Money, it's a gas

Helen mentioned "a hefty sum of Franken" in her last post so I thought I'd dwell on that subject a little.

In the UK, my paper cash carrying progression started quite young with crinkly blue notes and mild awe at anything with a '0' on it.

As a student, a purple beer voucher was an aspirational concept and my favourite cash machines were those that allowed me to withdraw ten pounds in two notes.

As a working man, the purple beer voucher played a more frequent role in my life but that is the end of the escalation.

The fifty pound note has remained an almost mythical entity.

And so to Switzerland. Where they love their money. And I don't just mean money in a conceptual, sitting in a bank, way. I mean actual physical money. Cash.

To start with we have the CHF10, CHF20 and CHF50 notes. These are easy to work with. The fifty pound note may be almost mythical but these foreign notes are colourful and reminiscent of money from board games. So the CHF50 note is still quite easy to work with. It's worth about £33.50 today so it's not such a big mental stretch as from £20 to £50.


Next though, we have the CHF100 note. This is worth (quick, do the maths) in the region of £67. That's a lot of money for one piece of paper. But when you take into account the cost of things here and the efficiency of the cash machines meeting your withdrawal request with the fewest possible pieces of paper, it's a common note.

Elsewhere on continental Europe I have asked the nearest cash machine for 50 or 100 Euros and received one note. Then, I have taken that single note to perform a small transaction and received scorn for not having anything smaller with which to pay.

Not so in Switzerland. It is perfectly acceptable to pay, for example, for a packet of chewing gum (CHF1.60) with a CHF100 note. No-one will even blink at this. No-one will scowl at you for draining their cash float.

Then there's the CHF200 note. It's a very light way to carry so much money. Efficient? Yes. Mildly unnerving? Also yes.


But we are not finished yet.


Yes, that's right. That is a CHF1000 note. That is one piece of paper with a value equivalent to about £670. That's scary stuff. Imagine leaving that in your pocket when putting your trousers through the wash!

Although that would never happen here. Money is to be respected. To be carefully stowed in a wallet or purse. No decrepit fivers here.

N.B. no money was harmed in the production of this blog post and all participating notes were obtained purely in the process of paying a month's rent in advance in cash (that was a whole month's rent in a mere eight bank notes!!).

(I'm allright Jack, keep your hands off my stack.)

House hunt part 2: The denouement

We have found an apartment to move into on 31st March! Given the horror stories that abound on the expat community message boards about the competition and confusion of house hunting, I was expecting, at the very least, to be asked to swap a kidney in return for a tiny garret above a strip club in the red light district. The expat online community, like any other, does attract a few fruit cakes (see Swinging Switzerland post below), so some exaggeration is probably at play. But still we have been exceedingly fortunate and I can only thank Special Providence for smiling down on me (and mention that if He feels like working on a job for me I might give Catholicism some serious thought).

Our new apartment is in 8006, a quiet and leafy area on the hillside above the Hauptbahnhof and near to the university. It has 3.5 rooms (for the uninitiated this is the London equivalent of a medium sized 2 bed flat) and a balcony, is sunny, quiet and pretty (sonnig, ruhig und schön). We will be on the first floor of an old vierfamilienhaus, (not sure how to spell that), literally, 4 family house, a house originally built as 4 flats for families.

This was the first viewing that I went to, and I was a bit nervous. We put on some smart clothes to make a good impression. At the appointed viewing hour there didn't seem to be much competition (just 2 boys looking together, either students or possibly a couple, I couldn't tell). The flat seemed lovely, nice layout and with a nice kitchen, although it was a bit of a blur. Greg got out his super charming German skills and chatted to the landlords, a middle aged Swiss couple, Herr and Frau L, as they showed us round. I smiled and said "Ja" and "schön" when it seemed most likely to be appropriate. When we left, Frau L asked for our surname when giving us the application form, so it seemed hopeful.

We took the form away, translated it all, filled it in and then wrote a rather pretty personal letter explaining our situation to go with our application (this seemed a bit strange to us, but is recommended to make one's form stand out). We sent it off in the post and crossed our fingers. 2 days later we got a phonecall - Herr L offering us the flat and inviting us to a meeting on Saturday afternoon to transact the official paperwork! The meeting was to be on neutral territory at a nearby cafe (of course). We got ourselves smartened up again, and arrived early with a hefty sum of Frankens for the first month of rent in advance.

Herr and Frau L arrived as the church clock struck 3pm. Seats were taken, coffees ordered, and small take made. This went on for quite some time (in German), mostly between the menfolk. Frau L, clearly in charge of operations, then brought us smartly to business and handed round the paperwork (in German). We discussed the Ts and Cs (in German) and handed over the cashola. We were then 'dismissed' by Herr L. Cue an awkward moment as Greg hears an unfamiliar verb and is not sure what we are instructed to do, and I am confused over the social convention for who should pay for coffee and attempt to query this in my poor German. Laughing and relief all round as translation occurs and we are gently but firmly pushed out of the door, without paying.

After this, it was simply a matter of translating the contract, or at least the additional terms and conditions, eventually giving up on some parts, and signing it anyway - it is a standard proforma from a Swiss tenancy/landlord website so we are pretty sure it is safe. We have agreed, amongst other things, to use the washing machine only on Mondays and Tuesdays, and to open the windows for 5 minutes, four times every day to ensure proper airing (although Frau L has hinted that once per day would be sufficient). So now we just have to find 3 months' rent for our deposit (!) and then we can move in.

Sprechen Sie English?

About making another post about language I am afraid.

Helen learning (Swiss) German has been busy and I had have some language learning do myself. However, there can be no book for grammar reading or checking dictionary as I already told was what the rules grammatical are and the vocabulary I know before.

One of the hardest aspects of starting a new job in Zürich has been learning International English. Unlike Americanese this is not a bastardised version of English, rather it is a confusing result of any number of mistranslations. And it varies according to the origin of the speaker.

It is easy to understand how this happens. I have (at least) two similar problems with German.

I really struggle to say 'wann' and not 'wenn' if I want to say 'when'. This is quite problematic, especially in shops and service situations. "I would like a sandwich if there is no mayonnaise in it" begs a response but "I would like a sandwich when there is no mayonnaise in it" can lead to a really long wait.

And whilst in English we use the word 'time' for both instance and duration, in German I often use 'zeit' (duration) instead of 'mal' (instance). It is hard to translate the difference between 'zeit' and 'mal' because we are so used to describing both concepts with the same word. But perhaps it is something like:

Colleague: Greg, are you coming to get some lunch?

Greg: I'm a bit busy today. Next era.

Colleague: [blank face]

This varying use of the English language makes for an interesting mental workout as you can never assume that what you heard is what was meant. And it makes for great confusion in the impersonal assaults that are business emails these days.

But it makes you a bit more humble about your own use of the mother tongue. And a bit more precise. Given my natural tendency to loquacious language this is quite an interesting test.

That said, working with the part of the organisation that sells to and supports customer across Central and Eastern Europe leads to some incredible sentences.

Try this:

• go to http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt
• type in (or copy and paste, as you prefer) This sentence really should make sense
• now copy the text translated into German and paste it over the English sentence
• now translate it back from German to English.

Admittedly, Babelfish is a notoriously bad translation tool but imagine if that had been a forty-odd word sentence with conditional sub-clauses and complex concepts...

Expat Encounters/ Swinging Switzerland

Our social life is still a bit limited, and we haven't met many people apart from Greg's colleagues and my German classmates. So we went to an expat drinks night last week to try to make some new friends. Having no idea what to expect, but feeling we really ought to do something, we turned up at a rather smart bar, (feeling rather underdressed), prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. To begin with, conversation was quite stilted and the early arrivals tended to stay for one or two drinks before heading home, but soon people warmed up and were quite friendly. A few of the people I spoke to were really genuine and engaging, but there were also a couple of real fruitcakes in attendance. We swopped tips about house hunting, job hunting, German classes and supermarkets, and it felt like maybe there was some common ground to build from.


As the evening wore on, and the drinks continued to flow, there was a fair bit of flirting in the air and some of the later arrivals of ladies were rather revealingly dressed. Group conversations started to turn into one-on-ones, leaving an ever shrinking pool of those not yet paired off. Not really sure of my social footing, I was chatting away quite happily in a small group, until someone remarked (on learning that Greg and I were there together), that there were plenty of swingers clubs in Zürich if that’s what we were into... and at that point it dawned on me that we were the only couple in the bar! We stuck it out for another drink, and on the way home agreed that whilst it had been great to flex our social muscles a bit, we might give it a miss next week.

The Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Not death, famine, pestilence, war and Fabian (the most popular name for Swiss boys) but the five languages of Switzerland.

Really this is about the use of English in Switzerland but we'll need to cover a bit of background first.

Switzerland has four official languages (you can decide for yourself which one is death, which famine, which war and which pestilence). These four languages are:

• Swiss German (not German);
• French;
• Italian; and
• Romansch.

Swiss German is distinct from (High) German in more than just dialect. Most notable to the casual observer is the presence of non-German words in common parlance. For example:

• the hairdresser is a 'Coiffure' not a 'Frisuer';
• a bicycle is a 'Velo' not a 'Fahrrad';
• wish someone a good meal with "En guete" (which roughly translates to have a good digestion) instead of "Malzeit!"; and
• thank someone with "Merci vielmal" instead of "Vielen dank".

French is a language spoke in the part of Switzerland to the west of the Röstigrauben (Rösti ditch) and Italian is spoke in the sunny southern canton of Ticino (over the hills and nearly in Italy).

Romansch is spoken by about 1% of the Swiss population located in parts of south-eastern Switzerland. In fact it is a group of dialects but is officially recognised as a language as it is the closest living relative of spoken Latin.

However, it is the fifth language that is of most interest. This unholy and unofficial half-brother of the four official languages exists for a good reason. Is is not very efficient or cost effective to always use four languages.

If you are trying to shift inventory then designing, producing and placing promotional materials that say

Verkauf
Solde
Saldi
(and a word in Romansch that I can't find online!)

is not a good idea.

A simple sign that says Sale can be understood by all, is cheaper to produce and doesn't take up all that valuable window space used to entice people into your shop.

But beware of thinking that all usage of the English language in Switzerland is so sensible.

In fact, don't think of the use of English at all. It is not like the French adopting English words to create 'le weekend' and 'le parachuting'. This is a (sub)language in its own right - dubbed Swinglish.

The most notable example of Swinglish is the word that the Swiss use to describe what it is to think and behave in a way appropriate to being Swiss - 'Swissness'. An important concept in a country of compromise and agreement.

But there are some occasions where Swinglish provides some confusion and (oft puerile) entertainment for a native English speaker.

Exhibit A is the German for mobile phone - das Handy.

Now, sometimes the Swiss call it a 'Natel' and "mein Handy" doesn't sound quite the same in a Swiss accent. But it's still a bit confusing...



Exhibit B is a popular Swiss German superlative. Through the 20th Century, popular American culture brought words like 'hip', 'cool', 'bad' and 'wicked' to the land of 'super', 'spiffing' and 'ace'. And the Swiss have… 'tip top'.

Exhibit C is the use of the word 'hit' to describe a deal. Remembering that the German language compounds nouns this can lead to some interesting results. Price (Preis) deal is mildly amusing and deal of the day (Tag) a little entertaining. But the supermarket Migros has won my award with this promotion at its cafeteria.



But none of this schoolboy humour can quite prepare you for this range of dental hygiene products. Are you sure you want to put that in your mouth?

Ich mache ein Deutsch Kurs

Thought it was time for an update on my German-learning progress. I started a German beginners course a few weeks ago, and now spend four hours a week at night school bashing my head against German grammar in the convivial company of my classmates. We are a very mixed group, containing 3 Brits, 3 Italians, 2 Serbians, a Slovakian, a Chinese chap who doesn't speak much English, a Nigerian, a Portuguese and a lady from Thailand. Selecting a suitable neighbour to share German dictionaries with is therefore a challenge - the German for vicino (Italian) is nahe, in case you were wondering. Everyone is very nice, and the camaraderie of bewilderment should not be underestimated as a means to bridge our complex language and cultural barriers.

My German has now progressed to the point that I can order a coffee, decline an accompanying pastry, ask how much things cost, exchange greetings with our cleaner and explain that I have only been in Switzerland for 6 weeks so I don't know enough German for anything else. One thing I have not learnt yet, but which is becoming a pressing need, is how to give directions. Apparently I have the sort of face which people like to approach in the street - this is not new news to me, but it throws up some interesting opportunities to cause well meaning chaos. Now that the weather is a bit warmer I am continually waylaid by Swiss people in need of a map. My pointing skills are legendary, however, this week's task is to learn how to differentiate between first and second on the right/left.

The Hunt Begins

Well, it is unseasonably warm in Zürich at the moment (again!).

We were not expecting double digit temperatures in early February and certainly not double digits above zero.

But there is a lovely Spring feel in the air that makes for a great opportunity to get out and explore the city.

It comes at a good time as it is now time to start to find somewhere to live once our three months in temporary accommodation finish at the end of March and it isn't so easy to get a feel for a new city when ten to fifteen minutes outdoors is enough to make the end of your nose freeze!

There are many interesting views on the Zürich rental market on the various web sites, blogs and forums. Most of them contain cautions, warnings and horror stories. But I'm not sure that many of the authors have dealt with the rental market in London.

I think that helps. Certainly as far as prices go. Although the volume of available flats isn't what we're used to in the big smoke.

We are expecting some interesting local curiosities in the rental process. Already we have identified that not only does the rental depend on location, location, location but so does the level of taxation and the cost of health, contents and possibly even public liability insurance. Whilst the taxation differences might be worthy of consideration I have never previously selected where to live based on the cost of insurance products so I don't think I'll start now (although maybe the health insurance).

Wednesday will be our first viewing (well, my first viewing as Helen will be on a plane back to Züri) and I'm expecting to be one of many turning up at 17:00 for the public viewing appointment.

Punk Plane

This is a little belated now but still worth writing about.

Last Thursday I went on my first client visit in my new role. This was a day trip from Zürich to Münster and back via Düsseldorf airport. Not only was it a long day in terms of time and distance but trying to concentrate throughout a four-hour meeting conducted exclusively in German was exhausting. It turns out I did understand some of it but there was an awful lot I didn't.

However, most notable in the day was the journey from Zürich to Düsseldorf in the morning.

I left the flat around seven and it was starting to snow. By the time I got to the gate it was snowing quite heavily (think the weekend before Christmas in the UK) and a couple of inches of snow had settled on the tarmac. More was to come and by now Heathrow (and, to be fair, Schipol, Düsseldorf and Charles de Gaulle) would have shut down for the foreseeable future.

There was a sense of nervousness amongst the awaiting passengers but the word was 'delay' not 'cancellation'. Indeed, when the delay to my flight was put on the departures board it was set at five (yes, 5) minutes. I can't remember being in a airport where a five minute delay was even announced as such.

We boarded the plane a little late and, once the departure protocols had been completed, we got underway.

Now, I've never flown in such conditions before and so what came next surprised and fascinated me. Sorry if this is old hat for some (especially any previously Swiss-resident aeronautical engineers!?!).

The plane taxied not to a runway but to a de-icing pan. At this point a vehicle loomed into view out of the window that looked like a cross between a transformer, a giraffe and a dragon. On a truck was mounted a platform with a cab containing a driver and controls a bit lit a crane. On the front of the platform was a hose on extending tracks. A bit like the ones in this article

First the de-icing truck sprayed the wing with orange liquid to remove the ice that had formed. Then a second spray, this time a green liquid, to prevent new ice forming. Imagine being in a car wash but sitting in a plane, minus the rollers. The outcome looked a bit like a dodgy dyed mohican.

After the spraying had finished there wasn't much to see out of the green/orange window. A surreal experience though. And one that lead to only a forty minute delay by the time we landed in Düsseldorf.

Hydrotherapy Swiss Style

This weekend just past we went to Baden, a short train trip from here, and lazed about a bit in the thermal baths. The sun was shining down on the snowy hills behind the town, and the sky was blue, making the setting rather lovely. There are two hydrotherapy pools, one indoors and one outdoors, and also saunas and so forth (which I decided to give a miss just in case nudity was required). Rest assured that everyone in the main area was appropriately attired, those Swiss present not seeming to go in for skimpy swimmers for either sex. I saw no banana hammocks and only one inadvisably small bikini (see sartorial note, below). However, there were some very hairy backs in evidence, Homo Alpinus clearly being a rugged beast. 


For the uninitiated, the hydrotherapy pool consists of a big swimming pool with a series of high pressure water jets around the edges. The water is toasty warm, and also mineral rich, and the idea is to relax, soak up the minerals, and get massaged by the jets. They start at ankle height and move up as you move to the left, ending up at neck & shoulders, and then they repeat so you get 2 cycles head to toe. This being Switzerland, there is a very organised procedure to follow. Every 90 seconds a doorbell sounds and everyone moves one jet station to the left.  One watches the procession for a little while to identify where the start/finish point is, and then one joins the back of the queue. This leads to a very equitable system of everyone getting evenly massaged all over, twice, but it does feel like being a sausage in a sausage factory! On a sartorial note, to any ladies who come to visit and would like to go to the baths, I strongly recommend bringing a snug fitting and modest one piece (the jets are rather powerful).


However, just as I was beginning to feel unnerved by how organised it all was, I was relieved to observe that teenagers are teenagers the world over. There were 3 who pushed into the line in front of me, and sometimes shared 2 jets and sometimes took one each, causing all sorts of havoc and bunching up behind them. They got many stern looks.

Linguistics

Just a link to another page which explains the Swiss-German situation far better than I ever could http://www.eldrid.ch/swgerman.htm.

Especially fun to click on the sound clip for anyone who speaks any other kind of German (German German, Austrian German...) http://www.eldrid.ch/images/Ebae.wav

And for those wanting the sound of yet more melodious Züridüütsch: http://www.radio24.ch/ and click on "Live hören." Be warned, musical Russian roulette will follow...