Swiss Fun Facts

Over the 18 months that I have been in Zurich, I have tried to immerse myself into the culture and city; doing as the locals do, and in some instances, actually dating a few locals. During this time, I have noted a few things, observations if you will, about Switzerland and the Swiss way of life. Individually, they are not worth a blog, but I thought it would be fun to summarize a few here to give you a taste of my current life:

• In the US, the fast cash option at the ATM gives you $40 with the push of one button. In Zurich, the fast cash option gives you CHF400.
• In the US, if I took at $40, it would get me through the week, with money left over for brunch on Sunday. In Zurich, the CHF400 will get me through the week and brunch gets charged to the card.
• While the Swiss are incredibly polite, orderly, law abiding citizens, all civility goes out the window when it comes to waiting in line or grabbing a seat on the tram
• Swiss are so law abiding, they only protest or riot if the proper paper work has been filled out or if it is customary for that specific day (i.e. May 1)
• Swiss German is the language spoken in most of Switzerland (followed by French and Italian). Swiss German is a spoken language only and varies by Canton (or “State”), so people from one Canton won’t always understand someone from another Canton, however both will know exactly where the other is from. In addition, there are people who only speak Swiss German or French or Italian, so for some, you can both be Swiss, and not be able to communicate. For a country smaller than California, it can be quite confusing when traveling
• For most Swiss, traveling 1 hour is a long trip and is typically saved for the weekends. In California, that is the average daily commute to work
• Back to Swiss German, while it mostly resembles the German language, it is different enough, in the use of different words and sentence structure, that native German speakers have a hard time understanding it. To me, Swiss German is like the Ebonics of German. I can’t help but think that, had Oakland been separated from the rest of California, by say a mountain range, 100 years from now Ebonics would be recognized as a language, just as Swiss German is.
• It is this distinction between Swiss German and High German that made me abandon all hopes of learning German while on rotation. After 8 months of High German classes, I gave up, primarily because while I was being taught proper German, I heard nothing but Swiss German on a daily basis and it was impossible to reconcile the two…that and the fact that every time I tried to speak German, I always received a response in English.
• And finally, the Swiss people and overall way of life is one that I find enjoyable and incredibly logical. People work hard at work, but enjoy their time off with friends and family, spending time outdoors hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter. The honor system works in this small country (you weigh your own fruits and vegetables) and no one feels the need to take advantage of it. And once you make friends with a Swiss person, you can count on them for anything, unlike some of the superficial friendships I find myself in in the US. So while I have decided to move home at the end of June, it is not reflective of my experiences here, but rather a need to be closer to my family.

Editors Note: I just recently found out that the CHF400 fast cash option is not a pre-set amount for all customers, but is rather a customized amount equal to the average withdrawl for each customer. Whoops!

White Turf

White Turf is an annual horse racing event that takes place in February on the frozen lake in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The races last all day and vary in style, from the 1100m sprint, to the Skijoering, which consists of the horses running the track while pulling the “jockey” behind on skis. The yearly event is known for drawing an international upper class, with excesses of fur and money. Upon hearing that the Swiss considered the event “high-brow”, it was somethi I HAD to see for myself. These people live and breathe high-brow and therefore, it would take something truly decadent to draw that sort of comment.

To set the stage, St. Moritz is one of Switzerland’s, and possibly the world’s, most famous winter resorts. Add on top of that the glamour and money of horse racing, and the comments of “high brow” started to sound less like an exaggeration.

Mentally and physically prepared for the day of ritz and glam, Anna, Braden, Hurricane McKane and I headed down to St. Moritz feeling slightly underdressed, what with our lack of fur, designer purses and moon boots…Yes moon boots. Who knew Napoleon Dynamite could start a fashion trend?! But from what we saw, I was more than happy to be “underdressed”. Although we were down there for the horse races, the majority of time was spent staring, or should I say gawking, at the outrageous outfits: my favorite being a woman with so many tails hanging off of her fur coat that an entire pack of animals must have given their life in vane to create the monstrosity she called a jacket, not to mention her matching fur purse, with just as many tails, and the fur jacket for her little dog too.

Not only did the day allow for great people watching, we enjoyed countless glasses of wine and Swiss standard kalb bratwurst, and occasionally watched the races which were spaced out by 30 minutes, lasted only 2 minutes and allowed plenty of time for socializing, seeing people and more importantly, being seen yourself.

The day was absolutely beautiful with sunny weather and no wind, and for just those few hours, I felt like I could possibly get used to the high brow life style of Switzerland. Of course that feeling was short lived, by the time I got home, I was ready for my elastic waist pants and wife beater tank top.

Girls Night Out…in Venice?!

I have never really had a strong desire to visit Venice, but just recently, out of blue, I felt my stay in Europe wouldn’t be complete until I saw the place. So when Anna mentioned that she and her friend from high school were going Saturday through Monday, I immediately signed Erin and myself up for a quick weekend get away, or better yet, a Saturday Girls Night Out.

After being forewarned by a Venice local about the high price of the city, and finding out my only two options to get to the city from the airport were either a 12 euro, 1 hour water bus ride or an allegedly faster private water taxi for EUR95, I wasn’t immediately impressed by the place. Seriously, for a large tourist city, what kind of options are those? But thankfully, like most of my first impressions, this one was wrong. Seriously wrong. I ended up LOVING the city.

I met Erin at the main square, San Marco, and she quickly walked me backed to our hotel nearby to drop my bags, meet up with Anna and her friend and head out. And so, the four of us, connected by two friends from Zurich, headed directly to the closest “Pub” and began, what ended up being an 11 hour Venetian style pub crawl, well, almost a traditional Venetian style pub crawl. After 2 traditional stand up, tapas serving bars, we got lazy and found a restaurant that served cheap wine, and what initially started out as a cheap carafe of wine and an appetizer, turned into 3 carafes of wine, 2 appetizers, pasta and dessert. By the time we paid our bill and got directions to a fun dance club in the area, the four of us were chatting it up like we had all known each other for years.

Continuing the party, we went in search of the dance club. Going against our only rule of not crossing any large bodies of water (revised from not crossing any bodies of water, which limited us to two blocks) and against the general travel rule of not walking down dark deserted alleys, we crossed the grand canal, walked down a dark deserted alley, found the name of the club hanging over a closed door, knocked on that closed door, were greeted by a burly old Italian woman who requested 10 euro for admittance and one drink ticket and found ourselves alone in an empty bar. Apparently, Venice is not known for its night life, but thankfully, we had found the only place in town that had dancing and we were just an hour too early. Exactly one hour later the place was packed and in full swing, and a short 4 hours later, we stumbled back out into the alley to begin our trek home, stopping through San Marco square for a quick look at the flooded and empty square, which had, only hours earlier, been filled with street vendors, sight-seers and tourists feeding and holding the pigeons (probably the most disturbing things I have seen in a while).

Needless to say that after the four hours of sleep that night, and constant drift of snow, the following day of sight seeing was limited. But the town showed enough promise to guarantee a return trip.

Igloo-Dorf, Davos

You would think after my experience in Warsaw, and the general shock of moving to the Alps from sunny CA, that I would forego any additional trips to areas known as “cold”, and instead opt for warm beaches and deserts. But apparently, either the obvious doesn’t come naturally to me or I just lack all common sense, because on one of my last free weekends before busy season, I chose to spend the night in an igloo in the Alps. And I somehow managed to talk 8 friends into joining me.

We headed up to Davos Saturday morning and met up with our “guides” later that afternoon in a restaurant at the top of the Davos ski resort. After saying good-bye to the warmth, we hiked down the mountain to our igloo, a large doom structure made by blowing snow onto an inflated bubble and then deflating the bubble.

Once inside the igloo, hot mulled wine was handed out to help warm us up and then we set off on a tour of our “home” for the evening, which consisted of: the events room, the dinning room (where we were later served a fondue dinner), the private suites (one with a private Jacuzzi), the shared rooms which slept 6 each and where we were staying the night, the sauna (in what appeared to be a separate building/trailer for obvious reasons) and the much anticipated bathrooms, which consisted of one room, two port-o-potty type seats, with a divider between the two and a chain across the opening to signal to others that the stall was in use.

Structurally the building was beautiful, with intricate ice sculptures throughout the rooms, carvings of art on the walls, and nothing but candle light to illuminate the way. Physically, however, was another story. The effects of the hot wine and subsequent hot tea provided only temporary relief from the cold, the fondue helped to warm us up a little, but surprisingly the kirsch liquor added little value, and the effects of the post dinner snow-shoeing expedition under the stars, while breath-taking in both sense of the word, lasted only long enough for us to realize we needed a plan to hold off the cold.

So faced with the bitter cold and knowledge that we would be sleeping on ice covered only by a thin mattress, we did the only thing guaranteed to provide a full nights sleep; we drank. And when the alcohol finally ran out, we got into the sauna to defrost before bed. And while we eventually warmed up and stayed warm through the night (the -40 degree sleeping bags helped) the 5 hours of sleep we eventually got just weren’t enough (and probably wouldn’t have been enough had we slept in a 5 star hotel) due to the amount of alcohol consumed.

We were woken up from our too-short slumber at 7:30 with hot tea, followed by breakfast at 8am, and an early departure to either ski down the mountain or to make it home into time for a much needed nap. I chose the later.