On Communication and Cleanliness and Being American.

Here in Switzerland I have struggled with communication on two levels:

1) I don't speak German. I don't really even speak enough German to tell people that I don't speak German. And even if I did speak German, Swiss German is the dialect spoken here, which is really quite different from High German, even to my untrained ears. When people start to speak to me in any sort of German, I go all deer-in-the-headlights and just totally freeze, which isn't super helpful to anyone. In one disastrous phone conversation, the person on the other line ran through at least three languages (German, Italian, and French that I could tell) before finally hanging up. It seems that my response is the same whether it is a live person or an inanimate object: it took me three weeks to get up the presence of mind to use the coffee machine here in the lab because it kept on yelling at me in German, and I had no idea what to do! I even carried a letter around for a week looking for a post office where I could buy a stamp, only to finally discover that the envelope had prepaid postage. Sometimes I am so talented that I amaze myself!

2) I have somewhat limited internet access, so communication with friends and family has been specifically challenging. Work is the only place where I get internet, but I share an office with five other people, so chances are pretty good that there is someone else in the office at all times. Therefore, I am relegated to sitting in the hallways to catch the wireless (which doesn't work in most of the rooms).

And this is where the cleanliness comes in... Here in Switzerland, things are CLEAN. For example, even on a walk in the middle of the woods, you will come across at least half a dozen pet waste stations (with free bags!; see picture below). In fact, I have counted the number that I see on my way to the train station (8 minutes walk): six!

Pet waste station. Of course the bags are bright pink.

So, every evening like clockwork, a man cleans the floors of my building with some sort of riding floor cleaner (similar to a riding lawnmower, but for tile floors). My building has a large atrium, so you can hear this machine and its echo basically everywhere. And the man who drives this machine loves to sing and whistle to himself (which also echos) for the whole two hours that he is cleaning the floors every night. Of course, I'm glad that he's a happy floor cleaning man, but this two hours of cleaning directly overlaps with the best time for me to talk with people in the US, so machine noise and singing has been the background for most of my calls.

One evening, miraculously the entire office was empty during these golden hours of calling opportunity, so I settled in at my desk and started chatting with my sister. And then my office door opened, and at least five different cleaning people came at me! Two were wiping down the desks and taking out the trash, then one vacuumed all around me, and then two mopped me in to my desk so I couldn't move at all! It didn't matter that I was on an international phone call- the office must be cleaned! I apparently can't escape the reach of the cleaning people and their loud machines...


In addition to my language issues, I have decided that I will probably never really fit in, because I look hopelessly like an American. Every morning, I stand at the train station and look around me and realize that I am the brightest thing that I see. My jacket and backpack are both bright sky blue, which I didn't think was super bright at the time of purchase, but now I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe not a sore thumb, but definitely a bright thumb. Then one evening I caught sight of someone wearing a bright green coat- and then realized that she was wearing white tennis shoes and jeans. Clearly also an American. Also interesting, at the party I went to on Friday night, you could literally look at people's socks and tell where they were from: white socks=American, dark socks=European.

One final note about Switzerland for now: My advisor, Kris McNeill, gave his Einfuhrungsvorlesung at ETH this week, which was basically his introductory lecture to the ETH community. He hosted an apero (happy hour) after the seminar, and was warned in advance that there would be some homeless persons that would show up, as the seminar was given in a large public building and was advertised. They did indeed show up- not just for the food and wine, but also for the talk! Apparently in Switzerland, if you're going to go to an apero that you really have no business to go to, you at least sit through the talk (in English) that is associated with the goodies. Such politeness! It really entertained me.

Anyways, happy Friday! Looks like the weather will be nice this weekend, so hopefully I will have some adventures to share next week!