Switzerland 101

Before moving to Switzerland I associated the country with chocolate, secret bank accounts, and murky role in the WWII. Add to that the Alps and the iconic cows (think Milka) and that would be the extent of my knowledge.

For the first time in my life I am living/working in a country of which I know so little, and whose history, culture and society hardly even registered on my map prior to coming here. I was equally a foreigner in Bulgaria and Hungary, but these countries meant something to me through centuries of shared history. It might have been shared at knife- or gun-point most of the time and we might interpret it very differently, but at least there was shared recognition of historical events.

No such thing here. Even living in the UK was very different because I had been so steeped in British literature, language and pretty much anything Britain-related that it never even felt foreign--just quirky, and mostly in a likable kind of way. With Switzerland, there are neither commonalities, nor prior interest, only some vague ideas and stereotypes.

I tried my friend Amazon for some Switzerland 101 resources to boost my shaky knowledge base (it is embarrassing if all of your information about a country comes from a guidebook) but it is surprisingly difficult to find books in English that try to explain Switzerland to foreigners beyond the practical advice on living, working, getting around by train or buying property. Many of the books that the above-mentioned guidebook recommends for further reading are either out of print or strangely expensive (must one be rich to be interested in Switzerland?).

One that I manage to get through a colleague was excellent; it's called Why Switzerland by Johnatan Steinberg and it tries to answer why we should care about Switzerland and what it is that makes it so special. It's a good overview of Swiss society, with chapters on history, culture, religion, etc but the most amazing--and also the most confusing--was the one about the voting. I have never heard of a voting system so complicated. I may need Swiss voting for dummies but in the meantime I am going to try something called Swiss Watching--yet another Brit promising to unmask Switzerland beyond banks and skis. It's got raving reviews on Amazon, was Financial Times 2010 book of the year, so even if it is half as entertaining and informative as it is branded, it must be a good read. I wonder if it will cover voting?

If anyone can manage snow...

...that should be the Swiss, right? The country of Alps, Jura and Saleve gets plenty of it every year and lives off it quite nicely, too, so you would not expect any surprises there.

And yet, Geneva was plunged into absolute chaos few days ago when it snowed for 24 hours, resulting in about 30cm of snow cover. Traffic was mad, people spent hours stuck in jams, buses were completely out of schedule if they came at all. Wednesday morning TPG decided to cancel all buses and trolleybuses, then changed the decision few hours later, but nobody had any idea when or if the buses were going.

On the French side it was even "better"--our prefecture simply decided to cancel both of the buses that link us to Geneva, and we were left to either navigate uncleaned roads, or walk to work.

What was that all about?! I heard a few explanations:

1. The Swiss don't use salt or grit on roads (for environmental reasons or not to damage roads) so cleaning is very difficult
2. Geneva does not typically get that much snow so the city was caught by surprise

I would venture a third: maybe we just live in the wrong part of Switzerland? We consider the Swiss the paragon of efficiency and punctuality, and Switzerland as the place where things just work smoothly (at least that was my opinion before moving). But that might be Switzerland on the other side of the rostigraben, and not Suisse Romande? Here we could easily slip into a discussion on what it really means to be Swiss or if there is such a thing as being Swiss, but we won't--not on the account of 30cm of snow.

There is a silver lining, though--possibly because they don't use salt on the roads, the snow remains clean and very white, so we've had a truly fairy-tale landscape these days. The funniest thing is that I haven't enjoyed snow this much in decades, traffic jams and all...

What's disability to you?

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and my colleagues have just launched the first in the series of videos in which people with disabilities talk about what it means to them. This is the story of Faustina from Tanzania--I think she is fabulous.