27 February 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20 February 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

13 February 2007

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

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

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

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

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

Editor's Note

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

30 January 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24 January 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

16 January 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 January 2007

Happy New Year!! I got back from the Maldives a week ago, and I’m slowly returning back to normal. I did five loads of laundry, a load of dishes, and some grocery shopping. I washed and rinsed my dive gear (and showered at the gym, as my bathtub is full to the brim with gear that is slowly but surely drying out again). I sorted through pictures and posted them (have you seen them?) before sending out an update email (did you get it?). I went through my inbox and started chipping away at the backlog. I watched multiple episodes of a few shows and did some big downloads to get caught up on TV. I got my dog back and reminded him what life with rules and dietary restrictions is like (he spent much of break with a friend who is the closest thing to a fairy godmother he’s ever had). I came into work. I started getting back onto local time (the Maldives are only four hours ahead, but add that to the fact that we were woken up at 6 a.m. and went to bed between 9 and 10 p.m., and that’s a pretty serious change in schedule).

The trip to the Maldives was a very different way to spend Christmas and New Year’s than I am accustomed to. For me, Christmas has always meant spending time with my immediate family (except for the one year when I was working at a big firm, and I spent Christmas miserably sick in my apartment, and doing a fund review). New Year’s has been less consistent, but has always been spent somewhere cold, either hanging out with my sister, visiting my parents’ friends, or with going out with friends. I’ve never spent it (or any other major holiday, come to think of it) on a dive boat near the equator.

The diving was good, but the weather was not 100% cooperative – it was warm, but the sun seemed to have forgotten that it is more visible when it’s not hiding behind the clouds. It made things a bit dimmer down below, but we still saw some amazing stuff: more sharks than I can count, half a dozen giant mantas, ten schooling mantas, eagle rays, stingrays (and no, none of them tried to stab me), big Napoleon wrasses, and every other kind of fish most people never knew existed. The current was strong, at times, alternately forcing us to hang on to rocks for dear life, if we were trying to stay in one place, or pushing us along at speeds that Olympic swimmers would never even dare to dream of, if we just let go. In those moments, we were like bubbling, underwater superheroes, zooming over the reef.

The Maldives import most goods besides coconuts and fish, as they don’t have a lot of land or natural resources (I read somewhere that the average height above sea level for the entire country is about one meter). With those restrictions in place, it meant that our on-board menu was somewhat limited, and we ate fish in every shape and guise imaginable. It became something of a running joke, when lunch or dinner was served, to point and ask what each dish was: “What’s that?” “Fish.” “And that?” “Also fish.” “Is this one chicken?” “Fried fish.”

We visited a few islands while we were touring around various atolls. For some reason that I still haven’t figured out, there are no cats or dogs in the Maldives, at least not on the islands that we saw. Most of the islands or tropical places I’ve been have had a range of domestic and feral cats and dogs, but not the Maldives. Maybe all their pets got sick of eating fish and coconuts all day.

Now that I’m back on land (with my dog), I’m settling back into Swiss life. A few friends and I are heading to London this weekend to see other friends, have a few good meals, and see a few things around the city, and we’re also having initial planning talks for a shopping trip to hit the winter sales in Milan later this month. Only in Europe…

Editor's Note

Happy New Year!! The first batch of pictures from the Maldives is up!!

13 December 2006

It’s hard to believe, but this will be my last post of the year, as I leave next Monday for the sunny Maldives for a two-week dive trip on a boat. Not really a typical way to spend the holiday season, but if “typical” means braving cold weather, going into the office, and dodging tourists, shoppers, and snot-nosed kids on the sidewalk, I’m happy to be taking the road less traveled.

Santa Claus (or Samichlaus, as they call him here) arrived in town last week, with his pal Schmutzli (a menacing black man with a donkey). As I’ve mentioned in previous years, Santa comes early so that he can hang out, mingle with the people, make house calls, and raise Christmas awareness. I knew that he drove trams sometimes for groups of children (I don’t really see the benefit, since it’s not like you can climb on Tram Driver Santa’s lap and ask for a Wii or whatever it is that kids are asking for this year, since T.D.S. would probably tell you to sit down). Last week, however, I was surprised to see him in another unlikely position, Bulldozer Santa. Yes, Santa was operating a bulldozer in a construction zone, wearing his full Santa outfit (and even a Santa hat instead of a hardhat). My truck-loving nephew would have gone crazy. If Santa is busy bulldozing things and driving trams in Zurich, however, who’s in charge of making presents for worldwide (well, Western worldwide) delivery? I guess Schmutzli and the donkey are holding down the fort.

Just a random train of thought, but I recently bought a new tube of toothpaste at the grocery store (which, incidentally, was Candida brand, which makes me chuckle every time I brush my teeth, since Candida is the Latin term for a type of food poisoning or infection, so it’s the equivalent of brushing your teeth with Salmonella Fresh Mint Paste or Trichinosis Kid’s Gel with Sparkles). Toothpaste tubes are differently shaped (and obviously differently branded) than in the States, but they are still recognizable as toothpaste. Other products are less obvious...

After living here for over two years, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing other things in tubes, as well: mustard, mayonnaise, condensed milk, sweetened chestnut paste (which is outrageously popular here, especially in the fall and winter), and fish paste. (I can imagine the ads -- Are you sick of only being able to eat fish paste in your own kitchen? Now you can have fish paste on the go: it’s delicious, spreadable, and ever so, er, fragrant!) Yeah, I have no idea, although I do have a quirky fantasy of buying one of every tubed food in the store, and combining it into one bowl of super-paste, to see what horrific astronaut-Frankenstein food-from-a-tube will emerge. Given the Swiss affinity for putting foods in a tube, I’m surprised that there isn’t yet hummus-in-a-tube, but then again, hummus is still considered quite exotic in Switzerland, so it can be hard to find it in any sort of container, tube-based or otherwise.

Back to a non-random train of thought. Although the Swiss don’t go overboard with Christmas decorations (most stores keep it to some greens with red ribbons, and some Christmas lights) or Christmas music (I have probably heard maybe three Christmas carols so far this year), they do know how to find other ways to celebrate. December 25 and 26 are national holidays, as are January 1 and 2. Many offices close for the time in between, as well, and when the calendar falls just right (as it does this year), that means that much of the country pretty much shuts down from Saturday the 23rd until Tuesday the 2nd. That’s a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, indeed, when you only have to take three vacation days to get eleven days off in a row.

Hope 2006 went well for you and that 2007 is even better. See you next year!

5 December 2006

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and as in most industrialized Western countries, that fact is quite evident when you go shopping. There are the usual greens and ribbons and twinkling lights, and the usual fake frost and snow in display windows. Part-time St. Nick’s ring bells outside shops, with their beards awry and their tight Euro-jeans sticking out from under their robes (Santa wears a hooded robe here, instead of the red fur suit that he sports in the States).

Grocery stores stock specialty items, like holiday cookie dough (who knew that there were so many types of Christmas cookies requiring so many different types of dough, most of which are on sale, apparently because the Swiss shun pre-packaged dough, opting instead to grind nuts, sift flour, and bake ten types of cookies without any help from large corporations, thank you very much), and scented toilet paper with reindeer stamped on it. Yes, the paper smells like cinnamon, and yes, it has brown cartoon reindeer frolicking in between cheery “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” greetings (is this stuff sold in the States or England, because I don’t know why else the toilet paper would be greeting bathroom-goers in English? If so, I feel a bit silly that I'm using imported, cinnamon-spiked reindeer TP, but it was on sale, and I was running out.)

On certain appointed dates, stores are open on Sundays. Sunday shopping is a rarity here, a special exception to the rule that Sunday is the Sabbath, a day of rest. Although I spend most of the year wishing that I could buy things on Sundays, Sunday shopping days invariably end up being the Sundays that I least want to spend shopping, due to the frenzy that ensues from all of the Swiss releasing their pent-up Sunday shopping urges in the pre-Christmas carnage.

It's hard to describe, but all I can say is that the feverish crowds are a cross between a sale at Filene’s (for those of you from my college years), Times Square on New Year’s Eve (for my law school-era friends), and a pack of ravenous lions mauling a particularly juicy gazelle (for, er, nature show addicts). There are no big sales or specials, it's just the pleasure of partaking in a rare forbidden pleasure that transforms the normally sedate and orderly Swiss into a rabid mob of Sabbath consumers.

Speaking of forbidden pleasures, there was an “Erotic Fair” the other week, right here in little old Zurich. It was held at one of the biggest convention halls in town, and it spanned an entire weekend (Thanksgiving weekend, actually, so while most of America was eating turkey and watching football, there were many Swiss who spent the weekend testing lube and picking porn). A friend who lives by the convention center said that it was packed the entire time (it wasn’t a Sunday shopping weekend, so people had to seek an alternate forbidden pastime).

In addition to the things I would have expected to be featured at something called “Extasia,” like toys and DVDs and “celebrity” meet-and-greets, there was a live sex show. Yes, a live sex show, and the original intention had been to solicit audience participation, live on stage, with the cameras rolling. The audience participation part was axed, due to morality concerns (live public sex by paid professionals is perfectly fine, but not if it includes upstanding citizens who are otherwise employed). So they were forced to put on a normal sex show, whatever normal might mean, for a non-participatory audience.

I suppose you could say that the convention put the “ho” in “holiday.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). In any case, happy “ho”-lidays from Switzerland.

28 November 2006

Ah, Thanksgiving, that age-old American tradition that entails taking stock of what you have and showing your appreciation by over-indulging in it. Food, shopping, family, and football are the four pillars of an American Thanksgiving, and most Americans try to overload on all four to the point of discomfort over the course of a long weekend. So how is Thanksgiving as an expat in Zurich?

Start off with food: turkeys are hard to come by in Switzerland, as they aren’t particularly popular, and are really only eaten at Christmas-time. Pumpkin pie and cranberries are similarly hard to find, as are candied yams. All of these items can be rounded up or simulated with some effort and ingenuity, provided that you’re willing to spend a lot of money (a nine-pound turkey costs upwards of 70 francs, or almost $60). Thanksgiving here is best done potluck style, partly because the kitchens are small, and partly because footing the bill for an entire Thanksgiving feast would leave you with very little to be thankful for in your bank account.

Shopping. I think I’ve covered the sad, sad state of shopping in Zurich. High prices, poor selection, abominable opening hours. Maybe it’s for the best, so that we can still afford to buy all the food for the big meal.

A German friend was completely baffled by the Thanksgiving and Black Friday tradition, saying he couldn’t understand why people would go eat till it hurts and then go Christmas shopping in November on a day when the stores are completely crowded. Granted, I’ve always avoided Black Friday, but I can see why less crowd-averse people might brave the throngs to get a deal. And really, who is he to talk? Germans and Swiss leave their shoes out in early December, and St. Nick comes by and fills them with peanuts and candy. I’d say that eating shoe-nuts is much weirder than going bargain-hunting.

Family. Um, none of us has family living here, since we left them all behind. Football. Well, American football is pretty much an American phenomenon. One expat friend pays to watch streaming sportscasts on the Internet (but it’s live, so an evening game in the States translates into a middle-of-the-night pixellated computer window here). I have TiVo and a Slingbox, but I don’t watch football. Long weekend? Thanksgiving isn’t a Swiss holiday. Well, it’s not a holiday anywhere except for in the States.

So, how does a Swiss Thanksgiving compare to an American one? Food? Check, sort of. Shopping? Nope. Family? Nope. Football? Not really. Long weekend? Nope. But we ate our turkey (on a Tuesday), saw our friends, and celebrated in a modest salute to the Holiday of Excess.

Saturday night, a bunch of us went to the ETH Polyball, which is sort of like a giant prom thrown by the Swiss version of MIT. It is apparently “the largest ballroom dancing event in Europe,” attracting about 10,000 people every year, who dance salsa, rumba, waltz, cha cha, swing, and do whatever other ballroom dances that are out there that I never learned. It was quite a spectacle, partly because it was populated by fashion-challenged computer science nerds (one of the raffle prizes was a brand new, super-deluxe graphing calculator), and partly because Switzerland doesn’t have prom culture, so this is sort of their idea of what a formal dance should be like (apparently garnered from careful imitation of high school proms in American 80’s movies). Add in all the folks who take the ballroom part of “ballroom dancing” seriously, complete with hoop skirts and ball gowns, and you get a unique mix of Revenge of the Nerds, Sixteen Candles, and Gone With the Wind. Whoa.

Editor's Note

Happy Thanksgiving! It's been busy here, between visitors, Thanksgiving celebrations (without any time off work), and so on, so update will come next week :)

14 November 2006

Living in Switzerland requires an ability to keep track of a lot of dates: trash day, cardboard recycling day, paper recycling day, national holidays, canton or city holidays, and religious holidays. I have not proven myself worthy, as I forgot that this past Saturday was November 11th. Well, I knew that it was the 11th, but I forgot the significance of the date, and so I was caught completely unawares when the marching bands started playing outside my window at 11:11 in the morning (yes, I consider 11:11 to fall squarely in the middle of the morning, and am surprised and somewhat disturbed if I get out of bed before the crack of noon on a weekend).

What, you may ask, happens at 11:11 on November 11th? That, my friend, is when Carneval season starts in Switzerland. Yes, the lead-up to Mardi Gras begins in November, and it involves a lot of marching bands blasting their instruments outside my apartment on a morning I had earmarked for sleep. The bands all play Guggenmusik, which apparently is German for “crazy Bandies wearing weird outfits and playing as if they are drunk and standing on a bus that is swerving in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid potholes of enormous proportions.” (I’ve been told that this strange sound is intentional, and that it takes a great deal of skill and practice to have the pitch and rhythm off just the right amount).

And they weren’t content to just play their lopsided music in the rainy street. No, they were determined to share their gift with the world, including the brunch-eating world. A few friends and I, unable to sleep, had decided to grab brunch in a cozy neighborhood joint, only to hear some seasick saxophones lurching around as we tried to eat our eggs. We wandered around town gawking at the costumed bands, who doggedly played through the entire morning, afternoon and evening, despite the cold and the rain. Eventually, we fortified ourselves with a few cups of glühwein (mulled wine), and ventured forth to observe the brass-and-drum-heavy festivities.

After checking in several bars that were overly full, we finally settled in at one bar that was only full. Every thirty minutes or so, a new band would stagger in and the old band would trickle out, and we would be treated to another round of wonky music played by people in wacky costumes. There were people in giraffe costumes playing steel drums, there were pirates dancing along to a marching band version of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” and obviously, since it was a big party involving beer and German speakers, there were clowns singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

The revelry continued into the night, and the confetti and rainwater formed soggy piles on the street. Of course, since this is Switzerland, the confetti was gone by the next day, and I’m sure the musicians are all plotting further outings for Carneval season, to be topped off with the Big One on Fasnacht (Mardi Gras, which is celebrated in late February this time around, actual date varies by city). Leave it to the Swiss to start a party at exactly 11:11 a.m., to clean up before it’s over, to leave sufficient time for further planning, and to let each city have its own staggered celebration. Let the good times roll, in as orderly and organized a manner as possible.

Had a visitor in town last weekend, and another one this weekend, and I’ve already planned several trips for the next five months: Maldives, Paris, London, Rome, San Francisco… (I keep repeating these facts to myself to help myself ignore the fact that by late December, it starts getting dark by about 4 p.m., assuming that the sun ever comes out of the clouds in the first place).

7 November 2006

A friend who was living here for a while said that he was afraid that he was falling victim to Prison Syndrome, which he defined as a situation in which you’ve been deprived of something for too long, so that anything that vaguely resembles it seems pretty appealing, and your new way of life starts to seem normal.

I live in the oldest part of Zurich, where the streets are cobblestone, the ceilings have beams, and there is no guarantee that your apartment will have any 90-degree angles in it. Recently, the city has started installing these 24-hour trash drop-off points every few blocks, they’re basically like outdoor trash chutes. This means that I can throw away my garbage (in regulation trash bags, of course) any day of the week, any hour of the day. I got excited about this new freedom, until I remembered that when I lived in New York, I could throw my trash out 24/7, as well, except that: (1) I didn’t have to buy special bags to do so, and (2) the trash chute was right outside my apartment, instead of several blocks away, so I didn’t even have to put on shoes to get rid of my garbage.

I went to see a movie last night with a few of my friends. We had purchased our tickets online in the afternoon, so we headed up to the seats we had reserved in the second row of the balcony (yes, some of the movie theaters here have balconies). I knew which ones to get, having been in that particular theater before, so I knew that all of the seats on the floor level are positioned such that you have to crane your neck upwards to see the screen, and the seats in the first row of the balcony are partially obstructed by the railing.

Monday is cheap night at the movies here, and we were quite pleased with our seats that had a good viewing angle unobstructed by poles or railings, and which only cost 12 Swiss Francs (instead of the standard 18). And then I remembered that every seat in the theatres back home is positioned to minimize neck injuries, and that even on a normal night, movies in New York cost the same as they do here on cheap night (elsewhere, tickets cost even less).

On the other hand, you can also get used to a good thing, so that going back to the old ways can hurt. I’ve gotten used to carefree traveling. I leave my apartment an hour before my flight (and remember, every flight is an international flight), and get to the airport 40 minutes before takeoff. I amble through security with my carry-on and still have 10 or 20 minutes to waste before boarding. I faintly recall the days when I had to budget up to an hour to get to the airport, and two hours to clear security and board, and I shudder.

And now I’m shuddering again, because the Zurich airport has just announced new security measures that will require getting to the airport an hour before non-U.S. flights (and probably an hour and a half before U.S. flights). On top of that, there are also those weird restrictions on carry-on liquids (100 mL per liquid), which means that I’ll have to put all of my toiletries in travel bottles from now on, since I absolutely refuse to check bags for trips that are shorter than a week. I know, I know, these travel restrictions are nothing in comparison to what people go through at Heathrow or La Guardia, but I’ve gotten used to the footloose and fancy-free style of traveling here, and considering it’s one of the few ways in which the Swiss can be considered “footloose and fancy-free,” it’s a great loss.

In the last twelve months, I’ve flown out of the Zurich airport thirteen times to visit twelve countries. Multiply that by 20 minutes, and almost 4.5 hours of extra time I’ll have to spend in the airport in the coming year!! It’s a hard life, isn’t it?

31 October 2006

Happy Halloween!! It’s not a big deal here (and even might not qualify as a little deal), so I haven’t bought any candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters, since I didn’t get any trick-or-treaters the last two Halloweens. If some of them unexpectedly show up during my impromptu little dinner party tonight, I’ll just have to improvise and give them some lentil stew or dog kibble in cheap Ikea Tupperware. I would be even worse than the people who gave out pennies or Necco wafers.

The Swiss are so accustomed to having everyone do everything by the book and to the letter that when something falls outside of the norm, they are quick to jump to terrible conclusions. Small glitches and tiny anomalies indicate gross violations and sinister intentions, and no violation is committed innocently.

My building has a communal washing machine and dryer, which is the norm in Swiss apartment buildings. We are allowed to do our laundry without a schedule, even late at night or on Sundays, which is not the norm. My building, which is small, is mostly businesses, so there are only a few of us who use the laundry facilities, and only two of us who actually live in the building. I have a dog. He has black fur. I sometimes touch my dog, and his fur gets on me and my clothes. It happens. And eventually, I do laundry.

In any case, some of his fur apparently lingered in the laundry machine and made its way onto the laundry of my neighbor. She sought me out, informed me that there was dog hair in the laundry machine, and concluded that I must have my own secret washing machine in my apartment that I use for my own clothes, and that I only do Fiver’s laundry in the communal machine. I insisted that not only do I not have a secret machine, and not only do I wash my things in the same machine that I wash my dog’s things, but on top of that, I hardly ever wash my dog’s stuff, because I’m too lazy to do it that often. She expressed her continued suspicion as to how his fur got in, remained firmly convinced that I was still hiding my secret washing machine upstairs, and strongly suggested that I start doing his laundry with mine, so that she could stop hauling her laundry to her daughter’s house to avoid getting hair on her things. She has since moved away, doubtless in search of an apartment with its own secret fur-free washing machine.

It’s not just dirty, lawless Americans who are regarded with suspicion. Even Germans, known for being orderly and rules-loving, are subjected to the Swiss paranoia with regard to breaking the rules. A German friend bought a parking permit for his German-registered car. The permit was specific to his residential zip code. He parked his car in a parking zone one street over from his street, and then left it there for a few days before going to check on it. There had been a succession of parking tickets left by diligent parking police who noticed that he was in the wrong zip code (unfortunately, his zip code ended at that street).

A week later, he received a notice in the mail that a criminal investigation was being opened against him, since his car had been parked illegally for over ten hours. Never mind the fact that the car was parked only a block from his apartment and had a parking permit that was valid for the entire zip code that was just one street away, it had been parked ILLEGALLY for OVER TEN HOURS!! A criminal mastermind capable of such horrific atrocities is surely also up to his elbows in smuggling, prostitution rings, murder, and who knows what else. He might even be hiding secret washing machines and other appliances in his apartment. Best to start an investigation.

24 October 2006

The long weekend in Lisbon reminded us of many things we don’t have in Switzerland: fresh seafood, abundant shopping, tank top and flip-flops weather in October, and cheap taxis, as well as panhandlers, flies, and dog poop. We ate, shopped, and squinted at the sun, all while waving flies away from our food and trying to avoid a minefield of canine waste that seemed to be required wherever there was pedestrian traffic. We stuffed ourselves at a Brazilian buffet for prices that are unheard of in both Zurich and New York (where it is pure fantasy to find all you can eat steak for 27 Swiss francs or 22 dollars). In any case, it was a good break, getting away from the prices and gloomy fall weather that plague land-locked Zurich (and it was cool to bring my list of countries visited to 33!!), but it was also good to get back to a city where walking without looking at the ground is not a risky venture.

After returning, I found something in my mailbox. After living in my apartment for over two years, I finally have an engraved plastic nameplate to replace the improvised bit of cardboard I had been using to let the mailman know where to put my mail. Of course, even without the spiffy new nameplate or the now-retired cardboard tag, it’s not difficult to figure out which mailbox is mine, since mine is the only one that is overflowing with junk mail from who knows how long ago.

The other tenants in the building apparently check their mail and clear out the junk on a daily basis. I imagine that they bundle it in with their neat stacks of paper recycling, which I still haven’t mastered, since I don’t know the paper pickup schedule, and can’t tie them into the perfect cubes of paper that are required. And I refuse to spend money to put my grocery store flyers into a regulation garbage bag to throw away with the regular trash. And so I’m reduced to a choice between smuggling junk mail to public trashcans or leaving it in my mailbox. Given my predilection for the option that requires the least effort, it’s not hard to guess which one I picked, and to then figure out why mine is the only mailbox that was vomiting mail this morning.

Although I am not a trash-master, I can say with confidence that I am better than the Swiss (and most other Europeans, other than the British) in one very important skill: waiting in lines. At the gate in the airport, at the train station ticket counter, at concession stands, and basically anywhere that forces people to wait for something they want, the Swiss are unable to grasp the concept of “waiting your turn.” If you’re waiting to get on a plane, or to buy a beer, or to get a ticket to the art museum, take a look around, and there will be at least two people trying to squeeze in front of you. It’s not a question of age or gender, I’ve been line-challenged by old ladies, teenage boys, and middle-aged men alike. The Swiss are unable to form lines, and instead clump up into throngs that push and wiggle their way up to the front.

In some cases, the powers that be have tried to force some semblance of order on the crowd: velvet ropes, numbered tickets, seating by rows. The only ones that work are the ones that say exactly when each particular person is entitled to go next. Other attempts at line management are completely ignored. Airline passengers who wait for their row in the middle of the plane to be called walk onto the plane to find the front rows already fully boarded. Housewives determinedly shove and wriggle their way through the “lines” carved out with ropes and barricades. For a country that likes everything to be orderly and in its logical place, Switzerland is hundreds of years behind in its understanding and enforcement of waiting in line.

Editor's Note

Still recovering from lots of sleep deprivation, so update will be next week. In the meantime, I've put up pictures from Zurich's Oktoberfest, and pictures from Lisbon, as well...

12 October 2006

World Animal Protection Day was last week, which I only found out when a Swiss group brought a bunch of live animals to a busy square near my apartment. Specifically, they brought the exact number of animals that the average Swiss person eats in his or her lifetime. Eight cows, 33 pigs, 720 chickens, six sheep, two goats, 25 rabbits, four deer, 390 fish, and half of a horse (they brought a whole horse, but the average Swiss person eats half of one). Mind-boggling. And all I could imagine was a Swiss guy, with a crazed glint in his eye, charging into the animal pens and chomping on deer neck, goat leg, or pig butt.

There are vegetarians who don’t eat any meat, which means that somewhere out there, for every Swiss vegetarian, there is a Swiss carnivore who eats sixteen cows, 66 pigs, 1440 chickens, twelve sheep, four goats, 50 rabbits, eight deer, and a whole horse. Of course, these meats and their proportions are tailored to the Swiss palate (which apparently prefers to eat the entire petting zoo), so I wonder if it’s possible to cash in the deer, rabbits, goats, horse, and sheep for some extra pork? Chinese people don’t have (m)any dishes involving sheep or horse, but pork is an entirely different matter altogether…

I don’t eat five of those animals. Call me narrow-minded, but I’ve somehow got it stuck in my head that horses are transportation, rabbits are pets, sheep produce sweater-material, deer are Disney cartoons, and goats, well, they’re just weird things that you see on farms and don’t really know what they’re for. For me, eating those animals would feel about as natural as eating a bicycle, a cat, a cotton plant, the Little Mermaid, or a weird tractor-y thing that does something I don’t know about out in the fields.

One question I had was regarding the sheer quantity of meat involved. Assume that the average person starts his meat-eating career in earnest at the age of five, and that he eats until he dies at the age of 75 (let’s hope the person still has a decent set of teeth, so that he doesn’t have to drink goat meat shakes at the end). Assuming that he never dabbles in vegetarianism, this means that he eats more than ten chickens and five fish every year, that every five years, he eats more than half a cow, two pigs, and almost two rabbits, and that every fifteen years, he eats more than a whole sheep, almost half a goat, and almost a whole deer. If his wife is vegetarian, I guess he has to eat her share, too.

A second question I had was regarding the cows. Veal shows up in half the dishes served in Swiss restaurants, and it’s a mainstay of Swiss cuisine. Do those calves count towards the cow quota? Does eating one calf’s worth of veal count as eating a whole cow, since a calf grows up into a cow, or does it take several calves to add up to one cow, since calves weight so much less? Or did they just forget to bring calves along?

Another random factoid: the average Swiss person eats about 11 kilograms (24 pounds) of chocolate per year, or 770 kilos (1680 pounds) over the same 70-year period. The average cow weighs 550-680 kilos (1200-1500 pounds). So I guess we could say that the average Swiss person eats nine cows in his or her lifetime, one of which is made entirely out of chocolate.

Heading to Lisbon for a long weekend this week, in search of a last bit of summer before we head into the interminable grey of Zurich winters.

3 October 2006

I spent the weekend in Munich for Oktoberfest (which occurs, inexplicably, for about two weeks in September). Oktoberfest was like a bigger, drunker version of all of the festivals we have here in Zurich. Lots of rides and tents and permanent-looking buildings that are built and taken down with no hesitation in the face of the amount of labor and planning that is required to bring it all in, assemble it, maintain it, take it apart, and store it ofr next time. Amazing. The Oktoberfest grounds are like a miniature city that sort of resembles a strange hybrid of a beach town's boardwalk (cotton candy and ring tosses and haunted houses), the German part of Epcot (people in costumes) and Spring Break (drunk college kids puking and passing out).

At Oktoberfest, beer is sold by the liter (which, incidentally, is also the unit used to measure gasoline, water, and other things that you buy in large volumes), and teams of roving paramedics constantly roam the grounds with stretchers, looking for unconscious people to schlep back to the central first aid area. To get one of the coveted spots inside one of the big tents, you either needed to (try to) make a reservation in February, or you need to get to the tents by 9 in the morning to compete for a seat on one of the long benches. Getting up can mean losing your seat, but drinking multiple liters of beer starting at 9 in the morning pretty much guarantees that you'll need to empty your bladder at some point. Some hardcore Oktoberfesters just pee at the table, thereby avoiding getting up, losing their seats, finding the restroom, and waiting in line.

Many partygoers sport traditional Bavarian clothing: lederhosen and knee-highs for men, dirndls (long dresses with puffy sleeves and aprons) for women. Some are older Germans, nostalgic for the olden days, some are younger Germans, making an ironic retro statement, and some are tourists, convinced that they blend in with the locals. The tourists usually also have stupid plush novelty hats shaped like kegs or beer mugs, which are probably the second-hottest item at Oktoberfest, after beer (about six million liters are consumed over a little more than two weeks). A lot of revelers also wear cookies on ribbons around their necks. Rock-hard, heart-shaped gingerbread cookies, bigger than Frisbees, with saccharine messages written in German with icing. Nothing says "I love you" like giving your girlfriend a mass-produced cookie as big as (and about as edible as) a toilet seat cover.

The train to Munich was full of people raring to get their party on. There was a constant level of excited chatter, and already-drunk teens and 20-somethings ran up and down the aisles, getting a head start. (They were already planning on doing two full days of heavy drinking; did they really think that the four-hour train ride was critical?) The train ride on the way back, however, was about as lively as a funeral, assuming that people at funerals pass out on the floor or make frequent runs to the restroom to vomit. I felt somewhat out of place, being one of the few people on the train who was both well rested and not hung over.

I started chatting with the guy next to me on the train back to Zurich: a Canadian student interning in Baden. I've met several people with the same story. My friends and I saw one on our flight to Istanbul (although we didn't know his story at the time, he was just wearing a very distinctive shirt). When we later ran into him in a shop in Istanbul (which is a huge city), we said hi. A month later, I saw him at a concert in Montreux, and we were on the same train back up. I mentioned his name to the Canuck I met on the train from Munich, and he laughed and said he had taken over the other guy's apartment. It really is a small world, after all, at least for expats in Switzerland.