’s start with shoes. *Always* wear heels, and make sure that they’re very, very pointy. Your heels should be at least 3 inches high, even if you’re wearing jeans or capris. The pointy part of the shoe should evoke thoughts of the Wicked Witch of the West. If you can easily walk in them, then the heels aren’t high enough and the toes aren’t pointy enough. You can go for an ankle strap or no ankle strap, whatever suits your fancy, but make sure that the shoes are very colorful. Fuschia, yellow, silver, lavender, any color is fine, as long as it will only match one or two items in your wardrobe. Flip flops are for Americans and slobs.

If you’re going to wear low-rise pants, make sure that they’re low enough to rival the plumber, and that they highlight the exposed rear cleavage with underwear that hangs out the top. If not low-rise, then please be sure that your pants at least go up to your natural waist, if not higher. Cuffing your jeans is absolutely acceptable. Do you prefer skirts? The flouncier and more floral, the better. Shirts should be worn off the shoulder, 80s-style, so that your shoulder-length earrings won’t interfere with your neckline.

Going to get a haircut? Ask for a femme-mullet, or a something long and shaggy, or if you want to be surprised, just ask for the most junior trainee at SuperCuts, tell them to knock themselves out, and that should be about right. Please don’t get your highlights and dye jobs touched up; it is much better to leave them as they grow, so that you can have two-tone hair. See note in the Men’s section (last week) regarding smoking. Everyone does it, and it gives your skin that nice 14-going-on-40 look to it, which you can then build on with matte foundation and heavy eye makeup.

Also, please note that all men should have at least one visible tattoo or piercing, and all women should have at least one visible tattoo or piercing, in addition to normal earrings.

20 September 2004

Hello again. Got back yesterday from my trip to New York and DC. The wedding was beautiful, it was good to see friends, and I ate a ton!! All you can eat sushi, all you can eat blue crab, two lobsters at Joshua Tree, Korean BBQ at Kum Gang San, Ethiopian food at Meskerem, pizza, “street meat” hot dogs, apple pie from Little Pie Company, soup dumplings at Shanghai Café, bagels, clam chowder, filet mignon, and so on. I brought back all the books, CDs, clothes, and DVDs that I bought in the States, as well as all of my winter clothes, a comforter, a spare dog bed for Fiver, sheets, towels, etc., and had quite a time trying to navigate my 5,000 pounds of luggage through the trip.

Things that I had forgotten about the States, and things that I hadn’t realized before moving away: it is HUMID over there! And air conditioning, while refreshing, can make you REALLY COLD -- I wrapped myself in three blankets on the plane flight over, and the flight attendant asked me if I was all right. I miss smoke-free New York; it was nice to be able to go to a bar or restaurant and not come out smelling like an ashtray. And I never really noticed the amount of gum on the ground in New York until living in a ground-gum-free city for three months. Look around, there is a lot of gum on the sidewalks, it’s amazing!! Also, I still have no idea how Zurich avoids that “rancid trash” smell that is seemingly ubiquitous in the summertime in the city.

Back on this side of the pond, I’ve decided to start putting out a handy dandy guide to assist people in blending in among the Swiss. I have decided to remain conspicuous and non-Swiss, but if I ever decide to become an undercover agent here, at least I’ll have a guide all ready to go. This week’s lesson is about basic dress code for men.

How to Pass for a Swiss Person, Part I, Section 1: Appearance for Men

Are you male? Then this issue applies to you. Image is king! Always buy your jeans tight. If your girlfriend’s jeans are tighter than yours, you’re doing something wrong. Make sure that the legs taper at the ankles. Never go without a belt. You don’t technically need it, since you bought your jeans tight enough that you couldn’t get them off without a paint scraper, but the belt is essential. If you object to really tight jeans, you can also opt for capri-length cargo pants (if you don’t know what “capri-length” is, go ask at your nearest Gap, or ask a female friend).

Tuck your shirt in, you look like a slob. Make sure that your shirt is tight, even if it makes people wonder which team you’re playing for. Bonus points if your shirt has no sleeves, or if you flip the collar up. Color coordination is important, too; get help on this one if it’s too hard for you. It’s pretty simple, though: if you’re wearing a red and yellow shirt, make sure that your shoes are also red and yellow, and preferably made by Adidas. Only leather shoes, or else people will think you’re a slob with no money.

Finding it hard to squeeze your wallet and keys into your jeans, because they’re too tight? Not a problem, go buy a fanny pack!! Preferably black leather. You can put it around your waist, or you can sling it over your shoulder. Everyone has one. But again, make sure your clothes are really tight, or else people might get you mixed up with an American tourist.

You’d better shave, or else your female friends might get annoyed, since you kiss every one of them three times every time you see them. Stock up on hair gel, because crunchy hair is a must.

Not a smoker? That will have to change. Switzerland is one of the heaviest smoking countries in the world. Don’t like nicotine? That’s OK, you can cut your cigs open, mix the tobacco with pot, and re-roll it, and you’re good to go. Too poor to do that? That’s OK, too, because there are enough people smoking in the street that you can just breathe deeply in their vicinity and get a contact high.

7 September 2004

So I’m heading back to the States on Friday, with stops in New York and D.C., and I’m already making mental lists of things I’m going to do. Actually, it’s mostly a list of things I’m going to eat. At the top of the list: bagels, Ethiopian food at Meskerem, all-you-can-eat sushi, Korean BBQ, soup dumplings at Shanghai Cafe, lobster at Joshua Tree, burgers at Island Burgers, bloody steak, tapas, tiramisu at Ferrara, French toast at Eatery, smoothies at Route 66, and so on and so forth. I was out for drinks last night with some co-workers, all of them fellow expats, and the topic of “what to do when back in the States” came up, and everyone just started listing their favorite restaurants and how much food costs at those restaurants. The variety/quality/price of food in New York is just unbeatable. Which is why I’m going to eat non-stop while I’m there.

Then there are the things I need to buy or bring back. I’ve already bombarded Amazon and Barnes and Noble with orders for books, CDs, and DVDs that are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive here. It should be fun seeing me try to lug all of that stuff back to Zurich. I also plan on stocking up on cold medications and toiletries, which are all sold in Oompa Loompa portions here, for monopoly prices. Ahh… somewhere in the world, things are sold at market prices in econo-size packaging. Expats dream about such things for long spans of time, in between food cravings and laundry angst. The strange thing is that while most things here are sold in small packages, and there is no such thing as Costco, they have a proliferation of “erotic warehouses” that are as big as any IKEA or Costco I’ve ever seen. I haven’t yet ventured inside one of them, but I can only imagine that they must sell “erotic products” in containers ten times the size of the shampoo and laundry detergent bottles.

Speaking of all things erotic, this past weekend was the street fair celebrating the red-light district in Zurich. The weekend before was the street fair for my neighborhood, which is sort of a cross between the village and Times Square, if you can imagine such a hybrid. But this past weekend, we took the tram out to the red-light district (which, incidentally, is also where my office is). This area of town is the most dangerous part of Zurich, which means that there is perhaps a 0.05% chance that you might get pick-pocketed, and a small chance that you might be asked for drugs or money. It’s about as dangerous as Central Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon in June. In any case, at some point as we were walking down the street, eating cotton candy, drinking sangria, looking at random trinkets, and deciding what to eat next, these two big tough guys got drunkenly upset at each other for some unknown offense. I slowed down, thinking that maybe I would finally see some real craziness. However, one of the guys just stood there with his arms crossed, yelling at the other guy, and consulting with his friends. The other guy, who was sporting full biker leather and long biker hair, and therefore seemed promising, was also screaming. He would occasionally rush in and do tentative little toe-kicks and wind-milling bitch-slaps. He fought about as well as a third-grade girl. Amusing, but unfulfilling. Nobody does random street violence like the good ole U S of A.

In apartment news, I think I’m still recovering from furniture deprivation, as I have not been able to shake this furniture-hoarding instinct that has suddenly been awakened in me. I have yet to get rid of any of my 9 small tables. I also have two couches, two barstools, four indoor chairs, five outdoor chairs, four outdoor stools, a kitchen table, a terrace table, and a TV from the Stone Age. Also, there is always the bed frame. Still no slats, so it’s still useless, but I’ve sanded and varnished the rest of the frame, so I prefer to think of it as an ornamental piece, for now. I still need to figure out what to do with some halogen lamps I just inherited from a friend who is leaving. In any case, if you’re looking for a place to sit, lie down, or put things on, my apartment now has a plethora of items suitable for such uses.

1 September 2004

So I had always thought that no one could out-polite us Asians. Think of the simultaneous stereotypes of the smiling, bowing, gracious Asian, and listen to how much weight Asian parents give to addressing people in the proper way, bringing the right gift to someone’s house, holding your chopsticks just so, giving and deflecting compliments, and you will start to understand what I mean. However, I have discovered that there is a place where the people are just as etiquette-conscious, and that place is Switzerland. I think they might be Asians in disguise.

Example 1: When having a drink with friends or acquaintances, you have to stop, clink glasses, and make serious eye contact with each and every person you are with, even if that group is 12 people. And this has to happen every time someone gets a new drink. So much for a quick round of shots.

Example 2: When writing an SMS, it is considered quite impolite to say something like, “When are we mtg tomorrow?” Instead, you have to sit there and type away on your phone, something more along these lines, “Hello, Billy Bob, how are you? I was wondering what time would be good for you to meet tomorrow? Hope you are well!! Bye, Angela.” So much for the “S” part of SMS.

Example 3: Don’t even think of picking up your fork before saying, “En guete” or “Bon appetit,” even if you’re just having fast food.

Example 4: Don’t answer the phone by saying “Hello,” use your name, because otherwise, your caller won’t know whom they are calling. Even though they called you in the first place. No calling after 9 p.m., because people might be asleep.

However, I also think that part of the way they make it look like they are so fastidious about the rules of etiquette is that they use a completely different set of rules, which makes it harder for outsiders to learn and understand them, and easier for the Swiss to make us look completely clueless and rude, which we very well might be, but not always knowingly.

For instance, they don’t have the rule about not eating the last piece of food on a serving plate, but there is a whole litany of rules regarding how bread works. Bread that is shaped a certain way is not free, even though it is brought out and placed on the table at the beginning of a meal. Bread that is placed in the center of the table is not necessarily for everyone at the table; and may only be intended for one person, depending on what people ordered.

Anyways... despite the fact that I am finding endless differences and quirks to amuse me, Fiver has settled down as if this is the only place he has ever lived in his entire life. Dogs can go anywhere, just about -- bars, restaurants, shops -- my office has four dogs, as well. Fiver is fine with that. He has developed quite a little attitude since getting here.

When we lived in New York, Fiver was used to being left home alone all day, every day, while I was at work. He would make his little martyr face, but he would deal with it pretty well.

Since getting here, he has developed delusions of grandeur and supreme importance. He loves coming to the office, but makes me coax him out of bed before he will get up. He eats anything and everything he can find, and always has dog food on hand (on paw?) but he begs *shamelessly* from friends and strangers alike. He made such pathetic faces at some woman in the street that she handed me half a loaf of bread and repeated several times that it was for my dog, as if Fiver were some poor, starved, and abused animal. If I leave him at home alone, he will bark at me when I come back, then ignore me for a little while, and then *allow* me to pet him in a benevolent act of forgiveness.

He was stung by a bee, which shocked him to no end, and made his foot swell and hurt. Once it had stopped hurting (and I know it did, because he was running around chasing his butt), he continued limping whenever he knew I was looking, to get more attention and treats. Silly Fiver.

NEWS BULLETIN -- 25 August 2004

We got an email this morning that someone was coming through to clean our phones at work. Um, OK. Sure 'nuff, a woman comes through to clean our office phones, and I kid you not, she had a full toolbelt of things used to clean phones: soft brushes, hard brushes, fabric cloths, dust cloths, cleaning spray, cleaning picks, and one of those click-and-count contraptions so she can keep track of the number of phones cleaned. I have never seen a phone get such close and loving attention. I am tempted to really dirty it up next time to see a full-blown treatment.

23 August 2004

The furniture saga continues. Apparently, when you buy a bed, you have to buy the bed slats separately. These things never occured to me as being separate items that people would get at different times or in different combinations. Bed slats are bed slats. So I ordered my bedframe, and it was delivered, and I put it together, and it looks quite nice except for the fact thatit is entirely useless when it comes to supporting a mattress, since there are no bed slats, and my mattress is not of the levitating variety. You would think that the ordering site would either say quite prominently, "This bed won't work as a bed unless you buy more things with it," or give a helpful link to "Things you will definitely need in order to make this bed functional." I suppose they do it that way so that if you already have some bed slats lying around, you don't have to end up with an extra set. Except that I don't know anyone who has random bed slats, since THEY COME WITH THE BED. Also, they were quite pointed in telling me that the mattress and sheets didn't come with the bed. Yes, I realize that, and I'm pretty sure the model sitting on the bed in the pictures is not included, either. I just want a large, elevated, flat surface to hold my mattress off of the ground. Is that so hard to get?

The Swiss like things to be a certain way, and that way is clean. In fact, the German word for "clean" is used colloquially to mean "good" in Switzerland. How far does this go? Some examples:

1) A friend killed a cockroach on my terrace, and threw it over the side. When he left the building, he saw the cockroach in the street, and picked it up and moved it into the gutter, because it didn't belong in the street.

2) Three roommates that I know have a cleaner kitchen than most Americans I know. At the end of a meal, they are incapable of leaving the dishes overnight, or even worse, letting them accumulate until the sink is full. Dishes can only be dirty while they are in use.

3) Another friend vacuumed his bedroom at 5 in the morning, because he simply could not sleep, knowing that the room was dirty. How dirty, you might ask, it must have been pretty bad. There were small dust bunnies that had come from a down comforter and feather pillows, but the thought of them was just so disturbing that he couldn't rest until they were gone.

You should see the ice cream ads here. Perhaps to provide some form of release from the rigors of everyday rules and regulations concerning propriety, the Swiss have the most sexually charged ice cream ads you have ever seen. They're not on the same level as Playboy or Penthouse, but I think they would fit into Maxim pretty well. Girls seductively eating popsicles, guys holding out large ice cream cones, just out of reach of their girlfriends, girls sharing ice cream with each other. Strangely, though, this hyper-sexualization seems to go almost exclusively with ice cream ads, and not with other products. Salami and bratwurst are sold with serious pictures of mountain men and cows, but ice cream is all about getting laid.

It is entirely possible to get locked in your apartment here. The locks work with keys on both sides, rather than a key on one side and a knob on the other. If you are prone to losing track of your keys, you can find yourself stuck inside until you find them. The outer doors of the buildings are the same way, such that, if someone has locked the front door, I have to go fishing through my bag to let myself out, and the keys by the time I get downstairs have somehow managed to get under everything else.

16 August 2004

So the Olympics started over the weekend, and I was watching the opening ceremony, and the Swiss commentator was making the usual inane chatter about the different teams as they walked into the arean, "This team has 57 athletes here this year," "This team is really strong in cycling," "Here come the defending champions for volleyball." Then the team from Singapore walked in, and the Swiss commentator said, "Here is the team from Singapore. Singapore is even cleaner than Switzerland." No joke, that is really what he said.

I ordered furniture from IKEA the other week -- a bedframe, a couch, some end tables, and a kitchen table and chairs. The same day, my landlord offered to show me some things that I could borrow. Being completely furniture deprived, I said yes to almost everything he offered, and it was only upon returning with the goods to my apartment that I realized that in addition to the three end tables I ordered from IKEA, I also borrowed another 6 small tables from my landlord. Who needs chairs and television when you have a lifetime supply of small tables?

IKEA delivers. In Switzerland, IKEA delivers whenever they decide to deliver. You get a letter in the mail and a voicemail in Swiss German saying the date that they will drop the things off, and a time frame, and you'd better be home when the stuff comes. It's sort of like cable in the U.S. Apparently, they also have a tendency to forget some items, or to only deliver parts of items, so I had a coworker call them to make sure that they were delivering a bedframe, a couch, three end tables, and a kitchen table and chairs. The person on the phone said he couldn't verify what was being delivered, but he could tell her that it weighed 160 kilograms. For all I know, I could get a delivery of 160 kilograms of toilet seat covers. In any case, I went onto the IKEA website to look at how much their stuff weighs, and the things I ordered should weigh, in total, 110 kilograms. So either they don't know how to weigh things, or I'm getting an extra 50 kg of furniture and household items for free!

Got my DSL set up, so my Vonage phone now works again, so I spent half the weekend on the phone, since I don't have to worry about long-distance rates anymore. The crazy thing is that it's also cheaper for me to call Switzerland, now that I have my old phone up and running again. How can it be cheaper for me to call Swiss lines from what is supposedly an American line, than to call Swiss lines from my Swiss numbers?

Because it's so expensive to make phone calls here (some cell phone plans charge about 80 cents a minute for local calls), everyone does SMS, instead. In New York, you walk around, and everyone has a headset or a cell phone attached to their ears. Here, everyone walks around looking down at the cell phones in their hands, where they are madly typing and sending text messages. It's quieter, but it's also hard to walk, when everyone is looking at their cell phone screen. I don't think I'm coordinated enough.

Another laundry mystery: the laundry machines here are really small and very slow. You put in two sheets and two pillowcases, and the machine is stuffed full. The shortest wash cycle is 46 minutes, and some options go for over 2 hours. I ask you, if you lived in a building that only gave you 2 days a month to do laundry, and those days were almost always during the week, and the loads are tiny and the cycles long, and you had to finish by 9 pm on your days, would you have enough clean clothes? Thankfully, I can do laundry whenever I want, unlike in most buildings, but I don't see how I would get by, otherwise...