The Flag's a Plus

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 ...