SwissBlog

After Hans, our rental agent, had completed the inventory of our new apartment he handed the keys to me and wished us a happy stay in our new home. Pausing at the door he turned and said "if you want my advice then you’ll introduce yourselves to your neighbours. In Switzerland it’s up to you to introduce yourself, if you don’t then your neighbours will assume that you don’t want to be friendly and they will leave you to your own devices. All you have to do is say you’re the new neighbours, shake hands and that’s it."

Mr H had a look on his face that suggested that he didn’t care if he lived here for 300 years and no one spoke to him – he was not going to knock on a stranger’s door and introduce himself. We had a chat about it and a few minutes later we knocked on Frau Studer’s door.

Heute entdeckt: don't mention the skiing. Heather ist Engländerin und wohnt mit ihrem Mann in der Schweiz. Aus den bisher gelesenen Beiträgen habe ich noch nicht herausgefunden, wie lange sie hier schon lebt, oder wo sie lebt. Ihre Beiträge über ihr Leben hier in der Schweiz sind auf alle Fälle sehr amüsant und lesenswert:

It started yesterday evening when Frau Rübli, a respectable housewife, was prevented from placing her freshly washed laundry into the tumbler dryer shared with Frau Heatherjb. Prevented by the fact that Frau Heatherjb had not removed her dry clothes from the dryer. Frau Rübli is a reasonable woman and she waited for 1 hour before trying to place her laundry into the dryer but still Frau Heatherjb had failed to remove the offending articles of clothing. Frau Rübli returned on a further two occasions within the next hour but the articles had still not been removed.

(Ich sag es ja schon lange. Wir Schweizer und unsere Waschküchen - ein Kapitel für sich!)

Auch sehr lesenswert ist die Beschreibung der Dorfbeiz, dem Rössli:

Opting for the green salad will bring the question, "French or Italian?" which refers to the dressing. Take my advice and have a naked salad. The French dressing is a creamy coloured vinegary-tasting emulsion that glows on your lettuce like nuclear waste. All I can say about the Italian dressing is that if the Italians ever find out what horrors the Swiss are creating in their name then it’s going to be a full blown war.