Category Archives: Switzerland

Gratitute Friday: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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Post by Lauren

This post is dedicated to my uncle who wanted to know how they decorate for Christmas in Switzerland.

The presence of Christmas decorations is also our gratitude post because we aren’t coming home for Christmas. For Gabe & I, this is the first time we won’t see our families during the Christmas season. Bless their hearts, both our Moms decorated their homes for Thanksgiving in Christmas also in order to help infuse us with Christmas spirit.

In fact, it is because there is a lot of this spirit here in Geneva, that we made the selection to come home for Thanksgiving. We figured we’d miss not being home for Thanksgiving more than Christmas since we knew a little Christmas would be in the air in Geneva. Thanksgiving isn’t at all celebrated. And, boy, Christmas has been in the air:

 


Joyeux Noël & Bon week-end!

 

Montreux Christmas Market

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Post by Lauren

Yesterday, we had a girls outing to one of the many Christmas markets in the region. We’d picked Montreux because it was supposed to be either sunny or snowy. Well, weather.com was wrong and we had chilly rain, but the company and hot beverages kept our spirits warm. Here are a few photos:

The market was broken up into little stalls selling things. Their little chalets were festive in themselves.Goods ranged from handcrafted items, to teas, and food. Also there were some Christmas items like nativity scenes – creches.

Vin chaud, hot cider, and Christmas tea were sold in various forms of cauldrons.
It kept us warm and toasty as we navigated the market.

This little fire chalet was also a hit.

Not to mention the French Onion soup. Even little HB, our newest Girls Club member, wanted a piece of the action.

Joyeux Noël, everyone!

 

Swiss Minimum Wage

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Post by Lauren

One of the interesting things about Swiss government is that any petition can be put to vote, through a referendum. You just need 50,000 signatures in 100 days for a Facultative referendum and 100,000 signatures for an Obligatory Referendum.

A petition table in Old Town Geneva



Before we left, there was a heated debate about a minimum salary in Switzerland.

Political advertisement for minimum wage change

The party who instituted the referendum was hoping for a minimum salary for full time employees of 4000 CHF / month which is about $60K USD a year.

Wow, that’s a lot for a minimum! Mental note – start seeking Swiss jobs more aggressively!

Equalized in USD but cost of living is not factored in. This would affect these #s quite a bit.


As it turns out, only 40% came out to vote and the referendum was not passed. They hope to revisit it next year.

An interview with ourselves

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During our US travels, we got lots of inquiries about our first six months in Switzerland. So we figured we’d post the top ten questions & our answers in case we didn’t get to see you.

What is your favorite thing about Switzerland ?

We love being in the same city as one another. It was only 8 months ago that we were doing the long distance thing, so we are enjoying being with each other, avoiding Interstate 85 and not packing up on Sunday nights.

We really like Geneva. Its got great public transportation, fun summer activities and is in the middle of everything.

We also love our opportunity to travel during this time in our lives. We have a great location in order to explore Europe. We are trying to make the most of our time here by doing trips on the weekends. We have been to London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Florence, and lots of Southwestern France – Chamonix, Burgundy, Annecy, as well as ventured around our home country, Switzerland – Montreux, Gruyeres, and Interlacken.

What do you miss the most?

We both miss feeling like capable adults. In the US, there wasn’t much we couldn’t handle in terms of day-to-day life. Living in a foreign country feels like being a four year old sometimes….not able to talk properly, figure things out, or know how to function as an adult does. In fact, you can count on there being an uncomfortable situation every single day. Sometimes its not fun.

Oh, and we also miss Mexican. And pumpkin spiced lattes. And not being able to afford to buy anything but food.

Do you have any friends?

Yes, we are very lucky to have met lots of great people – both Americans and other nationalities. We enjoy learning about other cultures through our friends from around the world.

Do they have Christmas in Switzerland?

Christmas is a religious holiday of which Switzerland is 40% Protestant and 30% Catholic, so yes.

What season are you in?

We have the same four seasons as the US which occur at exactly the same time. It only gets flip flopped if you are south of the equator.

What time does it get dark there?

The same time as it does in the US. So, since it is winter, when it is 5pm our time, it gets dark. Except we are 6 hours ahead, so it is East Coast 11am.

Is it really cold there?

It’s not too bad. Geneva is one of the most mild cities in Switzerland. We haven’t seen any snow yet and the Fall / Winter has been pleasant.

What do they eat in Switzerland?

It is famous for chocolate and cheese. We eat dark chocolate every night. Fondue and raclette are cheese dishes that are really popular at restaurants but we only eat them when company comes because if we gain too much weight we won’t be able to afford new clothes. The restaurants are mainly French & Italian. There are a surprising number of pizza places because of proximity to Italy. The food in Geneva is not that spectacular compared to other cities we have visited in Europe.

What language do you speak there? Swiss?

Nope; there is no Swiss language. We speak French in Geneva. Other parts of Switzerland speak Swiss German, Italian or Romansch. It really depends on what country you border in your canton to what is the official language. Some have two. That would suck to live there.

If you have a kid while you are there, would it have Swiss citizenship?

We don’t plan on having children until we are back to the United States, but no, our child would not have Swiss citizenship. One parent has to be Swiss. They don’t give out citizenship here like candy bars here.

Feel free to ask more questions in the comments section. We’d be happy to answer them!

Gratitude Friday: Autumn in Switzerland

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Post by Lauren

This Friday, I just wanted to express my gratitude for Autumn in Switzerland. Since our house hunting fell in Winter and our move in Spring, Fall is the last season that I have yet to see. It was worth the wait…..

 

Bon weekend, everyone!

 

The Price Is Right – France vs. Switzerland

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Post by Lauren

Do you remember the Grocery Game on the show The Price Is Right? I used to love watching this show when I was a kid. So for the spirit of fun, we are going to play the game on this blog with the prices of goods in France vs. Switzerland.

Good luck guessing. A little more challenging than Bob Barker’s version.

The prices are equalized by currency, and I took it a step further to actualize it into American dollars. So, euros x 1.4 and Swiss Francs x 1. 2.

Be a sport. Scroll til you see the product and no more before you guess the prices.

Roll of Pizza Dough:

Switzerland:

$ 6.48 (5.40 CHF)

France:

$ 2.80 (1.37 euros)

500 Grams of Spinach

Switzerland:

$ 7.08 (5.90 CHF for 300 g)

France:

$ 3.50 (2.50 euros for 500 g)

Kronenbourg Beer 10 pack

Switzerland:

$ 10.68 (8.90 CHF)

France:

$ 5.72 (4.09 euros)

 


Guacamole, jarred*
I know, its gross, but beggars can’t be choosers

Switzerland:

$ 6.60 (5.50 CHF)

France:

$ 3.02 (2.16 euros)

Canned green beans

Switzerland:

$ 8.22 (6.85 CHF)

France:

$ 1.33 (0.95 euro)

Coke 4 pack, 1 liter each

Switzerland:

$ 9.12 (7.60 CHF)

France:

$ 6.72 (4.80 euro)

 

So how did you do? I hope you were a winner.

Me, I’m depressed after putting together this game.

Swiss political ads

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Post by Lauren

Switzerland held elections this past Sunday.

Leading up to the election, political ads have been in full force, covering trams, buses, and about 80% of the Geneva billboards. To be expected, right?

What wasn’t expected by me was the shocking nature of some of these campaigns. For a neutral country, they can be very direct. Particularly, the Swiss People’s Party ones which are fear based to stop “massive immigration”.

Believe it or not, this year’s campaign’s are tame :

Previous years have been a bit more appalling. I did a quick Google search and found some from the last big election in 2007. You really don’t need to know French or German to interpret the xenophobic message conveyed.

For more background, check out the CNN article here on the election results, or a portion of the Jon Stewart show which talks about the minaret topic.

Measuring. Never the same.

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Post by Lauren

Aside from the language barrier, another barrier for those living in foreign countries is measurement.

 

No more inches, feet, yards, pounds, miles.

Everything is by the meter, the gram, the kilo.

And after 4 months, I still haven’t adjusted to grocery shopping in terms of measurements. I shy away from the meat and cheese counters as I am not sure I’ll know exactly how much to order. In the US if something like that happened, I’d just suck it up and buy whatever I ordered. Here, if I make a mistake in meat, my two steaks could cost the equivalent of $100 USD. No kidding.

And here are some more examples of how the quirks of measurement affect our lives:

Paper. Printer paper is not the same size. It’s about halfway between the US size and a legal size. I had to chop off the bottoms of my French assignments to get them to fit into my notebook.

Printing Photos. Here are the options for printing photos on my nearest photo lab machine. If I don’t happen to carry my tape measurer with me, I am screwed.

A4 is a apparently a common size in Europe to print photos for display. I needed to submit a display photo for the women’s club exhibition. After 2 hours of attempts to get my printer to do it and taking it on memory stick to printshop twice and not being able to find the right size, eventually, I had to ask someone else to do it. Talk about feeling incompetent.

Frames. Not the same. I am learning this with art. US canvases don’t fit Swiss frames. US frames don’t fit Swiss canvases. This was surprising to me that standards would be different in this area. I spent an hour in the art store and the frame store trying to figure out which ones would match each other for my upcoming art booth.

Weights. At the gym, all the weights are in kilos, not pounds. I feel really weak here.

Distances. Of course, everything is in km. We have tricked our GPS to talk in miles so we have a better concept of when a turn is coming up since we haven’t master the kilometer. Roughly, its 3.2 miles for 5 kilos, so I sort of just divide in half. The good news is that when you see a high number, it feels much faster when you reach your destination.

Outdoor temperature. I still remember someone at the women’s club exclaiming it would be high thirties in Spain that weekend. Everyone gasped and I just looked confused and tried to calculate it. I keep my weather updates in Fahrenheit on my iPhone & laptop because even though I know the math behind it, I have am not able to quickly do the conversion enough to make a judgement in what to wear.

Cooking temperature. Our oven of course is in Celsius degrees. I just tend to double what I think it should be in Fahrenheit. Truly, the math is to multiply by 1.8 and add 32, but doubling is just simpler to me. This might be why I burn a lot of things in our oven.

Furniture. They don’t have the same bed sizes here. A coworker of Gabe’s brought their mattress and sheets and planned to buy a bed frame in Switzerland upon arrival. They couldn’t find one to match so they ended up shipping a new US double bed frame to our house before our move so we could bring it with us.

Knowing this, I ended up bringing extra sheets since it would be impossible to get them here.

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!