Every country has its quirks. There’s no doubt. When I lived in Canada, you could only buy
alcohol at a liquor store. In Ontario,
they went even further and beer was bought at the beer store (a store which was
literally a giant beer cooler) and alcohol at the liquor store. Liquor stores were never open on Sundays or
holidays (they’ve since changed that some in the tourist areas) When I lived in Germany, it was full of
quirks. Too many to mention actually,
and I’ve tried to forget most of them.
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| The Great Beer walk in cooler that is the Ontario Beer store. |
Switzerland is no exception and has it’s
own quirks. For all intents and
purposes, I consider Switzerland a collection of small towns. The entire population of Switzerland is just
over 7.5 million people, even by Canadian standards, that’s not a lot of
people. The biggest city is Zurich which
has about 500,000 people, or about the size of the German town I lived in which
everyone complained was so small.
Yes, Switzerland is efficient and clean and
I love it for that. For the most part,
it’s quirks don’t bother me because what I love about living here, far
outweighs it’s quirks. So, what are some
of Switzerland’s quirks (or more specifically, Switaly…)
-
laundry day. I’ve gone on about this before, but the idea
of a set laundry day is… quirky (not to mention inconvenient) I’m “lucky” because my laundry day is Sunday
morning: a day I stand a chance to be home.
I’ve heard of friends and colleagues who have their laundry day on a
Wednesday afternoon from 1-5pm and have had to take time off to do their
laundry until they can negotiate a better time with their landlord or
neighbors.
-
Car inspection- so far, everything about transferring my life
to Switzerland has been pretty seamless (couldn’t say the same about Germany…)
however, transferring my German car to Switzerland was a pain in the ass. Majorly.
My favorite part of the ordeal was this:
In order to go thru Swiss inspection, they first needed to have my
engine shampooed. You know, so they
could inspect a clean engine. My car is
2 years old.
-
Quiet time- it’s not weird to
have a quiet time at night to not to disturb your neighbor. What’s weird is to have the activities
specifically listed. For instance, I’m
allowed to have a shower in the middle of the night, but only if it’s less than
10 minutes. And a late night bath? Don’t
even think of it!
Not all of Switzerland’s
quirks are bad. For instance, a few
months ago, one of my friends called me in a panic. In her jetlagged state, she dropped some
important papers in the garbage. Would
I be so kind to come and help her fish them out. Now, Swiss garbage, in it’s goal to be neat
and clean, drops from street level to a pit below the sidewalk. Knowing this, I prepared us just the tool for
the occasion (thank you 1 year of college mechanical engineering) The tool I came up with was foolproof. Almost.
If not for the pouring rain and the wet papers in the garbage and the
extra sticky lint roller not being so sticky in the rain, it would have
worked. I suggested calling the city in
the morning to see if they had any solutions.
The next day, she gets on the phone to the city and they tell her “well,
usually we pick up the garbage on Wednesday, but we’ll be there in an hour to
help you” 2 friendly workers came out,
unloaded the garbage and helped her pick thru it. She was really apologetic for calling them
out and they would have none of it. They
said they got calls every week of people accidentally dropping keys, passports,
you name it. In what other city in the
world would this happen in? Exactly none,
that’s where. If you dared to that in
Vancouver, they’d laugh at you and tell you to dive in.
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| 2 broomsticks taped together for length- extra sticky lint roller at the end so documents could be rescued. Flawless- almost |
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