Hair of the Dog, Pt. 1

Big news in Zürich city this August on multiple fronts! First our little neighborhood Hungarian specialty foods store started selling freshly baked bread, a remarkable event indeed well worth the newspaper coverage received. Quite a shrewd move, since we (and I can only imagine other locals) didn't frequent the store very often. After all, once fully stocked with an industrial-sized tube of authentic paprika paste and bottle of Unicum bitter herbal liquor (Hungary's answer to Jägermeister, which actually didn't need to be answered) we're set for several years of goulash dinner parties.

But a tiny new bakery is entirely a different matter. We stopped during Saturday morning's walk with Hobbes and tested the new wares, the family sharing a single Nussschnecke. Yes, that's spelled correctly with three consecutive s's, literally it means "nut snail" or what we'd call a cinnamon roll (that's Zimtschnecke) except not so sweet, with nuts instead of cinnamon sugar. The tasting panel decided it wasn't half bad with one judge in particular voting an emphatic four paws up for this latest neighborhood expansion project. It's now completely unnecessary to walk four minutes downhill to the existing local bakery; it sits on a different Platz after all, practically an altogether different neighborhood!

But our major life change in Zürich this summer appeared as another local business transformed itself. We're incalculably lucky that a Tiersbedarfladen (animal care store) opened up the street (about as far away as the Hungarian bakery) soon after we moved into the neighborhood. Neither groomers nor pet stores are plentiful in Zürich, so lacking a car means a cross-city tram ride trying to rein in Mr. Golden Personality for a grooming, or a return trip from the city's only mall lugging 33 lbs of dog food on one's shoulder. Lamentably our local shop's full potential never quite materialized, instead providing a frustratingly perfect display of typical Zürich customer service: although we tried to buy the exact same specialty dog food every month (and the owner recognized me as a montly customer), she never stocked it but instead asked me to special-order it every time with the lead time varying inexplicably from 3 days to 3 weeks (except when they forgot completely), and at 100 CHF per bag I didn't feel like stocking up. Invariably I'd buy a sometimes similar but usually different food every month, wreaking havoc on poor Hobbes's stomach. So I recently resorted again to the cross-city mall trek, viewing the haul home as good backpacking training.

Apparently that particular service model earned scant repeat business, because the store changed motif significantly a few weeks back. New signage and rearranged decor features the storefront prominently now as a Hundecoiffeur, the dog barber! Details forthcoming!

Abwasserreinigungsanlage, Pt. 2

Ha, I bet you thought I was kidding about that German word until you saw it pictured! You can find anything on Google these days.

Sometimes my inexpensive, nearly-retired, very sweet, gratefully patient Zürich barberess tries to converse with me. It's happened twice now. Of course, I've seen her well over a dozen times already but Zürichers often take a while to warm up to strangers. It didn't help that early in our "relationship" I could barely schedule an appointment via phone in German, so she understandably mistook me for another hapless ex-pat short-timer. But perseverence pays dividends.

Have you ever ordered up a haircut in a foreign language? My initial vocabulary with her consisted of pointing to various areas on my head and instructing kurz (short) or nicht so kurz (not so short). That's actually a big improvement from my first-ever Swiss haircut 20 months ago (!) in Kloten where I communicated through a written note. But she's a professional so the results are always top notch anyway.

I may qualify as her only Under-40 Male in both the age and gender categories. Her clientele consists primarily of gossipy grey-haired ladies using that old-fashioned hair-dryer thingy that sits on your head for 45 minutes (I always politely refuse the hair wash). But once after a particularly lively Schwiizerdütsch gabbing session with a longtime client and subsequent lowering of the hair-dryer thingy on those silver locks, her good mood continued unquenched and she struck up a conversation with the strange new boy. Her Hochdeutsch is quite good, with only a trace of the oftentimes heavy Swiss accent. Both times I unbelievably more or less kept up my end of the conversation. The only problem is that I get nervous and sweat like crazy while she's chatting and cutting my hair. It's excellent real-life practice for me but quite nerve-wracking; my T-shirt feels nearly soaking wet when I finally leave. So what do we talk about?

Well, here's the long answer. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is a standardized system that defines foreign-language aptitude by stepwise levels. The levels advance from A1 (beginner) to A2, B1, B2, C1, up to C2 (indistinguishable from a native speaker). So just for kicks, I'm preparing to take the CEFR 'B1' exam sometime this fall, a level usually requiring about 360-400 hours of study to attain. It's defined:

B1 - Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Amazingly accurate for what I currently can and can't do in German. My barberess and I talk about my original home, how Steph and I came to Zürich, how long we've been here and how long we expect to stay, where we work, vacation plans, and lots of general thoughts on dogs. She has no children and when we start to address the pros and cons of kids vs. dogs, her conversation rolls too fast and I can't maintain comprehension; I end up saying something vacuous at the end like, "Um, ja." That B1 level gets stuck at 'brief explanations of opinions'. B2 is truly fluent 'work-level' aptitude requiring an additional 200 hours of study (five hours a week for almost a year) and I ain't there yet.

So hopefully I'll persevere on the exam this fall. Two English-speaking friends have already experienced the ordeal; the test lasts all day with reading comprehension, listening skills, one-on-one conversation and written grammer sections. I'm a grammar whiz but struggle sometimes with hearing comprehension, especially when they record a voice over a loudspeaker or children talking quickly or traffic noise in the background or something similarly ridiculous. On that note, I should probably sign off. I have some studying to do.

By the way, this post title is Steph's favorite German word as seen on a passing sign during her daily train commute; it means "wastewatertreatmentfacility". My favorite word is ausgezeichnet!, it means "excellent!"

Abwasserreinigungsanlage, Pt. 1

Grüezi mitenand! There's a bit of Swiss-German dialect for you, meaning basically "Hi, everybody!"

In all our 21 months (!) now in Switzerland, I've never blogged on German. But learning Deutsch occupied a major portion of my time particularly in the months before landing a job; a fairly regular lesson schedule kept me sane by providing measurable progress during a difficult adjustment period when everything else seemed in the air.

A long time ago on a work-trip train ride to Milan, Steph randomly chatted with another U.S. ex-pat who recommended a long-distance tutoring program conducted via Skype. Inexpensive at $20/hour and much more flexible than classes, the service hooked me up with a Russian linguistics teacher who spoke six languages, including perfect German after working as a translator in Germany for several years, and former host of a German-food cooking TV show in Russia (?!), now living in North Carolina. We conducted one or two hour-long tutoring sessions per week for over a year, although we unfortunately canceled the lessons recently when her life became too hectic with one feisty toddler and another baby on the way.

For whatever reason, I pick up grammar quicker than most people (German has loads of grammar, rule after rule after rule) but struggle a bit with comprehension; vocabulary requires lots of memorization and speaking smoothly takes lots of practice. Although everything in Zürich and German-speaking Switzerland is written in standard or "high" German, Hochdeutsch, including newspapers, advertising, etc., the Swiss strongly prefer speaking their own dialect, Schwiizerdütsch, a rather unbecoming sing-songy guttural unwritten language unintelligible even to most native Germans (imagine the Muppets' Swedish chef choking on phlegm). Speaking Hochdeutsch is a touchy political issue in Switzerland; although Swiss learn Hochdeutsch in school (to read the newspaper, of course), most locals respond in English if addressed in German so daily "immersion" gains from hearing spoken German are largely unavailable.

The subject is on my mind only because after more than a year, I must be making progress--more or less successfully conducting a full 30-minute German conversation with my barberess last week. She's not shown in the picture above; that's from my still-jobless last summer when the family believed we couldn't afford the average 60 Franc ($55) men's haircut. As evidenced by her concentration, Steph gave the task her best shot but the result still earned a quizzical look from my old Chicago barber when we returned once last summer. Keeping my eyes peeled, I finally located one storefront with the rock-bottom haircut price of 28 Francs, the place I've frequented since. There's only one catch... the barberess doesn't speak English.

OK, I'm cheating now and going to break this post into two parts, although maybe it doesn't deserve it. I'll try to turn over a new leaf: shorter posts more often. You'll have to wait with bated breath to know what Abwasserreinigungsanlage means.