Author Archives: lauren

A page from the Swiss Rule Book: The Draft

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Post by Lauren

People here are wicked afraid of drafts. Not like the military. They don’t mind that and every Swiss man serves each year, and keeps a gun in his home to protect the motherland. What I am talking about is the kind from wind.

Just as a preface to my story, in case you haven’t noticed from earlier posts, air conditioning doesn’t exist here.

I noticed this extreme fear of the draft when my French tutor, on a sweltering day, refused to sit in the cross winds of the dining room, where I had ingeniously created a nice flow of air from kitchen to living room. “Pas dans le vent!” she exclaimed. She made me close one of the doors.

I was confused by it.

The next instance was at the women’s club when again, a sweltering day, and 60 of us were jammed in the lovely clubrooms for a luncheon. Could we open the windows? Let a little air in? Nope.

Sitting next to friend, M, I commented they must love being hot.

She told me she’d read something about the fear of draft and loaned me her book.

Here is an excerpt.

 

Courtesy of Culture Smart: Switzerland

Maybe I should follow suit. They have the longest life span of any people.

Aside from superstition about germs, the one dislike I have of the draft is the noise it can make when it will randomly slam a window or door. It truly is the worst sound I know since it is always unexpected. Gabe knows if he is the culprit of leaving a door open without a prop and it slams, I am going to give an evil eye.

So, I could possibly figure one could get a headache from the draft based on the door slams. But, until AC comes along, its going to be hard to adopt this tradition myself.

Reason I wish I knew French # 98

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Post by Lauren

I need foot surgery. Years of running and exercising with the wrong shoes for my high arches created some issues with my big toes. I have been managing the pain with cortisone shots for the last few years, but don’t want to continue steroid injections as frequently as I have been getting them. So, its time to bite the bullet.

I don’t want to miss out on travel while we are living here in Europe, so I decided that winter in Geneva is going to be my best bet. We have heard winter here can be nasty, so why not opt for my 8-12 weeks of recovery time then? Gabe begs to differ that I’ll miss out on ski season but I suppose I’ll be forced to sit in the chalets sipping delicious chocolate chaud instead. Oh well, there are worse things in life. Besides, have you HAD the hot chocolate here? Out of this world….

I decided that I should probably find a doctor now so I can plan out the surgery. Luckily, we have an agency that is here to help ex-pats like us with finding doctors.

Before we continue, I have an admission. I procrastinate making simple calls like this here in Geneva because I am embarrassed by my French skills. Thus, I am uncomfortable doing errands and calls that I could do in the US four-at-a-time with my hand behind my back. However, I finally called Friday at 4pm, after putting it off all day.

This particular day, I was lucky enough that I got someone who spoke some English.

“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Lauren. I need to find a foot surgeon in Geneva.”

“A what?”

“ A FOOT SURGEON”

( silence )

I muttered, “médecin pour les pieds….chirurgien pour les pieds”

“For your husband?”

“Non, pour moi.”

“It’s called a podologue in french. I will call you back”

“Oh….une podologue. Merci beaucoup!”

She called back later that evening saying there was an appointment Monday. I couldn’t believe my luck. All that putting off and I had an appointment for Monday!

The only other time I went to the doctor here, it was to the chiropractor. He could speak a little English, I could speak a little French. All went fine and I felt great afterwards, but this time, I decided to do a little preparation to make the language gap easier. In addition to the x-rays and detailed medical files I had organized to bring, I worked on a timeline and case history of my feet (the image above). I detailed all the surgery options that my podiatrist and I had considered in the US and listed out my preference. I listed my questions. And then I popped it in Google Translate and printed both, in English and French. That way, if there were any issues with a part of it, I figured I’d know what part there was confusion on and I could do charades or something. A combination of charades and broken French usually works with the maintenance folks who come to the house.

So, this past Monday, I went to the podologue, with my x-rays, my medical files and my special translated letters. I left a bit early, but good thing as the building was a little hard to find. I arrived on time at sat in the really nice office, which resembled a spa. A lady greeted me kindly, “Bonjour, Madame.”

“Bonjour, Madame. Je m’appelle Lauren. J’ai un rendez-vous pour mes pieds”

“Oui, entrez!”

I cut right to the chase and handed her my packet. She studied it, reading my detailed explanation. She looked confused. “J’ai aussi les x-rays” I added and started to hand them to her.

She sighed. “J’ai peut couper vos ongles”.

This means, “I can only cut your toenails.”

Lesson learned: a podologue is actually a person who does pedicures.

She kindly handed me a card of an orthopedie who could do the surgery, located in a town 30 minutes away. But, I’m going to wait a little bit I think to book an appointment. I am trying to scrape all my self esteem off the floor in the foot spa where I left it.

Curry if you care

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Post by Lauren

Have you ever used curry to promote peace and tolerance? After this weekend, I can say YES!

This summer, tens of thousands of Singaporeans united against intolerances by pledging to cook a pot of curry on August 21. The effort was designed so that all could appreciate and embrace multiculturalism. Check out the link to Reuters from Lady J’s musings here that can provide more background.

While so many of us were traveling late summer, our friend, Lady J, who happens to be the best cook / pastry chef I know, decided to treat us to a rain check….a Cook A Pot of Curry evening in Geneva. Gabe and I are always up for promoting multiculturalism. Plus, did I mention how awesome her cooking is? 🙂

Lady J and her husband J, and traveling guest KT were such excellent hosts. We had the pleasure of tasting Gado-Gado, Chicken Satay served with Ketupat, Curry Chicken, Prata and Kaya Puffs. My favorite were the incredible sauces. They are so delicious and spicy.

Because I didn’t pull out my camera until the end, Lady J’s Musings and KT ‘s blog provide much better recaps of the fun we had that night. However, here are a few shots I captured later in the evening of the great people we’ve met in Geneva:

The only thing that I am sad about is now I have a constant craving for Singaporean food and its really hard to secure the goods here in Switzerland to make such a meal. Guess its time to plan a trip to SIngapore!

How we watch TV

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Post by Lauren

We’ve commented many times how lucky we are that our overseas assignment fell now, when numerous technologies help keep everyday comforts easy to access.

Slingbox is a wonderful invention. We got an extra cable box and cable plan that lives with Gabe’s brother in Florida. It allows us to dial into it over the internet and play it on our TV in Geneva. We even have the ability to DVR programs we want to watch. Some days it works better than others, usually depending on the internet speed, but its great to have.

So, here’s how our habits have changed:

– It takes a little effort to navigate to record shows, so usually don’t have a ton in the queue. So, watching TV is a special occasion and something we look forward to all day long if we have something to watch that evening.

– We watch commercials now. We use to be hyper-obsessed with fast forwarding through DVR’d shows to maximize our time. But now we watch them as attentively as we do the TV programs because they are in English and it keeps us updated on what is going on back in the US

– We watch college football on Sundays or Mondays. Since we are 6 hours behind, we can’t watch evening games the day live. Last week, when Virginia Tech played Clemson at 6:30pm Eastern time, it was past midnight when it started. We didn’t have a chance to watch it Sunday, so I watched the whole thing Monday. I had to stay off Facebook for 2 days as I knew logging on would surely give it away. Let’s just say it wasn’t very pleasant to watch us lose 2 days later.

– Sometimes we get foiled. This past weekend, VT played Miami. One would think that would be televised in Florida where our Slingbox lives. But, no…..we DVR’d what was supposed to be the VT game but got Penn State instead. Big letdown. Especially when I saw on YouTube this was the “best game” that the announcer had ever seen.

The language divide

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Post by Lauren

Switzerland has four official languages. This map below from about.ch depicts the portion of Switzerland in which each language is spoken.

A few things to notice:
-The spoken language typically matches what the closest proximate country is. Ex: Geneva is closest to France, so we speak Swiss-French here (blue). This also plays out in the local cuisine of the areas as well.
-Most of Switzerland speaks Swiss-German (yellow) – 64%
-Some portions of Switzerland are bi-lingual…such as the part near Bern where you can tell its shaded in blue and yellow.

It’s really interesting to see the road signs change as you drive into different parts of Switzerland, see below for “exit”. Also, the radio stations change back and forth into different languages as you drive along.

This week, Lady J, S, and I took a little road trip up to Murten, which is just west of Bern, and one of the bilingual areas where 25% speak French and 75% speak Swiss-German. We visited the Old Town and had a nice drink in the main square. When the Swiss-German waitress came for our order, we attempted a little German before she effortlessly slipped into English to take our drink requests. There’s nothing like trilingual waitstaff to make you feel insufficient in life. This happens very commonly in Geneva to Gabe and I, since most Swiss residence know upwards of three languages.

Rooftops of Murten, Switzerland

As if this isn’t enough to keep track of, the languages that Switzerland speaks have deviations to the original versions. Swiss-French is slightly different than French. French people typically think that Swiss French is more sing-songy and its interpreted as being slower or more “country”. Thank goodness I am in the slow part. I can barely understand it as is.

Swiss-German is very different than High German. I have heard that people who know excellent High German have a hard time with Swiss-German.

And still, there’s more! Esther taught us in French this week that every one of Switzerland’s 26 cantons speak a different dialect. There are different words and expressions used in different cantons even though the overall “language” is the same. For example, in typical French, petit déjeuner is breakfast, déjeuner is at noon and dîner is in the evening. But, in Geneva, déjeuner is breakfast, le dîner is served at noon and le souper in the evening. There are also different words for post office box and they use different variations of #s (see my prior post on numbers). And this continues throughout Switzerland.

While we all speak English, I suppose dialect thing is very common in the US, where people speak differently in Boston vs. Chicago vs. Texas. What words have you found different depending what part of the US you are in?

Gratitude Friday: Swiss Water

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Post by Lauren

One of my favorite things about Switzerland is the abundance of free yummy water.

Whether you are in an urban area, a small town, or the middle of the countryside, you are sure to find a babbling spout, as can be seen below. You can easily fill your bottle up no matter where you are.

In the US we have things like this but you wouldn’t dare drink out of it. However, here is is 100% safe and super tasty. I have been told the water supply is monitored three times a day to monitor for any abnormalities. From the swissworld site, they quote:

The drinking water that comes out of Swiss taps is as pure as bottled mineral water – and 500 times cheaper.

In a country where everything is expensive, I am grateful for this natural perk.

Bon weekend, everyone!

 

Our very own bomb shelter

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Post by Lauren

Switzerland might be the safest country in the world.

It’s a requirement that every Swiss building have a bomb shelter, back from the days of WW2. However, present-day code still requires that new buildings are built with such provisions.

So that means we have our very own bomb shelter. They call it a cave (pronounced, “cah-v” meaning basement ). Actually, we keep our wine and suitcases down there instead of hiding out waiting for disaster.

But good to know that its there in time of need.

So come visit….you’ll be safe.

A page from the Swiss rulebook: Visit and Thank you specifics

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Post by Lauren

When moving to Switzerland, I read quite a lot about how to properly thank people and what to bring when you are invited to a true Swiss person’s home. All these books advised that it would be quite rare to actually get invited to a Swiss home as an ex-pat, since they only invite trusted long term friends vs. folks who are only here in two year stints. ( See more on this and tu and vous on Schwingen in Switzerland )

However, I thought we better be prepared, so I have noted the following:

Rule #1 – When going to a dinner party, you should bring a gift for the gentleman and a gift for the lady. So, perhaps a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers. Or chocolate for her and whisky for him.

We saw this when Gabe’s co-workers came to pick up the large items we had included in our shipment for them, after they found out it wasn’t possible to buy in Switzerland. They brought him a very nice bottle of champagne and me this gorgeous orchid that has been adding so much color to our home this summer. They obviously read the manual and I was impressed by their gesture.

Sub-Rule 1a – if there are children, you must also bring something for them like a chocolate or a toy.

Sub-Rule 1b – if you bring wine, it is noted to make sure it is of high quality.

Check. Good to know not to bring the Boones farm to the nice gatherings.

Sub-rule 1c – if you bring flowers, they should not be carnations, or lilies which mean death or yellow roses.

Sub-rule 1c1 – do not ever bring an even number of flowers. Only odd. Its bad luck to bring even.

Glad to know about the even/odd thing. I’ll make sure to note this.

However, I am concerned that they had to put the clause about buying carnations in this book…who is out there buying carnations anymore?

Rule # 2 – Always wait for your guest to offer a toast such as “Santé”* before drinking. Don’t clink your glasses like American’s do. Make sure to stare deeply into everyone’s eyes before taking a sip.

Check. I can handle that. We have actually been practicing the “santé” quite a bit. Except everyone seems to interpret “deeply” as “creepy”. See A executing the creepy santé below.

Rule #3 – leave by 9pm.

Check. When I lived in Charlotte and went to the gym at 5am, I can appreciate this rule. Most of my Charlotte friends have witnessed me falling asleep at my own dinner party. That was usually their signal to leave.

Also, we have heard that we shouldn’t make noise between 8pm and 8am. So, no running the dishwasher, washer/dryer and certainly no footsteps. We haven’t had any issues with neighbors so far, but our friends have had neighbors approach them and tell them that they won’t think twice about calling the police if they hear a peep from them after 10pm.

Rule # 4 – never ever show up at someone’s door unannounced. The Swiss are very private people.

Check. Every building has a door code anyway. I don’t plan on breaking in to crash on new nonexistent Swiss friends.

So far we have only done Canadienne Buffets at friends homes, more in the style we are used to. We like this as everyone just brings a dish and we don’t have to buy each other gifts ever time we go over to each others houses. But now we are prepared in the case of Swiss friends. We shall keep you posted if we ever need to use such rules! I’m not banking on it….

*Santé means “to your health” and is pronounced sonn-tay! You should try it at home.

 

Our version of dry cleaning

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Post by Lauren

I miss the dry cleaners. Not that they don’t exist here, but that it is highway robbery to get anything professionally cleaned. In the US, a typical businessman in an urban area can get his shirts cleaned and pressed for 99 cents a pop. Here it runs about 8 CHF or 10 USD a shirt. A piece of ladies’ clothing is around 15 or 20 CHF for a cleaning.

So, no dry cleaning for us anymore.

I hand wash my dry cleaning items, and I wash & iron Gabe’s workshirts. Here is what our apartment looks like every 3 days. I just look at it that I am saving $200 by turning the apartment into a laundry sweat shop.

Unfortunately, I learned the iron can’t be on at the same time our TV can be on or it shorts the entire apartment’s electricity. I do it in my office with music or a podcast.

Next thing to accomplish is learning how to do alterations. I took a pair of Gabe’s jeans to shorten them 2 cm and it cost 30 CHF or 40 USD.

Gratitude Friday: Finally! A Phone!

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Post by Lauren

If you ever told US me that I’d be able to live four months without a cell phone, I wouldn’t have believed it.

But, yes, I made it 4 months. Many of you know the story, but for those catching up, you have to be a Swiss resident to get a phone contract.

My first two days I didn’t carry it around as I was afraid I’d hurt it. But, now it goes with me where I go.

Here is why I am grateful for a phone:

-Hands down, its the TPG app that is my favorite thing about iPhone ownership. I can check the bus and tram schedule continually. I love love love this feature. I don’t care if I don’t get another app…this one fulfills me!

-It’s nice to be able to have a communication device when meeting up with friends so if they miss the bus, or something changes. Otherwise, we had to do it old school. Show up at the planned time and if they don’t show, try to guess what happened to them and try to react like you’d think they would.

-It’s nice to have a phone # to give people, like repairmen, delivery people, etc.

-You can now call me! So, let me know if you want my digits…..

Here is why I am grateful I had 4 months sans phone:
-I have felt really free not being tied to a communication device. Working in Corporate America, I had my blackberry at the hip and I feel like it developed a little bit of ADD as a result….checking messages, multi-tasking, and being in constant contact.

-I missed my stop on the tram because I was taking this photo of the really large cello riding along playing music for the passengers. Whoops!

Bon weekend!