Secret of Our Unpopularity

While the cultural and social adjustments one must make when moving overseas are significant, certain actions may more smoothly facilitate one's eventual adoption by the local population. For example, learning the local language or dialect, purchasing or displaying affinity for local products, or attempting to mirror some personality traits or mannerisms in interactions with new local acquaintances. Conversely, one must remain diligent not to inadvertantly exhibit any cuturally inappropriate actions. Unfortunately, despite our little family's mighty strivings to adapt since our arrival in Switzerland last November, I discovered last week an incredible faux pas we've been committing. And one not limited to Switzerland, but consistent in virtually every country across the globe. Yes, in fact, nearly every expatriation problem we've encountered can now be traced back to one simple cause.

You probably guessed it already: for the past ten months we've been washing our clothes with water softener instead of soap.

It's amazing what you learn when you finally slow down long enough to pay attention. We've more or less settled on one brand of every household item in our extended need for simplicity. Our dishwasher detergent is Calgon, available in powder or fancy Express Tab form. We settled on the Calgon Express Tab because it's what we'd found in our temporary apartment way back in Kloten in November. Calgon also makes Express Tabs for the washing machine, so we simply bought those too. Voila! Kein Problem.

After repeating this easy habit about every six weeks for ten months, I finally became confused last week in the grocery store. My understanding of German continues to slowly improve, and after searching in three local stores I couldn't find the correct Calgon laundry soap, only Calgon water softener (Swiss mountain-fed water is quite hard and all appliances require periodic doses of special salts to reduce scale). I returned home empty handed to double-check the nearly empty laundry tab box. Hmm, wouldn't you know, it looked disturbingly similar to the grocery boxes. And the harder I looked, the more conspicuously absent any reference to soap became. Only a picture of a washing machine and references to water. And after sitting down and painstakingly translating the entire box, the true horror finally struck home--Calgon laundry detergent tabs don't exist, just dishwashing detergent tabs and laundry water softener tabs.

Steph and I enjoyed about the hardest laugh we've had since moving overseas. In retrospect, our clothes never came out dirty but likewise they were never particularly cleanly fragrant. I always chalked it up to European environmentalism and relative austerity with household chemicals. I returned to the store to purchase Ariel brand laundry soap tabs, and the next load of clothes' resulting flowery fragrant scent nearly knocked me over. So much for austerity. Luckily the drier sheets have had some pleasant scent to them, or we might not have had any friends over here at all.