Momentum

Being in Switzerland puts me in the middle of places I have only read about. I haven't traveled outside of Switzerland since landing in Zurich in August. My wife and kids went to London over a break, so they are enjoying this benefit without me. I haven't been able to take advantage of where I am located for a few reasons, but this week, I am in Athens, Greece, at a software conference called "Momentum". And, while I haven't yet made it out to see the awesome sites and to take photos of the inspring and very old landmarks, I did have to wonder what the graphic designer of this directional sign was thinking.

I can say I have been eating more food here than I would in Switzerland. Maybe the graphic designer has been, too.

Worte

I don't usually get hung up on words, labels, names, their meanings. I have a wife named Kris. I have a son named August, born in June (and although we call him Gus, it is most often pronounced "Goose" here when they see it spelled like this). I have a dog named Bear. It isn't intentional, but it is something I notice. Usually my noticeables land me in a restroom. This time, the toilet humor is still here, but minimized.

Here are a few words from my travels that make my children giggle:
Ausfahrt. It means Exit... well of course. I can't get the kids to stop saying this in public, asking strangers what does ausfahrt mean, commenting "you smell like an ausfahrt."
Manegg. It's a town in Zurich. I'll take a picture if I come across one of these eggs.
Moosegg. It's a restaurant in Rueschilikon. Most of my colleagues have eaten there, or had a nice beer on the patio.
Stonga. I don't know if I'm spelling this right. Probably not. It means a small draw of beer, any beer, just small.
Panache. I also don't know if I'm spelling this right. It means a half-and-half mixture of beer and what I would call Sprite, but my Swiss colleagues also have a brand called Citroen. They do this to limit the alcohol intake, but still enjoy the social time required to drink a whole one.
Au. It's a town. It is pronounced like "Ow." It's fun to hear the female train recording say it as we're pulling into the station. "Ow." "Quit kicking her, Gus."
And, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Chuchichaeschtli just to be respectful. Each ch sound is the back of throat ugula grinding. It means kitchen cupboard.

And an unrelated few worte... Today marks my zwanzig Jahre Hochzeitstag. Happy anniversary, Kris.

Coffee

Mmmmmm... Swiss coffee. In the company where I work, and specifically in Switzerland, coffee is an event. It's a social gathering. It's where deals get done. It's a time to sip, and discuss. Not so much in the same company in the US.

For me and Swiss coffee, I get wired, incredibly bad breath, and yellow teeth. The teeth situation seems ok for most because most people also have yellow fingers from smoking. Maybe they don't realize that, but I notice my teeth every time I brush them and wonder just how the heck that happens so quickly after visiting a dentist. It's the coffee.

The coffee here is instantaneously grounded. They pour in these awesome roasted beans into the top and walk away. Then, lines of people press buttons, juggle cups or glasses of all sizes, and loud grinding noises with wonderful aromas fill the air. Well, these noises fill the air just underneath the non-stop talking and chatter in the cafe where people rotate in and out every few minutes drinking, discussing, dealing, socializing, gathering.

I have also started drinking far too much espresso. I tried switching to Ristretto, which I finally learned is a smaller shot of espresso, but I guess it's also a little stronger than espresso. Lucky for me I was hitting that button twice to get a reasonable sized blast. Little did I know... until later when I was blasting a gut in the restroom.

My Swiss colleagues enjoy asking me politely "So, do you have espresso machines where you work in the US?" They already know the answer. It's really just an inside joke to them. I play along with American politeness. While our coffee resembles cat urine to them, it also makes them shaky. They switch to tea when they are in the US. An American coffee's taste is just unbearable, but the shakes are also too distracting. Swiss coffee to me doesn't resemble a cat's urine. I quite like it. For me, it does however produce interesting results other than cafe chatter.

Mit Kohlensaure

When I first started traveling here for monthly meetings, I always enjoyed water options. In America, bottled water is now everywhere. I am old enough to remember the laughter of soft drink distributors with their new lines of bottled water. These dumb people are buying water... in plastic bottles! What's next? Oxygen in a can? ha ha ha...

Here, there are water options even from a counter top dispenser. It seems the Swiss love their carbonated water. I do, too. I'm told it is best for digestion, or even a stomach ache, helps with gastronomic needs. For me, it creates certain problems. Room temperature, cold, and even soda water, or water with carbonation are the dispenser options here.

When I first started drinking wasser mit kohlensaure, I just thought it was a slightly salty soda water.

me: Wasser, bitte? (I am requesting a bottled water from someone behind a counter)
clerk: Mit Kohlensaure?
me: Uh... Sprechen Sie Englisch?
clerk: Mit gas?
me: I'm sorry?
clerk: Do you want your water with or without gas?
me: Uh, with, I suppose.

For my non-American readers, if you haven't already noticed, you should understand I have quite a juvenile sense of humor. My humor du jour is most often targeted at the age level of my children, because my delight is in making them laugh. This includes the easy-laugh bodily functions. Well, I'll just be direct, I never matured here because I still laugh uncontrollably.

So, imagine me at 3pm, having chugged cup after cup of carbonated water, and the noises my internals are making. If you multiply this times the super-strength dehydrating Swiss coffee I was drinking earlier in the day, the cacophony of accoustics rumbling from my insides are an incredible distraction to my co-workers. Not to mention my frequency of restroom trips. Even in the restrooms, I am faced with choices of being very loud, and laughing at myself, or trying to find ways of being discreet. I most often choose the former, because that's just me. Mit Kohlensaure.

Awash in sh...

I now work daily in a building I've visited almost monthly for the past two years. The food in the cafeteria is really really good, as is the coffee. The restrooms are a bit different. In public, "WC" marks "water closet". In most cases, including in this office, they hide toilets in closet-sized rooms with locks on the doors. There's no need to listen to a gut blast in the stall next to you, nor ask the chap to hand you toilet paper from his spare roll. Here, you're in your own room. Just you, and a toilet, an annex from a sink room.

What absolutely shocked me yesterday about these rooms in this particular office building, what I hadn't noticed in two years, was a new sign. An instructional sign. Apparently, if one sits on one of these toilets, and uses one's elbow to press against the flusher, one finds oneself awash. Release it, and a happy blow-dry follows. After laughing out loud alone inside one of these rooms, just me, the toilet, the new sign, and a process I have never experienced, I walked into a shared space where someone was brushing their teeth. Of course, odd looks ensued, but it was a two-way odd exchange. Who brushes their teeth in a space where my post-process ass was blowing around???

Observations on quality

I am learning what is meant by quality. I feel the only way I can do this is to have something to compare. Not just chocolates or watches. I mean, these are givens because they are the most widely known reputation about Switzerland.

The following are a few observations I can readily think of, but also what I have observed within my first 10 days:

• If I compare the quality of my house with the quality of my rented apartment, I notice a few things. My house has lots and lots of shortcuts to maximize the builder's profits while also reducing his expenses. Lots and lots of shortcuts. I was so frustrated at how many shortcuts I noticed after we bought it, I now put home builders in nearly the lowest "trustability" category, just above Enterprise Content Management software sales vendors. My rented apartment has concrete floors that emanate heat in the winters, well insulated walls and windows (almost sound-proof when they are closed), stone tile floors in the bathrooms, a sunken stone tile shower floor where the water just disappears over the edge of something, and towel warmers in the bathroom. But the most curious of all to me is that all cabinets and drawers (and even some building doors) have these strange springs on their hinges or rollers that allow you to fling it to a point, and it closes the rest of the way on its own... very very quietly. Considering I used to awake early on weekends to someone opening and shutting cabinets without springs, constantly rummaging for something, this is a fantastic benefit. I can also understand why these are a necessity in Switzerland, considering QNQ ("quiet neighbor quotient") is a valuable score to maintain.
• I've noticed a difference in cheese availability. Though I haven't tried this in somewhere like Wisconsin, I used to pay tons at wine & cheese bars in NY or Kansas. I would seek them out, just for the opportunity to ask them for cheese flights, to experience various appellations while resting comfortably on my rump, and to read the interesting provenance always so neatly printed for me in colorful language (English!) ... Here, I can go to almost any grocery store and find variations of cheeses I have never seen nor tasted, nicely portioned and lain in order of stink level, from soft to hard, from very mild to horribly poopy. I am working my way through all, just not all at once. Refrigerator space is a premium, and I will never be able to put in a can of diet coke and pull out a diet-coke-ice-cube-in-a-can. At least not without the ozone police handing me citations.
• Everything here comes with a two-year automatic warranty. OMG - What? How is this possible?? I can just bring it back and get another one if it breaks? This must be built into the price of everything, because the actuarial hedging on something like that... either that, or these folks are very very confident about the quality of their purchases.
  
• I learned today from an expat colleague a ton of useful things, of which I now owe someone later as I am expected to pay it forward. They will deliver my groceries for a small fee. Price Chopper would have laughed me out of the store. Here, they have no expectation one will lug home a 25lb bag of dog food on a train, bicycle, or by foot. They'll deliver it. To your door. With other groceries, too. I'll be taking advantage of this, considering I'm the lady's pack-mule. I am coveting my calories lately more than my francs. NO WAY am I spending calories on lugging any more.
• Doggy poop disposal is paid for by the citizens, included in the taxes. Poopy socialism. All you have to do is utilize the bags they offer, and place the poop accordingly into the proper container. Every time. That's all. NEVER leave it. EVER... you disgusting uncaring imbecilic slob. EVER.