I had an epiphany this week about another of the many ways I had gotten spoiled in Switzerland and had adapted to living there. There have been many things that have taken quite some re-adjustment, such as forgetting how floors are counted in the US and always ending a floor above where I want to be because I think that the ground floor is not the same thing as the first floor, having trouble with understanding dates because I can't remember if it's day-month-year or month-day-year here, getting confused when calendars start on Sunday instead of Monday, etc.
The most recent example is grass. I have been looking forward to the snow melting and the start of spring here in Ann Arbor. But, for the past two weeks, I've been wondering why on earth it's just so ugly here. The snow melting didn't provide the relief that I was subconsciously expecting, which I was puzzled by.
Then I realized: when it's actually cold, like it is here in Ann Arbor, the grass DIES. So, when the snow melts, it's not automatically green again. The snow melting is not the same thing as spring.
In Switzerland, the grass is never not green. The cold and snow in Zurich just don't last long enough, so the snow melting actually improves things in a way it doesn't here.
I feel like an idiot for forgetting that grass dies (I am from Minnesota after all!), but it just means that I'm looking even more forward to the start of spring!
