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.