More Melting than Fondue

Swiss culture is a bit odd in a good way. The country is obviously small (the size of Maryland) and landlocked between France to the west, Germany to the north, Austria to the east and Italy to the south. So the Swiss culture is heavily influenced by those others. The western 30% of the country is Swiss-French, the southeastern 10% is Swiss-Italian, and the 60% in the middle--with Zürich as the economic and cultural capital--is Swiss-German (please forgive the lecture, I didn't know any of this before we planned to move). Swiss-French and -Italian are spoken as in France and Italy but to make things difficult for visitors, Swiss-German is actually a completely separate dialect based on standard German (what they call High German) but so much more guttural that Germans can't understand it. In fact our relocation agent told us that when the Swiss speak High German (which they apparently rarely do), the accent is so thick that Germans mistake it for the Swiss dialect when it's actually only an accent. Needless to say, when Swiss actually speak Swiss-German everyone else is completely lost.

Somewhat interestingly, Swiss-German is a spoken dialect only, not written. Everything in Switzerland from the newspapers to billboards to handwritten notes are in High German. Until recently Swiss were required in school to learn two languages, so most everyone studied written High German and spoken Swiss-German and French. A few years ago the schools began requiring a third language; the Swiss-Italians are now upset because most kids elect English instead of Italian as their third language.

Since Steph and I don't speak any German (yet), how does this really affect us? Well, the fascinating part is the cultural linguistic blend. Hello is always "Grüezi" (GROOT-zee, Swiss-German) instead of "Guten Tag" (High German). Thank you is just as often "Merci" (French) as "Danke" (German). Goodbye is most often "Ciao" (Italian) and only sometimes "Auf Wiedersehen" (German). We ate dinner at a tapas restaurant earlier this week and the menu was translated from Spanish to German; we started the conversation with our server in (poor) German, she quickly switched to OK English, after which I realized that I should have simply started in Spanish, which later didn't matter because none of the tapas bar staff spoke Spanish anyway.

Stephanie's office is another kick. We ate dinner last night with three of her new work colleagues,from Britain, Portugal and Australia. Working for Hyatt International, they've lived and traveled all over the world. With Steph's and my combined knowledge of English, French, and Spanish--and international soccer--and our passable international travel experience, we're just barely able to keep up. Political correctness and decorum are out the window as most conversations are spent good-naturedly yet thoroughly ripping on other countries and cultures, peppered with a healthy dose of profanity between cigarettes (smoking here is a topic for another day). The beer is German, the fries are French, and the espresso is Italian. Fun stuff.

But language here is not really a problem. Almost everybody in Zürich (the "big city") speaks English very well; things are a bit spottier 30 minutes away in Home Sweet Kloten. But here's a classic example of international communication. I bought and boxed a new townie bike (cheapo for getting around town) in Chicago and carried it to Zürich, i.e., we didn't pack and ship it. I half re-assembled it on Monday before realizing that both my tools and mechanical know-how were lacking. I found a bike shop nearby in Kloten (don't ask how, but having lots of extra time helps tremendously) and brought the bike yesterday morning. The mechanic spoke as much English as I speak German--exactly none. But when you walk into a repair shop with a bike that has obvious parts missing, and then you open a bag and lay those parts on the table, and then you pantomime putting the parts in place and both people start laughing, getting what you want doesn't take long. And in fact yesterday it took only 20 minutes and I'm now dangerously mobile..!