In the 2 months since my last post I've made a lot of little observations and we've done a lot. So this will be long
New Job:
~ I have a new temporary job as of the beginning of November. This is a swiss/italian/pizza restaurant owned by a guy from Kosovo. I almost didn't have the job after the 2nd day when I asked what to do about needing a week of vacation in January. Restaurants here are very different from in the US. There are no chains, they are all small and personally owned and therefore the owners are usually tight for money so only employ the bare minimum of servers. He only has 2. So when you only have 2 servers, you are in quite a bind when one of them wants vacation days. Since I needed a week off in January he wasn't going to hire me because he wanted someone who wouldn't go on vacation. When I heard this I didn't want to work there anymore anyways. Then he called me back and said he could figure out that week in January, as long as I didn't have any other vacation. I told him I need a week off in May for my wedding (I didn't think this mattered because it was 6 months away) he said no never mind, he'll gonna find someone else. Seriously? But apparently he didn't find anyone else because he called me back to work for him.. So I told him I could only work until December 16th because I'm going on another vacation. Plus I don't want to work there any longer than necessary.
I don't love it, I don't really like the other server I work with, she's so picky and specific about how everything is done and just always tells me what I'm doing wrong, but whatever, it gives me something to do and keeps me speaking French every day. Hopefully by January my nursing paperwork will be done and I can get a job at a hospital.
Some food culture stories:
~ I worked in restaurants for years, in the US when, when you're finished eating someone will come by and take your plate while the rest of the table finishes. Here you cannot do that! I thought I was being nice and explained I was giving them some more room at the table. The owner said I can't do this in Switzerland. You have to wait until every last person is finished to clear anything off the table. Even if everyone else finishes 20 minutes before the last person, you don't go near the table. Or they think you are rushing them. And Swiss/French don't like to be rushed through their meal. They take forreeverrrr.
~ Pizza is not sliced here, unless it is for take-out. But if you're eating the pizza in the restaurant it is eaten with a fork and knife. Not your hands. People here also eat burgers with a fork and knife, which is even stranger to me. Except at McDonald's.
~ I love bagels, bagels don't exist in Europe and when you find them, they're terrible. We found a highly rated bagel/pastry/tea place in Bern and decided to try it. I asked for mine with just butter and asked if they would toast it. The guy looked at me as if this was a strange request and says, well yes but then the butter will melt. I was like, "uhh... yeah, I know" Then I remembered that I've had cold sandwiches here with butter on them, they prefer cold, hard butter. At least the bagel was good, hit the spot.
Future Travels:
~ So our month of traveling, its a whirlwind. December 16-20th we're going to start in Strasbourg, France to see their christmas markets, then drive to Stuttgart, Germany, then Adam has a meeting in Mannheim, Germany and while he's there I'll drive down and explore Heidelberg by myself. All those places are close to eachother. Then we get back home for just a couple hours and go to the airport to fly to Barcelona. From there we rent a car and over the next 11 days roadtrip all over southern Spain. We'll spend Christmas eve at the hostel in Valencia and Christmas day we drive 6 hours to Seville. We fly back new years eve. We'll ring in the new year on the train from Geneva to Lausanne. I'll buy a bottle of champagne at Duty Free.
Then the first weekend of Jan we're visiting my good friend in Belgium while she's vacationing in Europe. Then we're going to Florida Jan 10-15th to do a bunch of wedding related stuff and see both of our parents.
Past Travels:
~ In October we went to Sudtirol, a region in the Italian Alps (the Dolomites) that borders with Austria. I surprised Adam for his 30th birthday. Took him on the train and rented a car and he had no idea where I was taking him. This region was part of Austria until recent history so you don't feel like you're in Italy at all, in fact, they speak mostly German and the food is mostly Austrian. It was really nice, we loved it.
~ My mom came for a short 4 day trip at the end of October. We had a great time. I took her to Interlaken and we hiked. We also went to Gruyeres to the cheese factory and ate Swiss fondue (i like french fondue better) and then to a thermal bath, they have lots of those here.
~ The end of November we flew up to Manchester, England. Adam had a meeting. They have huge christmas markets. His co-worker got us 2 tickets to the Manchester United soccer game. That was fun! We sat right next to the "away" section. Which was bordered on all sides, every single row, by security guards. Apparently these fans can get violent when it comes to their beloved football team. When each team scored, they would look at the other fans and yell, get into shouting matches, and throw not so nice British hand gestures.
You're not allowed to drink in the stands, you have to finish your beer out by the food stalls, there's a big sign saying you'll be arrested if you have alcohol at your seat. Apparently the fans would throw the glass bottles at the field or at other fans. But it keeps the stadium really clean and the fans less drunk. It was definitely a different experience than a typical American sports game. And we got really into it.
~ We also took 2 weekends and took the train out to Lucerne and Bern to explore and take free walking tours and learn more about Switzerland and use the very expensive unlimited Swiss train passes we bought
Random stories and observations:
~ I joined a gym back in September to tone up and put some muscle on my bones because I have zero. Its just a little different here. For one, they don't keep the gym freezing cold with fans and a/c. Which is not good because I'm already sweating in the locker room before I even start my workout. I mostly take the group classes. The room for the classes has mild a/c but no fans, well there is a box fan but its never turned on. So its always SOO hot in there. When my class is right after something intense, when you walk into the room its so hot and sweaty and smelly. I don't understand why there is no ventilation in a room like this. Well, there's a little ventilation, coming from outside, which is full off people smoking on the sidewalk. So when I'm winded I take a nice deep breath full of cigarette smoke. And there's no water fountain, if I forget my water bottle then i'm screwed.
Also they're very clean, you're not allowed to wear outside shoes in. You have to put shoe covers on when entering and change into shoes that you only wear indoors or at the gym. I change into other shoes but I wear them outside running too. I'm not about to buy a pair of shoes just for the gym.
And, culturally, you should change into your workout clothes once you get to the gym. People in Europe never wear workout clothes/yoga pants outside the gym unless they are actually in the process of jogging or something. This is disappointing because I love to wear yoga pants all the time, especially when I worked night shift and was always exhausted. Here I have to actually look presentable to go to the store.
A funny story about this. We talked to a French person who visited the US and said to their American friend "wow, Americans are so healthy and fit" and the friend said "what makes you say that" and this French person said "well they are all working out and going to the gym, they are all in their workout clothes all the time." The American had to explain that Americans just wear those clothes normally and it doesn't usually mean they are working out.
~ Switzerland has 3 main official languages. French in the west, Italian in a tiny region in the south, and German everywhere else. (well, technically 4, there's an ancient language called Romansch that a teeny tiny percentage of people in the east still speak. Its the closest living language to Latin)
The German they speak is Swiss German, a completely different dialect than "high" German (Germans cannot understand them), and every region in Switzerland has a different Swiss German dialect. I've heard its very hard for a non-Swiss German to learn. But all signs and labels and newspapers are written in high German because they all know that too.
The typical Swiss person is fluent in at least 2-3 languages, including English. English is so widely spoken here that they voted to make it the 5th official language but it was voted down. But its basically the unofficial 5th language.
Everything everywhere is written in those 3 languages, but since the majority of Swiss people speak German, sometimes things are only written in German. Going grocery shopping is a language lesson. I have to do a lot of guesswork if I don't find a french label. But I'm learning little bits of German. I do want to start learning basic German, since its everywhere, it would be helpful when we leave the french speaking area.
~ German can be a hilarious language when you have an immature mind like me and Adam. Our favorite words we've come across are: 'ausfahrt' which means exit, 'extrafahrt' which means extra trip, 'Badgasse' which was a street name in Bern meaning Avenue of the Baths, 'Dammgasse' which was a street name in Germany, and 'Buttholz' which is in the name of a construction company.
~ The Swiss learn English at a young age and all English teachers here are actually native English speakers. So at a young age they are taught a correct British or American accent and they have very slight accents when they speak English. I think its because of this that when I speak English with English speaking customers they don't automatically know I'm American. I've been asked 4 times now "wow, your English is so good, how did you learn to speak such good English?"
~ In France, there is an entire aisle dedicated to cheese. Tons of cheese. Its fantastic. Here in Switzerland the cheese section is pretty small and that's disappointing. But what they have instead is an entire aisle dedicated to chocolate.
Swiss chocolate is said to be the best in the world. Switzerland consumes more chocolate than any other country. And it has to be made in Switzerland. Apparently its the milk. There's a region here that is said to have the best conditions in the world for the best grass full of all sorts of herbs for cows to eat and produce the best tasting milk/cheese. That region is Gruyeres, hence, the famous Gruyere cheese. This is also the milk they use for their milk chocolate. I wasn't a big chocolate lover before but now I eat a lot. It really is better.
You can buy Lindt and Toblerone in the US but its crappy quality because its made with US ingredients. Hershey's chocolate has such a small percentage of real cocoa in it that they are not legally allowed to call it chocolate and they have to label it "made with real chocolate." Typical American food industry. Crap.
Like how a very good quality and good tasting French cheese (Reblochon) that is required for a staple in French alpine cuisine (Tartiflette) is illegal in the US. Because it isn't aged long enough. Its short by just a few days. But then they allow Velveeta to be sold. And Cheez Whiz. You should see a french person's reaction when I tell them what Cheez Whiz is. And we wonder why there's so much diabetes... ok I'll stop now.
~ I mentioned the strict recycling and trash rules in my last post. How you have to buy special taxed trash bags for non-recyclable stuff to encourage recycling, and they're expensive. A lot of people go shopping in France since its cheaper and we didn't understand why they wouldn't just buy trash bags there too. We did. Well I found out that if you are caught with a non-swiss taxed trash bag you are fined big time. So how do you get caught? Apartment buildings have cameras set up on their trash cans. People will open a non-swiss trash bag and find something with your name on it and then fine you that way. And there are also "civil police," your neighbors are watching you. Usually little grumpy old people will watch you and tattle on you. So we bought the swiss trash bags, $10 for 10 small ones, before we could get caught.
~ I got a Swiss drivers license. If you're living in a European country for more than a year you have 1 year to transfer your foreign drivers license for a Swiss one, or you get in big trouble if your pulled over after that year is up. Adam never did this in the 3 years he lived in France, he tried to but the French administration system is so unbelievably obnoxious he gave up. But here it was easy, I was in and out with my new license in about 20 minutes. I just had call the Georgia DMV a few weeks ago to get a document with the date of my very first license and drivers test on it. I still have my Florida license but there's a sticker on it that says "not valid in Switzerland." Its not like we will ever drive in Switzerland, renting a car here is double or even triple the cost of the rest of Europe. When we've rented cars we take the train just across the border to rent in France or Germany. The other day we booked a car rental and when we clicked that we lived in Switzerland the price almost tripled, but when we clicked that we lived in the US the price went back down.
~ Switzerland is expensive, everyone knows this. It was recently voted one of the richest countries in the world. To give you an idea of how filthy rich some people here are, I saw a magazine called "How to spend it: Boating edition"... makes me want to throw up. If I had that much money I'd donate to so many charities.
~ On the ground floor of our building is a small grocery store, out front sits a homeless lady, every day from 8am-7pm. Since I pass her a few times a day I decided I'd give her something. Since it was about to be winter I went through my closet and found a hat, scarf and gloves. I gave this to her and she looked at it like "wtf is this?" and then looked at me and in broken french asked for coffee. That night after she left I found my gloves on the ground in her spot, I took them back. A couple days later I brought her that coffee. Again, she didn't say thank you, but asked for bread, tomatoes, salami. This annoyed me, but I went into the store anyways and bought her some food but I forgot the salami. She still didn't say thank you but asked for the salami. I said no, this is good, and walked away, angry. I'll never get her anything again. I give things to homeless people all the time and they're always so grateful. A couple weeks later I saw her wearing the hat I gave her. Now I cross the street to avoid her.
~ Our apartment building is full of families. We noticed that our neighbors leave their kids' bikes and razor scooters in the hallway. Without locks. One person even has a whole coat rack in the hallway outside their door. This was a surprise to us coming from France where anything left unattended anywhere is stolen within minutes. In Grenoble, Adam brought his bike, when it had a broken chain, into the hallway and left it there to fix it later, the next day it was gone.
~ This last story I'm borrowing from a friend but relates to the post I wrote about the cultural class we took and how the Swiss aren't the most inviting when it comes to making friends. My friend's husband (who is not Swiss) worked with a guy for a year (who is Swiss) and they really got along, after a year he asked to get together with their wives for a drink sometime. The Swiss guy said "no, we already have enough friends from high school and stuff" ... can you believe that?!
(I do want to say that the Swiss are super nice, I've never met a rude one, its just getting into their inner circle that I'm told is difficult)
