Turkey smuggling

A few weeks ago we celebrated Thanksgiving.  It’s just a typical work day here so we always celebrate it on the Saturday directly afterwards.  We get together with several other families and do the whole thing.  Stuffing, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce.  And, of course, turkey.   Turkey’s a lunch meat here.  No one really cooks a bird whole.  Our first year we made it work with a scrawny specimen that the farmer killed specially for us.   It was like a wild turkey is in the US which, last I knew, no one actually eats.   The second year we learned that in Germany it's possible to get a frozen one, similar to a US turkey but about half the size, which is just as well since a US bird wouldn’t fit in a Swiss oven.   That worked well so every year since I order one from the German supermarket and pick it up a few days before we cook it. This year, as we were expecting around 30 people, I ordered two.  As usual, the Wednesday beforehand I zipped across the border on the way home from work to pick them up,  While I was waiting for them to be brought out I looked over some information the store had and saw that the import limits had changed.   For all of the time we’ve lived here, poultry was treated differently than beef with regards to how much you could bring into Switzerland.  The brochure I was reading, however, noted that now, meat was meat, meaning that even for poultry there was a 1 kg limit.  As such, for each kilogram over there is an import duty of CHF 18 (roughly $18 now).  The two turkeys I was waiting for were close to 12 kg total.  Some quick math told me that they were going to cost, in addition to the purchase price, about $200 just to bring them over the border.    Unless …. I smuggled them.    We’ve generally been pretty law abiding citizens here.  Keep our noses clean, that’s been our strategy.  This, however, turned me.  I couldn’t help it.  I was breaking bad.  I became a turkey trafficker.    

Ginkgo seeds

This being Autumn it’s time for the annual shedding of seeds by the female Ginkgo trees in our neighborhood.  Anyone who knows these trees is aware of the characteristically offensive odor emitted by the seeds when they are stepped upon.  This smell, which derives from the butyric acid within, is powerful and, for lack of a polite comparison, I’ll say simply that it is reminiscent of vomit.  Why am I bringing this up in this blog?  Not because these trees are unique to Switzerland.  In fact, Ginkgo biloba is not even native here.  I raise this topic as an illustration of Swiss fastidiousness.  Last week, as happens every year at this time, the city sent out the forces who, working from lifts,  meticulously  shook the seeds from the trees so that they could be vacuumed up prior to being stepped on.  We can’t have our neighborhoods smelling like puke after all.  

Top 10 list - Lost & Found (#10)

And now to #10.  Making this list was tougher than I expected.  Lots of things to like about living here.    Nevertheless, restrict it I must so for the last position I choose a modest little behavior which exemplifies the thoughtfulness and honesty of the people who live here.  In Switzerland, when someone finds an object that was obviously dropped accidently by its owner they generally don’t take it to a Lost and Found, and they certainly don’t keep it.  Instead, usually they simply place it in a spot where the owner can return to find it.  And the people who subsequently pass by, but aren’t the owners, leave it there.  My son once lost an expensive pair of sunglasses.  As soon as he realized they were missing he simply retraced his steps and, sure enough, someone had picked them up and left them in an clearly visible position alongside the path he was walking.  Lost and Founds exist of course but are most often used for items lost in high traffic areas or on public transportation.  In fact, SBB, the Swiss Rail System, receives so many lost items that ten years ago they commissioned a solution which led to the founding of Fundsachenverkauf (lost property sale), a business that buys (in bulk, sight unseen) and re-sells the roughly 8,000 unclaimed items left monthly in Swiss trains, buses, airports or post offices  http://www.fundsachenverkauf.ch/.   Interestingly, the merchandise part of their website has a sex toy section.  Hmmm.  Sex toys lost on public transportation.  No doubt if they’d been lost on a hiking trail somewhere they’d simply be picked up, dusted off and placed on the side for the owner to find.  

Top 10 list - Safety and Security (#9)

Anyone who’s spent time here will confirm how safe one generally feels.    People are expected to watch out for themselves to avoid, for instance, getting run over by a tram but when it comes to violent crime one will feel pretty secure regardless of the time of day or section of town.  Switzerland’s low homicide rate places it #6 out of the 36 developed countries ranked by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) while the US sits proudly at #32.   Paradoxically, among this same group of countries Switzerland trails only the US in gun ownership rates.   Does this mean that whereas  Americans use their guns to kill each other the Swiss use them for protection?   Hardly.  Gun rights people  here are as vehemently protective of these rights as their counterparts in the US but you will not hear them supporting their argument with fear.   And they will never, ever say that they need them as protection against their own government.  For many of them, in fact, it’s the government that has provided the gun.  They  just say that they like having and shooting guns.  Nothing wrong with that.  In any event, at the risk of simplification I’ll play the amateur sociologist and opine that Switzerland’s low violent crime rate is ultimately a reflection of a lower feeling of desperation within the population, especially at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.   People are less desperate here and the resulting confidence that they have options makes them less likely to kill another person.  Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m wrong.  But it is safe here and for the peace of mind that this gives me and my family, I’m appreciative.    

Top 10 list - Weather (#8)

This one might surprise you because usually weather as a hi-lite is reserved for warm climates with perpetual sun.   This is my list, though, and I’ll tell you why I’ve included it.  We’ve got four seasons.  Four genuine, glorious seasons.  For me, the cycle begins with Spring and ours is the classic version, full of the new life that puts a skip in your step.    No whiplash change from cold to hot but, rather, a nice transition that lasts long enough to savor.  Next, just as you’re ready for summer, it arrives.  Not too hot but warm enough that’s it’s clearly summer.  Generally just right for mountain hikes, dips in the community pools (which are without exception terrific) and even a nice Rhein swim.  In September, comes Fall, generally beginning with a nice Indian summer as the leaves begin to change, bringing with them the clear freshness in the air that makes you break out the sweaters while not regretting having to do so.   Lastly, we have Winter, which brings cold, but not bone chillingly so, temperatures.   For the most part, just right to enjoy the snow sports or a nice fondue after a hike in the snow.   In a nutshell, what you get are the seasons without the extremes that plague some regions of the world.  And on those rare occasions when the summer temperatures rise too high?  You can head to the mountains.  This past summer we had an atypical heat wave when the mercury reached over 35 °C (95 °F) for three weeks in a row.  It was so hot that even friends visiting from South Carolina complained.  What did we do?  We went to the mountains, where we played in the snow and cooled off.   Try doing that on a hot, muggy New Jersey summer day.  

Engelberg on July 5th

Top 10 list - Vacation (#7)

The minimum paid vacation here is four weeks, which may be supplemented at the cantonal level or at the employer’s discretion.  This puts it at the low end of the range in Europe where most countries mandate five or even six weeks but it’s clearly more generous than the US requirement (i.e. no requirement).   In any case, what I like about it has less to do with the quantity and more with the mentality and how it is administered.  When supplemented, it is done so  dependent on an employee’s age, not service with the company .   Since I’m older than dirt I get six weeks, which is more than I’ve ever gotten or ever will get.   It’s one of the few advantages of being uralt.  Also, there is no “use it or lose it” here.  You’re expected to use it and no one ever resents you doing so.   Clearly, this also means that you cannot take money in lieu of time off.   What would be the point of that?   There is one feature that I find a bit overreaching but I appreciate the thought.  That is the law requiring you to take two of your vacation weeks consecutively.   The idea is to ensure a real mental break.  I don’t know how it’s policed but people do it, sometimes twice.   Having heard all this don’t make the mistake thinking the Swiss are vacation hoarding slugs.  They’re eminently practical, a characteristic that was evident in 2012 when a national referendum to increase the minimum vacation to six weeks was soundly defeated by a two-thirds majority.   Lastly, and perhaps the most important feature of the Swiss holiday landscape, is how the school breaks are spread out.   While kids here spend more or less the same number of days in school as in other countries, including the US, it’s broken up better.  The summer break is only six weeks which leaves six weeks to spread around to cover ski holiday (very important here), Easter and a Fall break.  It’s really quite nice.  

Top 10 list - Rules (#6)

I can hear you now.  “Rules?  I thought that this would be on the list of things you don’t like about Switzerland.”  Au contraire, mon ami.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with rules.  After all, the rule of law is what allowed civilization to advance.  As with anything, of course, rules can be taken to an extreme but properly applied they provide order and stability, valuable commodities in these parts.  What I most like about the rules here, though, is not necessarily the rules themselves but the fact that people follow them.  Voluntarily.  While it can be a bit annoying when people yell at you when you don’t (unavoidable for a newcomer),  it’s a small price to pay for the benefits gained.  For instance, this rules following culture is a chief reason that the country is so clean.   And remember, via Top 10 item #3, Direct Democracy, the rules are decided by the people themselves, not by a handful of special interests.  This leads to a level of buy-in that makes the cultural adherence possible.  People observe the rules because they want to.  It’s interesting to me that perhaps the one area where Switzerland has a paucity of rules is for those activities through which you can hurt yourself.  In contrast, the US has a surfeit of rules where someone might do something stupid, hurt themselves and then sue.  Here, since law suits are rare such rules are lacking.  Their view seems to be, stupidity is permitted.  Just don’t blame us.   In the time that we’ve lived here we’ve inadvertently executed a limited developmental experiment on this topic.  The lab rat in this case was Paige, who arrived here as a typical four year old American kid with no particular proclivity towards or against rules.  Now, nine years later, even having grown up in our “American” home, she’s a rules following soldier.  To her, it’s as natural as breathing.  She would no sooner jay walk then walk through the park naked.  Actually, less likely probably, since nudity here is not viewed quite so puritanically.   In fact, for those so inclined it’s legal to enjoy the national pastime of hiking with absolutely nothing coming between you and nature.  The exception to this, sadly, is canton Appenzell Innerrhoden where this became so popular that in 2009 they voted to disallow it.  Too much of a good thing I suppose.

Top 10 list - Natural beauty (#5)

Switzerland’s natural beauty is a powerful incentive for two of the other items on the list, cleanliness and hiking trails.  The entire country is so pretty that only ISIS would disturb it and hiking provides the best means to experience it all.   Of course there’s much more to see than the bucket list spots.  For every famous natural feature like the Matterhorn or Jungfraujoch, there are fifty lesser known gems like the Stoos ridge hike, the Oeschinensee  or Val Müstair.   And while the mountains are the symbol of Switzerland’s beauty,  the lakes are breathtakingly gorgeous and the cities and towns are charmingly lovely.   You’re never far from something worth viewing.  Hell, we walk Ellie in the area behind our home and it’s simply beautiful (picture below).   It’s one concentrated package of natural splendor squeezed into a country about twice the size of New Jersey.  

Top 10 list - Cleanliness (#4)

I’ve never been to Singapore so can’t comment first hand on its legendary cleanliness but even if true it’s just an overgrown city so how hard can it be?  Especially when you’re allowed to whip people to achieve the goal.  Switzerland manages its spotlessness without the threat of caning because it’s cultural.  With the exception of cigarette butts, people don’t litter.  And they clean up after their dogs too.  But being free of trash is just the beginning.  You’ve heard the term, “squeaky clean”?   Here, this refers to the floors in parking garages where your tires literally squeak when driving in them.  There’s a lovely area near our home where people go to stroll in the countryside.  These paths crisscross between the fields of pumpkins, corn, rapeseed and other crops.  On a regular basis a Gemeinde worker cruises up and down them driving a small street sweeper to clean up the agricultural detritus that’s landed there.  Wouldn’t want to step in horse manure out there amongst the cows, would you?  This attention to Sauberkeit extends even to road kill.  In the US, these carcasses often remain on the road past the point of being picked clean by scavengers to when the elements have reduced them to a pile of dried out, bleached bones.   Never happen here.   I wonder if these poor animals are always even yet fully dead before being removed.  There is one three day period each year, however, when the Swiss litter gloriously, at least here in Basel.  It’s Fasnacht, the Basel equivalent of Carnival or Mardi Gras.  I think it’s because there is so much confetti strewn around that if you drop trash on the street it just sinks into this strata of Räppli, disappearing from view.  It doesn’t matter though because at the end of the three days, the clean-up elves come out and miraculously vacuum the city clean so that by Thursday morning it’s as though Fasnacht never happened.  You have more confetti stuck in the cuffs of your pants or hiding in the pockets of your coat than there is remaining on the streets of Basel.   

Top 10 list - Direct Democracy (#3)

I’ve lauded this in a post already so you know where I stand but truth be told,  they do get it wrong from time to time.  The most recent instances of this were in 2014 when the citizenry voted narrowly (50.3%) to restrict immigration (in the face of existing EU treaties) and the 2009 initiative banning the construction of new minarets.   Both of these embarrassments  were led by the SVP (Schweizerische Volkspartei), the Swiss People’s Party, their version of the Tea Party but not as irrationally nutty.   Such setbacks aside, and the reason I have this on my Top 10 list is that the opportunity to submit a popular referendum offers a huge advantage over our indirect system because it provides a path around special interests thus reducing the influence of lobbies.   This opportunity doesn’t displace the responsibility of the main law making body, it’s in addition to it.  Indeed, the Federal Council may make a counter proposal to one made by a citizen group which would result in two options landing on the ballot.  The one receiving more votes wins.   If the US had such an option then sensible initiatives could be proposed and voted on.   It’s an antidote to Congress’ continuous bickering and fighting as it allows the citizenry to simply go around them.   An example would be gun control.  While an extreme proposal, like an outright gun ban, could be made, it wouldn’t fly so the more likely scenario is a reasonable version that makes sense to most of the voters.  This opportunity for the real majority to be heard (not just the loudest or richest) is why Direct Democracy is #3 on the list for me.

© Die Landsgemeinde: ein Fresko von Albert Welti und Wilhelm Balmer

Top 10 list - Public transportation (#2)

Public transportation, or öV (ou fow) as it’s known, for öffentlicher Verkehr, is one of the highlights for which Switzerland is clearly and deservedly well known.   Most have heard about how dependable it is but that’s only part of the deal.   It goes everywhere.  There is no corner of Switzerland that cannot be reached by public transportation, be it bus, train, tram or boat.   Even the cable cars are considered part of the network.  The trains are expensive but everyone who lives here gets a Halbtax card (~$150), which cuts the fare in half.  Kids sixteen and under are half price anyway and with a Junior-Karte  they’re free when with their parents or grandparents.    Planning is simplified as the ticket price is not dependent on when you get it so no need for advance planning to snag the best deal.  And getting back to the legendary dependability... this reputation is no exaggeration.  It’s a matter of pride, not just with the employees but with the citizenry too.  It’s evident when the taxpayers put their money where their mouths are.  In 2014, there was a referendum to approve a $45 billion long-term plan to finance and upgrade the rail  infrastructure. Proportional to population, that would be a $1.8 trillion commitment in the US.   It was approved with a clear 62% majority.   As an example of how seriously they take their commitment to on-time service, Lisa and Paige once experienced a rare late train going down to the Valais which resulted in missing the last bus to their ultimate destination.  What happened?  They, and everyone else in the train, were given taxi vouchers to cover the last part of their trip.   The message was clear. We’re sorry and embarrassed and this is what we’re going to do about it.  Lastly, in a nod to perhaps the softest spot in my heart, I have to mention this.  On öV, Ellie is welcome to ride too.  Otherwise, how would you take your canine companion on a hike with you in the mountains?

Top 10 things I like about Switzerland

Everyone likes a top 10 list so I thought I’d pull one together.   I’ll post one item in each of the coming days and invite readers to comment.     

1.  Hiking trails

There isn’t a nook or cranny of this country that you can visit that’s absent of hiking trails.  And not just some tamped down paths through the woods.  Switzerland has a 65,000 km system of well-marked hiking routes maintained by the Swiss Hiking Trail Federation, an organization that has worked since 1934 to develop a safe and standardized network covering the entire country.  They’re posted, classified (according to difficulty) and timed.   The system is supported by SwitzerlandMobility, a foundation whose slogan is “The network for non-motorized traffic”.  The literal translation from the original German, “Das Netzwerk für den Langsamverkehr”, would have been “The Network for slow traffic” which just doesn’t sound fun, so they came up with something else but it’s not much better.  Maybe we could sponsor a contest to come up with something snappier.   In any event, they manage a national network for hiking, cycling, mountain biking, skating and canoeing and have an App which overlays all of the trails on a relief map along with your current location.  http://www.schweizmobil.ch/en/schweizmobil.html     It’s really terrific and while it won’t keep you from falling off the side of a mountain (in Switzerland, that’s your own business) it’ll help you avoid getting lost.  

Maternity leave

I had a conversation yesterday with a colleague who’d heard that Obama was about to sign an Executive order granting paid sick leave.   He couldn’t grasp that this wasn’t already the case.  I had to point out that this order would only benefit people working for companies with federal government contracts.  The other 99.5%?  Stop coughing and get back to work.   This evolved into a discussion about paid leave in general, which led to maternity leave.  Usually, when this topic comes up I like to describe Lisa’s experience when Erica was born.  At the time, Lisa was a young vet working in a large equine practice in Lexington, Kentucky and her pregnancy came smack in the middle of the busy Spring foaling season.   Thanks to the cloaking effect of the coveralls she wore each day she managed to keep the pregnancy secret, at least to all her clients with a Y chromosome (which was all of them).  Erica’s estimated due date was Wednesday,  May 10^th and sure enough, when Lisa  got home from work that evening, after a typical day palpating mares and making sure the foals got their colostrum, the contractions began.  We jumped in the car and following pre-arranged plans,  dropped Lindsey off with some friends and hurried off to the hospital.  Ever in a hurry, Erica arrived about twenty minutes after we got there leaving us with four nice days together before Lisa returned to work on Monday,  visiting her clients to check on the mares and foals and leaving Erica to be raised by wolves along with Lindsey.  Note to people who don’t know us well, the wolf part is a joke.  Everything else is true.   The farm managers, since they hadn’t seen her all weekend, and she pretty much worked seven days a week, naturally asked where she’d been.  Picture their faces when she told them she’d had a baby.  “ You found a baby?”  “No, I had a baby”.  “ A foal?”  “No, a person.  A daughter”.  “Excuse my French, Ma’am.  I mean, Doctor, but you’re shitting me, aren’t you?”   Clearly, this was the first time ever, in the history of the state of Kentucky, that there’d been a pregnant horse vet, and they’d missed the whole thing.  Damn.  Most likely, they still bring it up from time to time.  Anyway, upon hearing this story, my colleague reacted in typical fashion.  He recoiled in shock, no more so than if I’d told him that we’d subsequently sold Erica and set about growing another.   I offer this story not to imply that this was typical in the US, only to note that it was legal.   Her bosses at the time, who were marginally less clueless than the farm managers, became aware that she was pregnant in month six and immediately put her on leave while they considered firing her, before realizing that this, in fact, would have been illegal.  They then allowed her to return to work, after signing a sheaf of release papers,  with the pregnancy eventually concluding in the long weekend maternity leave described above.    The US is joined by only Papua New Guinea in the club of countries without any mandated paid maternity leave.  For those women working for larger companies, things look better, but not as much so as you might think.  In 2012, Working Mother magazine polled their “100 Best Companies” to see how it is for such lucky women.  http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/maternity-paternity-and-adoption-leave-in-the-united-states-1.  The average paid maternity leave was 7.2 weeks with 14% enjoying more than 12.    As they say, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man…  The worldwide average for paid maternity leave is about 16 weeks.  In Europe, it’s 20.  Here in Switzerland, it’s a miserly 14 weeks at 80% pay up to a ceiling of about $1000/week, which, if they had a minimum wage here, would be about that level.   Interestingly, in Switzerland it’s illegal to return to work in the first 8 weeks after birth, something that, as a mandate, is ridiculous but must reflect the will of the people.   As I’ve mentioned before, nothing happens here without a discussion and vote.  As an epilogue to the story of Erica’s birth, three and a half years later Daniel was born and Lisa’s employers, having seen the light and combined with her timing (Daniel was born in the foaling off season), allowed her to bask in the luxury of a full two week maternity leave.  Unpaid.  

Renunciation

I went to Bern this morning to renew my passport.  Yesterday, in order to make this as painless as possible I accessed the US Embassy website to print out the forms, make a reservation and make sure I had everything I needed.  While there, the page titled “Renunciations” caught my eye so I explored.  Before your thoughts begin to wander, let me be clear here.  I may bitch.  I may complain.  I may laud all of the wonderful aspects about living here (compared to the US).  But I will never, ever, renounce my US citizenship.  I fully understand why some would do this.  Those who’ve gained citizenship via the fluke of Jus soli and never really lived there aren’t really Americans anyway.  To them, it’s a convenience and they just need to decide if the convenience outweighs the inconveniences, most of which you cannot appreciate unless you’ve lived outside the US as an American citizen.  But people like me, or Lisa, or even Paige, who doesn’t really remember living in the US, we’ll always be Americans.  I honestly don't think it would be possible to renounce it.  Maybe legally but not in the heart.  It’s a roots thing I guess.  Anyhow, if you’re curious, it’s a nine step process, the first three of which are, in one form or another, checks to make sure that you really, really want to go through with it.    One of the FAQ’s is, “What privileges of my U.S. citizenship can I retain after I renounce?”  I wonder how “Frequent” this question really is.  Their response is basically, “None of them you stupid shit”.  They leave out the last two words and they’re a bit more polite but that is their answer.   They also include the subtle comment, “ Such a question indicates a lack of full understanding of renunciation”.  I bet the embassy staff had fun answering that one.  For those still certain that they want to go through with it, the cost is 2,350 USD, which can be paid in cash (USD or CH), credit card or cashier’s check drawn on a US bank.  Is it just me or does it seem somehow wrong to renounce one’s citizenship via credit card?   Anyway, thanks to my advance legwork the renewal process this morning took only 15 minutes.  Everyone was very polite and helpful with the only annoyance being that I couldn’t bring my iPad into the embassy.  They had conveniently worked out an arrangement with a bakery down the street to hold such devices for a small fee but it was annoying to have to do so.  I went with the flow, though, and should be rewarded in a few weeks with a nice shiny new passport good for another ten years.  I wonder, though, would they have been so nice if I had been there to renounce?

Quark

Ever eaten quark?  No, not the elementary particle defined by physicists to be a fundamental constituent of matter (although by that definition, I suppose the answer is clearly yes).  I refer instead to the dairy product used in German-speaking countries  to prepare a variety of dishes, including cheese cake.  Or at least they call it cheese cake.  Talk about false advertising.  Think cheese cake made with chalk.  A quark derived cheese cake looks exactly like New York style cheesecake but will desiccate your mouth as it sucks all of the moisture from your body.  It’s not that it tastes bad, only that if you’re expecting real cheese cake it’s like a slap in the face.  Not surprisingly, Starbucks sells the real thing here.

Learning German - 2

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ll come back to this topic from time to time.    Sadly, I’m still not fluent but give me some credit for the creative strategies I’ve developed to overcome my learning disability (as an American).  It appears that once you attain a certain proficiency level,  courses are surprisingly difficult to find, especially if your schedule is not infinitely flexible (i.e. you’re employed).  Several  years ago, I paid a neighbor kid to speak with me once or twice a week.   He’s now a law student at the Uni Basel and has partially paid his way by teaching German.  I like to think that I kick started this for him.  More recently, as part of an effort to improve my Swiss German, I joined the “Tandem Partner” program at the university.  This is a program through which you get together with people who are native in your language of interest and you split the time, speaking your mother tongue half the time and theirs the other half.   It’s not very time efficient but has led to my meeting some interesting people.   One of them was Jonathan,  a terrifically nice young man who had just finished medical school and was applying for a fellowship in the US.  In order to do this he had to pass the US Medical Licensing Exam so he wanted to polish his English.  For him, I was the mother lode.  Not only could I help him with his English, which was already very good, but I could hook him up with Erica (daughter #2 who just graduated from Columbia P&S), who had just taken the exam herself.  The only thing I couldn’t do was imitate a strong African American accent, which he’d heard was something he might be faced with in the simulated patient interviews.  I could offer Boston, more Brahmin than Southie, but that wasn’t likely something he’d need to deal with.   Over Christmas, when Erica was here, they discussed the exam and this past Spring he passed it.  Another success story.

The one tool that people most often suggest is the one that I haven’t used, intentionally so.  This is, of course, Paige.  Speaking with Paige in either German or Swiss German would be a sure fire means to accelerate the process.  The problem is, Lisa and I are Paige’s only opportunity to speak English and that's clearly more important than my German language hobby.    When you speak with her she sounds like a normal American kid but sometimes her phrases come out a bit “translated”.   We’re together at most a few hours in the evening each day so need to make this time count.   When we visit the US, we don’t want Paige to sound like an immigrant in her own country.  I'll keep plugging away but not at the expense of my daughter's future. 

Zürich

I suppose every country has it’s city or region that considers all other localities to be backwaters populated by country bumpkins with no other options.   In France, it’s the Parisians.  In England, the Londoners.  In the US, anyone on either coast.  In Switzerland, it would be the Zürchers.  My son once had a college interview with a local representative of a prestigious ivy league institution.  The interview was arranged via email and they agreed to meet at the Starbucks in front of the train station.  When the appointed time arrived, my son was there but no interviewer.  After waiting a bit he called the lady who said that she was there but didn’t see him.  Cutting to the punch line, she was at the Starbucks in front of the train station in Zürich while he was at the one in Basel.  While she knew where he lived, he knew nothing about her so had no reason to think she meant, clearly, Zürich.  From her perspective, silly boy.  Of course Zürich.  I should say that I also interview for a prestigious ivy league university, a different one, and I also often use Starbucks as a meeting place, but I would never assume the applicant would clairvoyantly know that I mean Basel.   

Direct democracy

Switzerland has a system of direct democracy that has held together a multilingual, multicultural, and multireligion country without any significant disagreements for over 150 years.   Structurally, there are many similarities to the US government but this is not one of them.  In 1848, the Swiss constitution was established,  modeled after the US version with a separation of powers rooted in three branches of government.   There is a Legislative branch, for making laws, an Executive branch, for carrying out the laws, and a Judicial branch, for interpreting the laws.   Taking the similarity one step further, their Parliament (our Congress) has two houses, one in which each canton is equally represented (like our Senate) and one in which the cantonal representation is proportional to population (like our House of  Representatives).   Those are the similarities.  Now the differences.  First, their Executive branch is made up of seven people, not one, and those members are elected by their Parliament, not directly by the people.   Now, you might be say, “I thought that the Swiss had direct democracy.  What’s this about indirect selection of the Executive branch ?”  The explanation has two parts.  First, those seven people, who also function as the cabinet, are selected from parties in proportion to the parties’ representation in the Parliament.  Second, and most important, no matter who’s sitting in those seats, they cannot enact new laws without direct approval of the people.  This happens via referendums which occur four times each year.  I should note that this post is not intended as a primer on Swiss government.  I bring it up only to provide a bit of background for our first personal taste of the system last year.  Naturally, not being citizens we cannot vote.  We can, however, participate in the process by collecting signatures to place an issue on the ballot.  And this is precisely what we did.  The part of Basel in which we live is one of the few remaining green spaces.  We hold it dear, as do all of our neighbors for it is a principal reason why we chose to live in this little corner of paradise.  What caused us to rise up and shake our fists was a proposal by the Basel city council to re-zone our area to allow construction of additional residential housing.  “No!”, we shouted (politely of course) and sprang into action to collect the 2,000 signatures necessary to place the referendum on the ballot.   Lisa and I didn’t collect all 2,000 of course but more than any other Americans.  Our neighbors were very impressed.  Once this was done, the next step was education, specifically of those who could actually vote.  The committee driving the referendum, with the catchy name, “2 x Nein zur Verbauung von Basler Grünflächen” (2 times no to the  obstruction of Basel greenspace) developed the cute little poster below.  I especially liked the little girl fleeing the monstrous excavator with her cervelat (ubiquitous Swiss sausage).   The posters were displayed, the brochures were distributed and the issue was civilly communicated .  In the end,  the forces of evil were driven back by the will of the people.  Our green space was preserved.  

Sport

The term used in schools here for gym is “Sport”.   It’s taken very seriously too.  To give you an indication of how seriously, the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, which is the top of the Swiss governmental pyramid, is made up of seven people.   Each of them is responsible for a federal department, for instance like our State Department or Department of Interior.  One of these is the Departement für Verteidigung, Bevölkerungsschutz und Sport, which translates as Defense, Civil Protection and Sport.  This is sort of like combining the positions of Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security under one person and adding Gym to their job title.   Like I said, they take it seriously.   When a student passes their Matura here, which is the university qualifying exam, regardless of their grade they are automatically qualified to pursue any course of studies at the university level save three.  One is medicine.  One is veterinary medicine.  And one is Sport.  For these three, an additional exam is necessary.   Paige’s scout group receives government funding for their two week camp each summer.  There is one stipulation for receiving this subsidy.  The leaders must ensure that the program consists of five hours of Sport each day.  This past Spring, as part of the Track and Field component of her Sport class, Paige took her sprinting exam and received a “3”.  This is failing.  Granted, she’s not a jack rabbit but she did run forward.  Shouldn't that be sufficient to at least pass?   I should mention, since Paige would insist, that there were ten other kids who failed the sprinting test (out of 23).  Perhaps their teacher wasn't very good.  

Basketball

A few years ago I joined a basketball club.  Did you know that you need a license to play basketball in Switzerland?   Just because it’s recreational doesn’t mean it isn’t official.  I play in the fourth division and technically speaking, I could work my way up to the pros.  The dream is still alive.   It’s been fun but I really must improve my Schweitzerdeutsch.  At least to the point where I can trash talk.  Early on, I was chastised by our coach when, after our first game, I packed up my things and left.  Nothing special I thought.  Game over.  Time to go home.  At our next training he explained to me that the custom here is to shake hands and greet each other upon arriving and when leaving.  I’d sort of observed this behavior but hadn’t realized it was so…rigidly expected.  Now I know.  To be honest, this is one of the reasons I decided to step out of the cocoon of playing exclusively with the expat gang.  After nine years, it’s time to take our assimilation to the next level and, clearly, I must study their customs more closely.

Learning German

Learning a language when you’re old as dirt is generally pretty difficult.  Learning two languages simultaneously is a huge stretch, even for the most motivated, and make no mistake about it, Swiss German and High German are two different languages.   I suspect that I will come back to this topic again and again since it’s been such a huge element of our integration here but let me be clear on this.  It’s hard.   If I’d thought that after nine years of living here I’d be where I am now I’d have heaved a huge sigh of disappointment.   My German is okay, I’m classified as B2,  but it’s a far cry from fluency and I still can only barely understand Swiss German.  It gives me some comfort knowing that, as an American, the expectation bar in the eyes of others is extremely low.   Americans are assumed to know two words, danke schön and gesundheit (which doesn’t mean God bless you), so when I actually hold a conversation with someone they think I’m a genius.   A veritable polyglot.  They’ve no idea  how hard I’ve worked for  this measly B2.   Not to make excuses but a significant disadvantage to learning German while working at a multinational is that our lingua franca is English.  German is not the default and as strange as it sounds,  one must be intentional about speaking German, even in a German speaking country.  Which brings me to lunch.  Once I attained a certain competence level there was a temptation to hold meetings in German, especially when I was the only non-native speaker.  The problem was that usually I was supposed to be leading the meetings and I just couldn’t do it unless speaking English.  I needed the confidence  that was, for me anyway, attached to my mother tongue.   While I really wanted to learn German, I had a job to do so I ditched that idea and decided to use lunch for this purpose and, to make it most effective, this meant one-on-one.  I therefore built a rotation of colleagues who were kind and patient enough to speak with me and I discovered a terrific side benefit.  I got to know them personally.  For the most part, we didn’t discuss work.  We discussed family, hobbies, travel, pets and even, as my skills improved, politics.  Politics is an area that really tests you.  The vocabulary of course but more significantly, the subtleties.   The shouting at Fox News and MSNBC may have drowned out the subtleties but I don’t identify with the extremes so when I want to express my views I need to communicate the nuances.   I’m still not there quite yet but I’m much more inclined to dive in now and search for the words as I get going.  

Swiss schools

Our youngest daughter, Paige, starts school again tomorrow.  She’s twelve and is beginning the seventh grade.   Since she was only three when we moved here we put her in the Swiss school system from the beginning.   In the “How to assimilate” guide book, this would be recommendation #1.   Saves quite a bit of money too.  The primary alternative is the International School of Basel, aka the Expat Cocoon.  We experienced this option as well since our son, who was thirteen and without German when we arrived, graduated there.  In 2013, the Basel public schools implemented a “harmonization” program and Paige’s school year was the first affected.  In a way, it was comforting to be involved in something in which we were as much in the dark as the local parents.  The most immediate impact was that Primary School was extended two years,  to and including sixth grade, meaning the tracking determination was delayed two years.  The program’s goal is to bring all of the cantons into pedagogical harmony.  Common Core comes to Switzerland, minus the NEA bitching.  The details are beyond a mere blog but for anyone who’s interested I recommend “Going Local – your guide to Swiss schooling” by Margaret Oertig.  Here in Basel, it’s available at Bergli books (http://www.bergli.ch/100/con_liste.asp?prono=72) but can be found elsewhere, including Amazon.   For our daughter, the significance of seventh grade is that she’s now moved onto the next step, what would be called Middle School in the US.  What makes it different from the US is that she’s now been tracked.  Again, I leave it to Margaret to explain what this means but Paige is feeling pretty grown up right now.

Deregistration

We deregistered our son earlier this summer.  He’s been a university student in the US the past four years but we kept him registered so he could work here during the summers and in case he decided to locate here after finishing school.  In May, he graduated and took a job in Houston so he’s now officially off the family dole and will not return except as a tourist.  The decision to deregister him was emotional for me.  It’s an official recognition of his moving on and from a residency permit perspective it’s a one-way street.  If he later decides to come back to work he’ll have to manage it himself.  Our residency status makes no difference.  I know this because I tried to do this for our oldest daughter and it’s just not possible.   What surprised me about the deregistration process was how easy it was.  You simply fill out a form on-line (https://secure.bs.ch/web/bdm/Wohnen/An-Abmeldung-Umzug/Wegzug-vom-Kanton-Basel-Stadt-Formular.html?mgnlFormToken=sauTiRBbEYZkH7BJYV65gu73h9qdE29t) and pay a small fee.    Shortly thereafter you receive an official confirmation that allows to cancel the obligatory health insurance (a CHF300/month savings, we’re getting richer by the minute).   The last step is then filing the final tax declaration.  I assume that there’s more to it if the whole family is leaving but for a single family member it’s so simple you could almost do it by accident.  

Swiss citizenship

I took a Swiss citizenship course last year.   We must wait yet another year to begin the process (residency requirement reduced from 12 to 10 years in 2016) but I thought the course would be fun and it was.  Unlike the US, Switzerland has no Jus soli law (Latin: right of the soil) which grants the right of citizenship to anyone born in the country.   It doesn’t matter how many generations of your family were born here, someone needs to get the citizenship ball rolling.  Only about 2% of the roughly one million people (out of eight million total) who have been in Switzerland long enough to apply have done so.  In response, the government has initiated some measures, this course being one of them.  Ironically, six weeks into the class the Swiss collectively, but narrowly, voted to restrict immigration.  This didn’t affect us as we already had our “C” permits (like a green card in the US) but it was fascinating to see this issue from both sides.  All of the others in the class were similarly legal and it made for some interesting discussions.  I was the only citizen of a G8 country (the Russian lady would’ve counted until Putin invaded the Crimea) and as an American I (not proudly) admit to a certain smug tendency to assume that this ballot wasn’t meant for us anyway.  The class included a guy from the Congo who came here by accident 22 years ago and a Croatian couple who’ve been here since 1987 and whose three children were all born here.  The others were from Turkey (several), China, Portugal, Serbia, Greece and Colombia.  Citizenship requires a language test (written and speaking), knowledge of Swiss history and government and demonstration of assimilation.  People ask me often if we’ll apply if we’re still here in 2018 and it seems like a no brainer, not so much for Lisa and I as for Paige.  You can never have too many options and someone needs to get the ball rolling.

Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute

Lisa’s employer, The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (http://www.swisstph.ch/),  is a fascinating place.  As their vision statement notes, they “seek to achieve significant improvements of human health and well-being through a better understanding of disease and health systems and acting on this knowledge”.    Key is the last part of the statement, “ and acting on this knowledge”.   While they’re largely an academic institution, their position is that studying diseases alone is not sufficient.  They want to use the knowledge gained to have an impact.   I suspect that this is why their Travel Safety documents refer to their business trips as “missions”.   Speaking of safety, as the nature of the work means significant project work in developing countries,  the emphasis in their safety training is quite different than what I’ve become accustomed to in industry.  Lisa’s training focused not on hard hats and safety glasses but instead on topics like the benefits of Durallin impregnated mosquito netting and clear instructions for what to do if a Tsetse fly escapes in the lab.  Some of the training is logical (always register with your embassy and if a coup d’état develops, contact them immediately) while other pointers are useful tidbits I would not have otherwise known (avoid Russian aircraft, they tend to be overloaded).   In addition to the survival tips, Lisa’s work has taught her much about writing NGO research grants, maneuvering around Africa (Tunisia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Chad so far) and how to find motivated, diligent field workers while minimizing dependency on government officials who’ve gained their positions via patronage instead of competence.

Lisa doing field work in Chad

Job hunting in Switzerland

In 2009, when we decided to stay here, Lisa began looking for a job.  She’s a veterinarian, specifically a horse vet.  She’s never even tended to our own house pets (save the kitchen table spaying of the Australian Shepherd twenty-five years ago but that’s another story).   For a variety of reasons, she determined at the outset that this was a good time to break from her clinical past and try something new.  My employer arranged for a consultant to help her, a nice young German woman named Petra.  Right from the beginning, however,  Petra was convinced that Lisa’s only hope was in clinical practice, never mind that Lisa told her repeatedly that she didn’t want to do that.  In Petra’s mind, Lisa’s wishes were irrelevant and trivial details.  Strange coming from a 32 year old former post doc with a baby and no idea what she wanted to do with her own life, but I digress.  Lisa’s view was that this was a chance for a change, her opportunity for a glimpse into the corporate world, the land of milk and honey.  Finally, she would understand why Dilbert is funny.  Petra was persistent, though, and didn’t give up on the vet idea until she learned that most of the surrounding cantons didn’t recognize Lisa’s US veterinary degree.   Another funny little Swiss thing but in this case it worked to our advantage.  Forced off plan, Petra had no choice but to do what Lisa wanted and soon arranged several interviews in Basel and the surrounding area.    Within two months, Lisa had two offers but the position that she ultimately accepted was one she found herself via friends in our neighborhood (another reason to assimilate).   This was as a Scientific Collaborator at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and it couldn’t have worked out better.  The projects are fascinating.  Her colleagues are interesting.   Her boss is great.  Along the way, she picked up a Masters in Epidemiology and now, more than five years later, she’s loving it more than ever.   And she gets to take our dog to work with her.

Going local

In 2009 our three year expat contract came to an end so we had to decide whether to stay or return to the US.    Staying meant that we had to “localize”, a term that sounds like some sort of creepy Swiss government mind reprogramming thing.   Certain that this wasn’t the case we decided to go down this road but then one morning in the shower I started singing, Trittst im Morgenrot daher, Seh' ich dich im Strahlenmeer, Dich, du Hocherhabener, Herrlicher!  Oh crap, I thought.  Maybe it was.   Maybe I’d start walking with my hands clasped behind my back and telling complete strangers on the tram how they should behave.   Fighting back the momentary panic, I soldiered on.  In fact, mostly what localizing meant was that we’d have less money going forward.  As anyone who’s been fortunate enough to have an expat contract knows, they’re an arrangement through which companies throw unnecessarily large quantities of money at people to get them to move somewhere.  In this case, essentially paradise on earth.  Paid housing.  Paid car (including gas).   Plane tickets back to home country.  Cost of living adjustment.  International assignment allowance.  It’s ridiculous really.  I’d have done it for none of that but I certainly wasn’t going to turn it down.  It essentially paid the college tuition of my oldest daughter.   Localizing meant an immediate weaning from the expat teat and living like all the other riff-raff around here.  That is, the riff-raff inhabitants of perhaps the richest country on earth.   The financial aspect  was not the deciding factor however.   The most significant consideration was psychological.  Staying here meant joining the Swiss social security and retirement system.  It meant getting local health insurance.   It meant no lifeline back to the US.  As we began thinking through the implications, it dawned on us that we were about to become, gasp, immigrants.

Dogs

Three years after we landed in Switzerland the dog died.    She was nearly fifteen so not entirely unexpected but sad nonetheless.   I accepted Lisa’s (wife) contention that given the circumstances (she had just started her first job here) the time wasn’t right to re-dog but two and a half years later, after things had settled down a bit, I was able to convince her that we (she) could manage it.  The question was, which breed?   As adults, we’d had an Australian Shepherd, a Border Collie and a Jack Russell.  I remember thinking that maybe, since at that point we’d been in Switzerland almost six years, we should get a classic Swiss breed.  For instance, an Appenzeller.   Or a Bernese Mountain dog.  Or a St. Bernard,  complete with iconic barrel slung from neck .   No, after a half second’s consideration it was clear that Swiss dogs are too big, at least for us.    We lived in a flat, not on a farm or the side of a mountain.  After some thought, we decided on a classically un-Swiss breed and what could be less Swiss than a Corgi?  It turned out that there was only one active Corgi breeder in the entire country but the dog gods were smiling on us and while Lisa was conveniently away in Africa, I learned that the breeder even had a litter.  She was in Interlaken, a town most famous as the launch point for trips up to the Jungfraujoch, and off my daughter and I went.  Making a long story short, we selected a puppy and named her Ellie.  Getting a dog here is not only expensive, it’s  complicated.  And there are a few rules.    And with rules comes training so in spite of our experience as previous dog owners  as well as Lisa’s professional status (she’s a veterinarian), someone in the family had to attend the requisite training. The course is known as  Sachkundenachweis für Hundehalter, which translates as dog owner certificate of competence and is a result of a new law that went into effect in 2008.  The good news was that since our Jack Russell had been registered here we placed out of the classroom training and needed only to complete the practical training.  I suppose that the objective is to get everyone on the same behavioral sheet of music and I didn’t mind doing so as it was a nice activity to do with my daughter.   So, I signed us up and the three of us (Ellie too of course) reported one nice, bright Saturday morning in March for the first of our six training sessions.   Turns out that with our first three dogs Lisa and I did everything completely wrong.  For one, we were speaking the wrong language.  Dogs obey German much better.  “Sit” sounds too much like a suggestion, but “Platz!” Well, you see.  Much less room for interpretation.  We also learned that training aids such as shock collars and invisible fences are cruel and therefore forbidden.   The law states that dogs are not to be treated like livestock.  Tell that to the farmers in Lucerne, Appenzell, Jura and Bern who seem to do just such a thing, including eating them. ( http://www.newsweek.com/not-just-christmas-swiss-urged-stop-eating-cats-and-dogs-287378 ).  In any event, we’ve no plans to eat our Corgi and after demonstrating our competence as dog owners we’ve all settled in together quite nicely.

Ellie, during a Christmas family hike in Zermatt.