The Flag's a Plus

Before I moved to Switzerland, I was playing with Google Maps, and I noticed that my driving directions always warned me "Route passes through Switzerland" with the same sort of warning that it used for toll roads, ferries, etc. I also learned that The Swiss Do Not Speed. It's something of a stereotype in Europe, and I assumed that it was a result of the general "respect for your neighbors" attitude. Nope. It turns out that speeding fines are really expensive in Switzerland . It's a 120 CHF fine for traveling 6km/h (4mph) over the speed limit in a residential area. Going 25 km/h (16mph) over the speed limit results in losing your license for a minimum of 3 months and a criminal conviction. If it happens again, in addition to much larger penalties, you have to visit a psychologist to figure out whether you can be trusted to ever drive again.

I was going to send a few gift boxes with local food from Switzerland to people in the US. I knew that Chocolate didn't ship well (mail packages are likely to freeze, which causes the chocolate to bloom and turn white), but I found a few other things that might survive. I talked to someone at the post office, and she warned me that food shipments to the US are very complicated and out of the control of Swiss Post. She. Was. Not. Exaggerating. To ship food: First, I need to register as an international shipper with the FDA. Of course, they want a ton of information, and they can't pull it from any of the dozens of other government systems where my name, address, SSN, passport number, TSA ID, fingerprints, iris scan, tongue prints, etc. are already on file. Then, for every package, I need to go to their website and list VERY detailed contents (including ingredients) for each package. Those will be reviewed and, if acceptable, I will receive a 12-digit confirmation numbe...

A few weeks ago, Laura and I took a long weekend and visited the town of Appenzell . Appenzell is a small and conservative Catholic town in the Northeast corner of Switzerland. We ran into trouble before we even left. We were staying at a quiet time of year -- too early for Ski season and too late for hiking season. So, many of the hotels had closed either for renovations or for lack of traffic. I made reservations online at Hotel Loewen. A day later, they called me and told me, very apologetically, that they were closing the hotel that weekend, but they'd forgotten to disable online booking. Would we mind spending our second night at the four-star hotel down the street at no additional charge? I told them that would be no problem. There's no direct train between Zuerich and Appenzell. Appenzell is reached via a narrow-gauge train from Gossau or St. Gallen. The SBB was quiet and comfortable with a great view, as usual. Swiss trains are thoroughly spoiling me. The App...

The Swiss like scarves. Used properly, a scarf can expand the comfort range of a jacket or coat. However, there's a growing fashion trend of ridiculous, enormous scarves. They wrap these things around their neck a few times, then pile them over their shoulders. In the end, they look like walking ice cream sundaes with a weird blond cherry on top.

A few pictures from a walk around old town.

I rode the cable car ( The Luftseilbahn Adliswil Felsenegg , or LAF) to the trail along Uetliberg this morning. It took me above the fog that had enveloped the city.  I took a few pictures along the way.  There's a video with the sound of church bells ringing and a panorama in the mix.

This is a picture of a day's grocery shopping from last week. Pictured: A bag of Kaegi  dark orange chocolates. These are a bit like a very light Twix bar. A bottle of sweeter Swiss white wine. A bottle of Ovo Drink chocolate milk A small bottle of cream A bottle of Rivella Chicken boullion concentrate Gravensteiner Apples Green onions Coop store-brand chocolate Ricotta ravioli made with pumpkin pasta For dinner, I diced and sauteed the apples and green onions in butter and a bit of apple cider until they were softened. I added some strong chicken boullion and white wine and simmered some more until the pectin in the apples brought it together almost like a gravy. I heated up the ravioli, then just before I served it, I added the cream to the apple onion sauce and stirred (didn't want to add it too soon for fear of it curdling). Mixed ravioli and sauce, then served with remaining white wine. Kaegi and schoggi for dessert. 

Laura and I have been in Switzerland for months, but aside from a return visit to the US, we hadn't left the country. Last weekend, we decided to change that with a visit to Milan, Italy. We left early on Friday morning via an SBB Eurocity (EC) train. The trip took about 4 hours. We booked second-class tickets because there's not much of a difference with SBB. First class cars are quieter and less busy. That's about it. It was my first time through the Alps since we moved to Switzerland, and they were magnificent. We would come out of a tunnel, and I'd be looking down. My first thought would be "Wow! We're so high that I'm looking down on the tops of the church spires of multiple towns. This view is fantastic." ...and then I would look up. It was often difficult to see the tops of the mountains from the train because they were so high. We were absolutely dwarfed by the mountains, even the ones on the other side of whatever valley or lake that ...

I get a lot of questions about Switzerland's size. So, I put together a spreadsheet showing Switzerland's size relative to each US State. You can view the full spreadsheet on Google Sheets , but here are some highlights: The two states that are closest in size to Switzerland are Maryland and West Virginia. Maryland is 61% (about 2/3x) of the size of Switzerland. West Virginia is 151% (about 1 and 1/2x) of the size of Switzerland. Pennsylvania is 281% (about 3x) of the size of Switzerland. One of the nice things about living in a small country is the short distance to the borders. I can be in Germany in an hour. France, Lichtenstein, or Austria in 2 hours, or Italy in 4 hours (less when full service through t he Gotthard Tunnel opens later this year). This weekend, we're going to visit... somewhere, and "do you want to go to Milan or Munich" is about as difficult as "Do you want to go to Columbus or Buffalo?"

I haven't posted anything for a while. Details later, I hope. For now, here are some more pictures from around Zürich.

The beverage aisle in Swiss grocery stores is a bit different from the US. Here are some beverages that almost all stores carry: Rivella - A soda that tastes like someone dissolved Smarties (the US kind) or SweeTarts in carbonated water. It's made with milk whey, which gives it a slightly tangy "is that an artificial sweetener?" flavor. It's often referred to by label color. It's available in red (regular), blue (diet), green (green tea - tastes vaguely like ginger ale for some reason), orange (peach), and, in the early summer, pink (rhubarb, which is delicious). If you visit Switzerland and want to try it, I guarantee that a local will be willing to buy you a bottle. This is because most Americans really don't like it, and the Swiss enjoy our " What WAS that? " reaction. I'm a weirdo who liked it the first time I tried it. Sinalco  - While the company makes many flavors, Orange is all you'll commonly find in Switzerland. It's vagu...

There's an energy drink that's common in Germany and Switzerland called Club-Mate . It's a fizzy yellow drink in a clear bottle that has about as much caffeine per ounce as weak coffee. I like it. It does look a lot like a bottle of beer, but that's usually not a problem because it's legal to drink beer in public here. With one exception: I try to get out of the apartment for a while every day. Lately, I've been stopping at the convenience store, buying a Club-Mate, and then walking to the park and finishing my drink while sitting in the park. The local drunks and homeless guys see a guy drinking a bottle of fizzy yellow stuff while sitting on a park bench in the middle of the afternoon and recognize a fellow traveler. They're normally pretty stealthy about drinking (or even being seen), but with my bottle of Club-Mate in hand, they'll raise their own bottles in greeting as I sit down. Two days ago, I had a guy who smelled like a brewery talking my e...

The major media companies in the US would like everyone to believe that access to filesharing sites would cause people to stop buying legitimate works. If you look at the actual research (as opposed to the propaganda from the media companies), this is simply not true . Of course, if you buy enough politicians  are a job creator, you can get anything passed, so despite facts to the contrary, laws were passed in the US to punish anyone who dared to use a filesharing site. Switzerland chose a different route . Given that the data suggested that filesharing sites present no harm to content creators, they decided that there was no reason to punish users of file download sites. Filesharing in Switzerland is completely legal. This, of course, mightily pissed off the media companies, and Switzerland was added to the Office of US Trade Representative's copyright "naughty list", known as the US Special 301 report .  To punish Switzerland for its impertinence, the media comp...

Two American beers spotted in Drinks of the World in Zürich's main train station . The prices are interesting. In the US, OE800 is the hobo's drink of choice. It's rarely spotted outside of its brown paper bag. The reason it has that distinction is because while it tastes horrible, it's cheap and packs a punch. Meanwhile, Flying Dog is a respectable microbrewer whose beers command a premium price in the US. Here, though, the hobo fuel goes for about the same price as the good stuff (per cl), and they're displayed side by side as American beers.

Laura and I are taking an introductory German class. It’s a very international group — we’re the only Americans in the class, and the only two from the same country. Everyone speaks at least a little bit of English, so that’s the “backup” language if the teacher can’t convey a concept in Deutsch. In last night’s class, toward the end of the class, she wanted us to play a game. We would pick celebrities or famous people, write down the German words for the things that they do, love, or are known for. Then we each were given a celebrity at random. We then had to interview each other to figure out which celebrity we were. By the time we’d finished the list, I was stifling laughter hard enough that I was having trouble breathing. I was getting some strange looks, and I was afraid that I was disrupting the class. I was later told that a few of them were worried about what Americans would think of their descriptions, but my laughing put them at ease. The list: Lady Gaga ...

In Zürich, there are 3 grocery chains with a major presence, and a fourth that's smaller but influential. Migros  is probably the least expensive, with a heavy emphasis on in-house brands. They're roughly comparible to Walmart. They're trying to expand into everything. There are Migros electronics stores, Migros banks, Migros credit cards, and even a Migros mobile phone plan. Denner is a hybrid of convenience store and grocery store. They all seem to be small, though they have a pretty good selection for their size. For many of their products, they only sell the store brand. Coop is a middle tier grocery store. They carry some in-house brands and a lot of the brands that you'd see anywhere in the world. I'd equate them to Target or Giant Eagle. Coop has also started to expand into other markets like banking. Globus is very nice and very expensive. There are only a few of them in Zürich. They tend to have a much better selection of unusual international food...

In the US, if you need to send someone money, it goes like this: The recipient gives you his or her address You mail a check to the recipient The recipient carries around the check for a few days, and eventually takes it to his or her bank. The recipient's bank cashes the check and presents the check to your bank. Your bank sends the money to the recipient's bank. In Europe, it works like this: The recipient gives you his or her IBAN  and optionally, a reference number (equivalent to the "note" field on a check) You tell your bank (via their website) to send money to that IBAN and include the reference number, if there is one Your bank sends the money to the recipient's bank. Now, the key thing to understand is that almost everyone only knows their own system. Europeans have no idea what to do with a check, and Americans have no idea what to do with an IBAN.  Fortunately, the US is big enough that some of the European banks know how to deal w...

Grocery shopping in Switzerland has a few wrinkles that we don't have in the US. Among other things, people shop almost daily. In the city, most people are on foot, and they don't want to carry their groceries far, so the grocery stores are small and frequent. There are more grocery stores than Starbucks stores around me, and there are plenty of Starbucks stores. The produce section operates a bit differently from the US. In the US, the produce often has price stickers. You put the produce into a bag, and it's weighed and priced at the register. In Switzerland, there's a number listed next to each different kind of fruit or vegetable. You put your veggies in a bag, then take them to a scale in the produce section. You punch in the number, and a price sticker is printed next to the scale. You then stick that sticker to your bag. The cashier then scans the sticker at the counter. No weighing or lookup involved. It's very similar to the way that the deli works in mos...

I bought a frozen pizza for dinner. It looked like it was topped with sausage and onions. Nope. Tuna and onions.

A few smaller things that I've noticed about Zürich that probably aren't worthy of their own posts: The Swiss speak many languages. English is often not one of them. Most people speak Schweizerdeutsch (Swiss German), Hochdeutsch (Standard German), a little bit of French, and an even smaller bit of Italian. Young people are more likely to speak English. I blame pop culture. Because everything is labeled in German, French, and Italian, it's pretty easy to make out labels. Whatever word English uses was probably stolen from or by one of those languages. The Swiss like steps between rooms. It's common for hallways to be an inch or two higher than the floors of the rooms around the hallway. You see this even in restaurants and public buildings. I spent the first week here tripping every time I entered or left a room. They seem to like slightly irregular walking surfaces, too. Even new construction features cobblestones and heavily textured walking surfaces. I cannot h...

In Zürich, apartments are really expensive. On top of that, the customary security deposit is 3 months' rent. So we need the security deposit plus our first month's rent up front. We knew this when we left. We had the money saved up. The only question was, "How do we get it to Switzerland?" So, I went and talked to someone at the bank myself before we left. She wouldn't stop trying to sell me crap I didn't need, but she did tell me that I'd be able to do an international wire transfer. We visited again together, and a very friendly customer service person told us that international wire transfers were NOT possible unless we were in the bank in the US. I called the customer service number to resolve the discrepancy, and was told that it was possible, but I'd have to set up a PIN before I made my first transfer. I decided to just wait until we arrived and had a local bank account. Then, I'd try it and see what happened. It turns out that there...

Yesterday, I figured out that we've been washing our clothes for the last week with fabric softener instead of detergent. Look, there was a soft-focus picture of a lady hugging a blanket on the front. "Laundry detergent" seemed like a reasonable guess.

Some photos from our first few days in Switzerland

Waiting on hold is annoying. Unless you're calling internationally and paying between 20 and 60 cents per minute. Then, it's infuriating. (Yes, there are ways to call for free over the Internet, but these are subject to occasional drop-outs. I tried this first, and when it's your bank that you're calling, and you're reading account numbers, drop-outs are really not acceptable.)

The local specialty in Zürich is a dish called Züri Gschnätzlets . It's veal, kidney, and mushrooms sliced thin and served topped with a wine and cream sauce and a side of rösti . A day or two after we arrived, we went to a restaurant that serves it. A bit after we ordered, another American couple sat down nearby, and the man ordered "the special". Their food arrived, and after a few minutes, the man said, "Honey, you've gotta try this veal marsala and hash browns! It's really good!" I am now feeling much better about my efforts to fit in.

You all know unhealthy salads like potato salad or macaroni salad. Let me introduce you to a Swiss unhealthy salad: Wurst-Käse-Salat (roughly: sausage cheese salad) To make it: Chop up cheese into cubes, chop up hot dogs or ring baloney (well, cervelat, but same idea), throw in some relish and onion, top it with a cheese sauce. Think "redneck antipasto covered with cheese sauce" and you'll be on the right track. If you were to serve it with a splash of barbecue sauce and some dried onion rings, you'd have something American enough to make a bald eagle shed a tear of pride. But, somehow, it's Swiss and I'd never heard of it before.

Zurich by Night from Alessandro Della Bella on Vimeo .

In about a month, we need to fly one-way from Pittsburgh to Zürich. This means booking tickets. There are two complicating factors: While we're about 95% sure that we'll be leaving in a month, there are still a few things that could go wrong. Refundable tickets are necessary. I'm fat. I don't fit well into the newer "cattle class" economy seats. We were looking at booking 3 seats for the 2 of us or considering business/first class to get the wider seats there. Both of these things raise the price of a ticket, and more importantly, they make it nearly impossible to compare prices using Google Flights, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Kayak, etc. However, those services are still a good starting point to figure out what's out there. I started with the ticketing services to get a list of airlines that flew that route. Then, I went to each airline's website and looked for the same route on the same days. To my dismay, one-way flights are barely less expensive t...

This has nothing to do with Switzerland. It's a leftover from when this was a personal blog. I'm leaving it here anyway for my own reference. I'm a fan of Podcasts. For those who don't know, these are something like radio shows that you download to your phone or computer. They often focus on a small area where they have passionate interest. They're perfect for long walks, drives, or bus rides. These are the podcasts that I've been listening to lately: NPR Hourly News Summary  because radios are hard. I own a dozen computers and cell phones, but there's not an FM receiver to be found in the place. The ISC Daily Stormcast is a daily brief overview of current events in computer security. Planet Money tries to figure out why financial markets work the way that they work.  Hidden Brain looks at some of our less-than-rational decision making processes. 99% Invisible  covers the reasons and impact of design decisions. Futility Closet discusses unusu...