An Englishman in Zurich

A Good Slide

2009-01-09T05:26:00.000-08:00

There is an expression this side of the roast-potato divide that invites New Year's revellers to have a good slide. I have never entirely understood it and given the current weather and the states of the streets in the city of Zurich the risk of some of us taking it literally rather than figuratively is significantly increased. I assume that it means that we should start the year well, by sliding into it, rather like one might slide along an ice skating rink, full of grace and style and poise.

Before I start to develop visions of myself as some kind of latter day Torvill and Dean, well Dean, as I can't be both Torvill and Dean, then I should note that I did start the new year with a slide. But it was more of a kind of skaty slide, a flailing, fumbling, falling slide as I ran for the number seven tram in morning. My ability to celebrate the New Year in a Swiss style obviously still requires a little practice. After eight years, I am still only a novice.

What I did do, however, was start a new activity. I have never really been one for new years resolutions since epiphany is about as far as I generally get with them. However this year I felt the time was right for me to take on something new, expand my horizons and generally lift myself out of the fur-lined rut.

Having become increasingly alarmed about stories of downhill skiers crashing into obstacles and into each other I decided that I would shun the conventional and take up a less dangerous sport. As options I ruled out horse riding, bungee jumping and sledding and settled instead on cross-country skiing.

There has apparently been an explosion of interest recently in cross country skiing brought on by those who in the course of nordic walking have found that they enjoy the movement of arm swinging and determined striding forward. For those of you unfamiliar with nordic walking, this when a walker uses ski poles to propel themselves along, giving them a sense of rhythm and purpose that is somehow missing in the traditional sport of simply going for a stroll. That you look faintly ridiculous seems by the by.

Cross country skiing uses the same principles. Long poles. Tight lycra. And two rather long skis strapped to you toes. The result is a feeling of schoocing rather skiing, sliding ones way through the countryside on little grooves dug into the snow. Things are fine on the flat – slog slog slog schooch schooch schooch – but uphill starts to get a little tricky. The answer is to either jog – apparently great for the gluts – or step out of the groove and do some nifty duck like herringbone walking. Actually come to think of it, this is presumably why Charlie Chaplin loved Vevey as he was close to the Cross Country courses where his splay footed walking style would come in useful when climbing hills on cross country skis.

All of this is all well and good, the problems arise when heading downhill. My usual downhill style of lean back and enjoy view unfortunately resulted in me coming clear of the grooves and sliding headfirst on my back down the side of a hill ending in a crumpled heap across both lanes of cross country traffic, like a lorry load of lycra and carbon fibre ski poles dumped across the autoroute. Everyone was very patient as I got back up and settled back into the groove. And no one can deny that I started 2009 with a slide.

Annus Horribilis

2008-12-21T05:30:00.000-08:00

The British Queen once described her year as an annus horribilis – a rough one basically – after her castle burned down and her children proved for the first time that the British Royal family is in fact composed of human beings by getting divorced en masse.

If you were a Swiss banker you might be saying about the same thing around about now. Apart from a certain US based hedge fund manager, I can’t imagine many people who have had a worse year than some of the poor souls on the Bahnhofstrasse.

It has been a peculiar year in Zurich: confusing if you support the SVP, great if you a US democrat and probably quite expensive if you were the owner of any of the plethora of paintings that went missing from art galleries in a spate of art crime.

Just to give you a quick overview, I can recap you on some of the things that we have been through in Switzerland and some of the international events, just to keep it all in perspective. So in January, Toni Brunner became president of the SVP and, er, the US presidential campaign got into full swing.

In February, the French president married his glamourous French girlfriend and in March Medvedev became Russian president. In April, the Chinese Olympic torch caused outcry and an Austrian man was found to have kept half his family in a cellar for all their lives. In May, the SVP began to implode while in June the long awaited arrival of summer, well, never really happened. Spain won the European footall championships and in UK Roger Federer lost in Wimbledon. The Iphone took us be storm in July apparently, offering you the potential not only to talk while you walk but also listen to music, look at you tube clips, check your email and increase you likelihood of walking into a lamp post. I know, because I have done it.

The Swiss army began to show signs of battle fatigue in July after ti was revealed that its leader was a stalker. This followed the tragic deaths of several soldiers in a rafting accident and begged questions about precisely what a neutral nation like Switzerland was doing spending millions on an army that is effectively institutionally redundant… In August, the Swiss pick up a couple of gold medals at the Olympics and the US select Barack as their democratic nominee. In September, the particle accelerator at CERN was switched on and the US economy began to go into meltdown. There was apparently no linkage.

In October, Austria’s political firebrand was killed ina car crash, in November Barack was nominated, Samuel Schmid stands down, Merz recovers from a heart attack and Christoph Blocher considers going for a second run at the Bundesrat. In the end, it is Ueli Mauerer who makes it in, promising that Switzerland will get the best army possible – an excellent intention for a neutral country.

Throughout this all runs the thread of the global economy standing on a precipice, banks collapsing, bankers collapsing, the US economy collapsing and the particle accelerator being paused for some remedial action. An annus horribilis it may have been but hopefully we have avoided complete meltdown for another year.

Cold North Wind

2008-10-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

The snow is already turning to slush but is it a sign of the long winter that is ahead of us? A recession. The prospect of job cuts. And a Christmas that could potentially be so parsimonious that it will make Scrooge seem like Santa Claus himself.

But it is not just the weather that has turned cold. Something in the political climate did the same thing.

For many years, Switzerland has had a somewhat complex relationship with its northern most neighbour: the big canton to the north – that would be Germany – has been a source of many things that have made Switzerland better (namely qualified company managers, fast cars, discount supermarkets and, allegedly, the large cash deposits). However, the Swiss seem generally ambivalent towards their teutonic cousins: in what was to my mind one of the most shocking examples of xenophobia that Zurich has seen recently, a German radio DJ was effectively hounded out of her job last year by a groundswell of opposition to her non-Swiss pronunciation.

Now, Germany’s purposefully uncharismatic finance minister Peer Steinbrueck has raised hackles with his suggestion that Switzerland be put on a blacklist of tax havens, with many arguing that this is a thinly disguised move to knock the stuffing out of Switzerland’s banking industry. It is an age-old battle and resurrecting it again is a sure fire way of testing the Swiss’s patience with their neighbours.

In Germany, such rhetoric – particularly from someone as bluntly spoken as Steinbrueck – is part of the rough and tumble of politics; a game that the media willingly plays along with until some other equally incendiary statement is made. But in Switzerland, where one’s word is taken at face value, such utterances normally carry far more weight and are seen as being a likely indicator of future policy. Perhaps they have a point: after all it was Steinbrueck who kicked off the massive tax evasion probe earlier this year that threatened to spill over from Liechtenstein into Switzerland.

The Swiss People’s Party, the nation’s most popular political grouping, appears to have seized this resentment, however, as the motivation for their latest policy position: their leader Toni Brunner surprised Switzerland earlier this week by saying that it will fight the continuation and extension of a labour treaty with the European Union under which most of Zurich’s German population, and me incidnetly, have got permits to work here.

Are the SVP redirecting the anger felt by voters over the attack on bank secrecy towards another target? Are they rising to Steinbrueck’s bait? Or are they positioning themselves for their next Swiss elections by drumming up some popular support.

A referendum on the free movement of people accord and extending it to Bulgaria and Romania will be held on February 8. Three of the four parties in the government, as well as the business lobby, are recommending they accept the deal.

It appears then that the move is an attempt to show that two can play at that game. It remains to be seen whether the vote will trigger another spate of icy temperatures and frosty weather from Switzerland’s northerly neighbour.

An Era's End

2008-10-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

House prices and credit cards. Stock market investments and tracker funds. Manolo Blahniks and Cosmopolitans. In a couple of decades we will be looking back on the past eight years and wondering what got into us. How did a seemingly rational western world become so obsessed with the creation and retention of material wealth that the defining TV programme of the era was based solely on the concept of shopping and sex? I refer of course to Sex and the City, a show which now seems so hilariously outdated that a movie released earlier this year already looks anachronistic.

Another indication came this week that an era has ended: the news that Madonna, the Ur-Material Girl, and Guy Ritchie are to divorce. After having fed our desire for celebrity gossip for so long, the media hyped star couple finally called it quits, after -- guess -- eight years. So what's going on? Is our post-millenium hangover finally kicking in, eight years after the event? The Credit Crisis too has its roots in that new millenium fever that convinced us we were going to be richer than ever before and that it would be easier than ever before to get rich. Eight years on from the start of the boom, the bubble has finally burst.

The credit crisis came home to Switzerland this week too. A secret plan to boost UBS's coffers with government money was, well, kept secret until the very last minute and announced together with a package of other measures that will ensure that Switzerland continues to be known for its banking prowess rather than as being a country that used to be known for its banking prowess. The result is a partial privatisation of UBS that has left the bank's employees feeling rather bemused: we are no better than subsidized egg farmers, one of them told the NZZ newspaper. The difference being, I think, that you can't make an omelette out of collateralised debt obligations.

So, without getting too maudlin, it's all starting to feel rather fin de siecle around here. After spending eight years trying to keep up with the Ritchies by spending big on our credit cards, it seems we might be entering an entirely new era of austerity and prudence. Now is the time to be thinking about downsizing, cutting back, tightening the belt and all those other cliches that are used to describe the grim reality of a world in which a daily cup of Starbuck;s Cappuccino suddenly seems excessive and wasteful and a 100 gram bag of Marroni appears to be a healthy, nutritious and above all cheap alternative to starvation. In East Germany, apparently, sales of Marx's communist treatise "Das Kapital" are going through the roof. Now there's a sign.

Crisis? What crisis?

2008-10-09T05:34:00.000-07:00

Anyone looking for a true gauge of investor sentiment, should look no further than a little corner of the Bahnhofstrasse. There, close to the HB, stand the stock market pundits of Switzerland. Forget the arm-waving doom-mongering of CNBC’s Jim Cramer. The plumily-delivered wisdom of Britain’s David Buik. The people who really know where its at are the stockwatchers of Bahnhofstrasse – and they are looking pretty gloomy.

Just next to shops selling jewels and furcoats, there is a UBS shop window with electronic display boards showing stock prices. While the shop windows have shone green for the past 5 years, indicating the rising prices of much of the world’s stocks, they have recently been glowing red – as stock markets around the world take a tumble. The Bahnhofstrasse stockwatchers gather with their migros and coop shopping bags, around the time of the US market open, and watch with morbid fascination as the western world’s wealth diminishes.

On Monday, the Swiss Market Index (SMI) had its worst day since September 11, with stocks tumbling. Later in the week, the Swiss National Bank joined the other central banks of the world in cutting interest rates by 50 basis points in an effort to give the endebted a break. The Swiss government also joined other European banks in reinforcing its commitment to guaranteeing Swiss savings up to the sum of 30,000 Swiss francs per person.

So far, however, and bear in mind that this is written and recorded hours and days before you get to hear it, there has not been any major collapses, bankruptcies or otherwise among the banks of Switzerland. Unlike Iceland, the week has been a relatively stable one for Switzerland’s financial institutions. While Europe goes to hell in a handcart, Switzerland appears to be sitting pretty. Ask someone on the street if they are bothered about the financial crisis and their answer will be ‘no’.

And why is that? Because unlike the UK, whose citizens have borrowed more than the value of the entire country’s economic output for a year, the Swiss don’t do debt. When did you last see someone buy a round of drinks on a credit card in Zurich? Never. They don’t own their own homes. They don’t buy and flip property. They don’t max out five credit cards and consolidate their debt into one easy repayment loan. Ok, as a result their economy might not show the kinds of amazing boom that Iceland or Ireland have shown in recent years, but it don’t shown the same levels of bust either.

What’s more, and I can’t confirm this is true but we can assume it is, the country is sitting on a huge pile of gold, the only asset that is appreciating. According to the Swiss National Bank, the country holds around 1,000 tonnes of Gold despite having sold some recently. One tonne of gold is worth around 30 million dollars so that would make Switzerland’s stash worth around 30 billion dollars or 30 thousand million to be precise. That is 30 thousand million dollars worth of hard assets. Quite reassuring.

And finally, another reason is that the Swiss are scrupulously honest. In the USA, when a banker loses billions or thousands of millions of other people’s money, the investors get none and the government gives them more. In Switzerland, it works differently. A news story caught my eye. A businessman leaves a Zurich carpark this week having mistakenly left his briefcase on the roof of his car. As he speeds off it falls to the ground and remains there for an hour before a woman picks it up. On opening it she finds his ID documents and 11,000 francs. To the amazement of the man and the police, she hands the money and the briefcase in. She is rewarded for her efforts with 1100 francs. Now if only Lehman Brothers would do the same.

Red Carpet Treatment

2008-10-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

It is a dangerous time to be a banker: if the pressures of the biggest global crisis since the great depression of 1929 are not enough to drive you over the edge or give you a heart attack then your investors could well be plotting your downfall, cowering in the alley way behind your luxury penthouse waiting to clobber you with a bag of worthless collateralised debt obligations as soon as you step out of your Maserati.

No matter how bad it gets though, life as a Swiss banker still remains quite sheltered when compared to that of a German peer in the 1970s. As if being dogged by two oil crises were not enough, German bankers and industrialists and politicians were stalked by the stylishly dressed, BMW-driving nutters of the Baader Meinhof gang ? a group whose members were to terrorism what Posh and Becks are to football, only expect the terrorists gave fewer interviews to hello magazine.

The closest that Switzerland has ever come to organised terrorism (and I am excluding here the Jura separatist movement for reasons I shall explains) was the screening of a new German film about Baader Meinhof at the Zurich Film Festival earlier this week. Opening the festival, this film is a portrayal of the apparently slightly unhinged Andreas Baader and his antics in Germany in the 1970s leading up to his death in 1977.

Lending a touch of retro chic to the festival, it starred Germany's Leo Dicaprio Moritz Bleibtreu and was generally well received, although the apparently uncondemning portrayal of the terrorists attracted criticism from some quarters. The Zurich Film Festival certainly knows how to make waves, however. In just its fourth year, it is already building a profile both in Switzerland and beyond.

Part of its success is due to Zurich's readiness to embrace the movie: it has the highest number of cinemas per head of population than any other city. While I would argue that this has more to do with the fact that Zurich's older art-house cinemas have been kept alive intentionally, than any particularly keen cinemagoing streak in the Zurich mentality it is nonetheless an impressive feat and one that should be applauded.

It is also bringing an interesting dose of stariness to Zurich's otherwise deeply Zwinglian shores: the red carpet was rolled out for tow heroes of Hollywood this week, namely Messrs. Stallone and Fonda. Now, politically, it would seem that you couldn't have picked too more opposed Californian residents to come visit Switzerland: the Easy Riding Fonda being a vociferous Democrat and Mr. Stallone - well actually he is much bigger than me so I am not going to guess his political persuasions.

Licence to Thrill

2008-09-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

They say the world is a small place. I don’t think that is strictly true – it’s the biggest place I know of – but there is an element of veracity in the fact that modern transportation means we can bump into our next door neighbour on the other side of the world. Since my next-door neighbours are Swiss, this happens more often than you might believe.

The Swiss are travellers: they have the disposable income and the time as well as that curiosity about the world that drives to the most out of the way places. Wherever you go, if there is one other foreigner in that remote mountain village the chances are they will be Swiss. And they will either be your next-door neighbour or have served in the military service with him.

The Swiss can be identified by their Mammut rain jackets or their Schoeffel hiking shirts, by their Swiss flag SIGG water bottles or their deft use of an army knife to create a small picnic in the middle of the jungle. Closer to home, there are other signs that set the Swiss apart – their Car licence plates for one.

Travel to northern Italy or the South of France in the spring time, pick the most attractive village you can find and then start counting the number of Swiss-plated cars you see there. There will be many. The Swiss have an ability to locate the prettiest places to spend their weekends, particularly when the weather on the southside of the alps is better than on the north. The Swiss licence plate quotient is usually a good indication of the quality of the place: if there are lots of cars with licence plates beginning with ZH and GE there, then you are in luck.

This week, Switzerland was shaken by the news that the growing number of cars registered on Swiss roads means that authorities are running out of numbers to assign to new cars. Inside of the two letter cantonal code plus up to six numbers currently employed, there may be a need to introduce 7 digit numbers. This would then potentially threaten the inclusion of the cantonal emblem on the licence plate – challenging the very core of Swiss identity and sparking an outcry the likes of which has not been seen since the redesign of the Swiss passport.

The Swiss licence plate is already something of an exception. Much like Switzerland itself in the world of homogenised European nations, the Swiss licence plate is willfully different from those of its neighbours: at the front the little thin tag requires carmakers to change the size of the mounting plates from the traditional Wide and long European size to the thin and skinny Swiss style and at the back the U.S. style square plate causes problems for those with cars designed to take the more conventional oblong form. Its no big deal but it is a nice reminder of the ways in which Switzerland differs from the countries around it.

Switzerland isn’t the only country with plates that tell of where the car is registered: france’s departments are clearly numbered on that country’s tags while Germany has a long list of the one two and three letter codes for each of its towns and cities. B, D, HH, M, MTK the list goes on.

But in terms of localness, quaintess and – dare I say it? – parochialness – the Swiss system with its Wappen really takes the biscuit.

A Swiss licence plate without a picture of a Bernese Bear, the white and blue Zurich crest or the Geneva crow and key combo appears to be more than the Swiss can contemplate. It would be another piece of their heritage eroded away and would mark the loss of an important pastime in Swiss society: namely honking ones horn at out of towners who dawdle along the streets of Zurich in their clearly labelled Aargau-plated cars.

Mother's Milk

2008-09-19T01:55:00.000-07:00

Arriving back in Switzerland from a sunny holiday abroad I was surprised by several things: the fact that autumn had rapidly advanced across the Zurich region; the fact that financial markets appeared to be in meltdown and the fact that there was just one headline dominating the Swiss newspapers.

It has been a tumultuous week in the banking sector, something that should be a cause for alarm in Switzerland, home to two of the world’s biggest banks. Stock markets have plunged, credit markets are frozen and American banks are folding like a house of cards – literally and figuratively.

On top of all this financial shenanigans, there is the tragic case of contaminated baby milk in China, an escalating scandal in which four children have died and hundreds have become ill through ingestion of baby milk formula allegedly contaminated by unscrupulous farmers and negligent food companies with melamine.

Amid this turmoil, the Swiss German newspapers have doggedly pursued the news, refusing to be sidetracked by such global issues as financial crisis and food scares, sticking instead to the more homely subject of a local restaurateur who has a novel idea for drumming up interest in his cuisine.

A chef in Winterthur announced this week that he wanted to experiment with a new ingredient in the production of his Zurich Geschnetzletes and Soups: namely breast milk. Not merely breaking a taboo but positively crushing it underfoot, the chef told local newspapers that it would be completely natural: “We were all brought up on it,” he said. “Why shouldn’t it still be part of our diets?”

Well – I might suggest one reason here: I was brought up on, among other things, Ribena and weetabix but that alone is not reason enough for me to expect a chef to use them in the preparation of my Wild Ragout.

Of course, he wasn’t expecting the milk to produced by one woman alone: in fact he distributed fliers to women who might be willing to donate. And at the princely sum of 6.50 francs for a four decilitre up of mother nature’s finest, he was certainly willing to fork out more than for standard dairy fare.

Naturally this caused an outcry: of all places, the country in the world with the highest number of cattle per head of population (expect perhaps Argentina), producing gallons and gallons of milk each year, this chef decides that human milk would be a better alternative.

The local health authorities, with typically Byzantine justification, said that while it was not permitted to process milk extracted from a human into food stuffs, it was not forbidden either. Later they decided that the fact that human milk was not listed as a safe food stuff, then the chef would in effect be acting illegally by serving it to customers.

The project was dropped but not before the man’s restaurant, the aptly named Stork in Iberg, was given the best publicity any restaurant has ever received in Switzerland. Food for thought.

Bring your own bottle

2008-08-29T04:03:00.000-07:00

There are many things about Swiss society that I have been rather slow to grasp and to understand, not least of which has been the popularity of the Swiss-German Word of the Year competition.

The idea is that a group of academics and journalists sit down and decide which one word has singularly defined the year. Previous contestants have included “Aldisierung” in 2005 – or the Wal-martification of Swiss consumer society – and Spuckaffaere of 2004 in which Alex Frei spat on an English soccer player.

It probably says more about the quality of media coverage than anything else that an entire year’s news output can be overshadowed by one word, but then that is the power of the modern media for you. Now that I understand the rules of the game, I think I have identified this year’s winner only eight months into the year: Botellon.

Botellon is a Spanish word which means to use social networking tools to organise an impromptu party of mainly teenaged drinkers who gather in public spaces apparently spontaneously, drink enormous amounts, carouse into the early hours of the morning and then go home leaving behind nothing but trash and empty bottles.

Its popularity in the media comes from the fact that it combines two of the industries’ favorite pastimes – binge drinking and the use of Facebook – creating an irresistible cocktail of mock outrage, amusement and debauchery that is guaranteed to annoy the conservatives, outrage the liberals and sell some newspapers during the slow summer months.

The pictures were fairly predictable: kids in parks slamming down bottles of the kind of sticky liquor that masks the taste of alcohol. A trail of devastation left in their wake. Fairly normal sight on the streets of a British city. In Switzerland, it prompted an uproar.

Swiss authorities rushed last week to attempt to ban the practice, fearful that the gilded youth of Geneva and Zurich could overwhelm local police forces with their unplanned parties and inundate hospitals with the after effects thereof. But since drinking is allowed from the age of 16 onwards in Switzerland, there appears to be very little left that they can do to stop it.

After years of rolling their eyes when contemplating the debauchery of British society, it seems that the problems of binge drinking might slowly be making themselves felt in normally staid Swiss society too. At least some Swiss realise that attempting to ban it will only make it appear more appealing.

A sociologists in Zurich pointed out that outrage about drinking fuels more drinking and the more that the media write about it the more people will want to go. One natural weapon that Switzerland has, of course, is the weather: while British teens are famed for staggering drunkenly around parks in their t-shirts in the depths of winter, their Swiss counterparts are unlikely to last as long: come October the prospect of a botellon in a cold, damp park will feel fairly unappealing. It might work year-round in Spain, but in Switzerland this botellon has a shorter shelf-life.

Cars for Comrades

2008-07-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

Everyone is turning green. Not gangrenous green but environmentally green. I have friends in the UK who have ploughed up their back garden to grown turnips and others who steadfastly refuses to use air travel to go anywhere. They are restricted to a 100 mile radius around their homes. A self-imposed travel ban.

I would quite gladly go green if it were not for one weakness: I am obsessed by cars. Since being a child I have had a passion for all things automotive. Thus living in a city where I can’t justify owning a car at all is very hard for me. Public transport is so superior in everyway, its even air conditioned for gods sake, that my lizard brain lust for convertible, turbo-charged gas-guzzling jalopy barely gets a look in.

You see, I am acutely aware of my energy consumption: first we must factor out my jet-setting tendancies (I don’t fly much but the amount I fly consumes energy equivalent to that needed to light a shopping centre for a year). Then we come close to what Swiss researchers are touting as the ideal energy consumption: 2,000 watts. 2,000 watts per person per day. At the moment, the Swiss consume close to 6,000 and the Americans 12,000. Here, without air conditioning, without the need for a car I can get close to the magic 2,000 and feel terribly smug about myself.

Only, there are times when a car is required: times when I really need to sling stuff in the back and take it to the tip. For those times, fortunately I have Mobility to fall back. Now, mobility car sharing is a wonderful thing. Close to our home there are six, maybe seven of these bright red cars, painted in sympathy for the socialist cause I suspect and just waiting to be used. Except if it is a Saturday and then they are already in use. All the time. Sometimes, they are in use from two in the morning until four in the morning as well. I don’t know what mobility users are doing at those times: sleeping in them? Anyway, with so many cars close by I never have a problem getting hold of one, waiving my plastic card at the dongle on the windscreen and driving off to fulfil my errands (and of course feeling smug about the sustainability of my transport habits in the process).

I get five metres down the road and have to stop. The car was clearly previously driven by someone measuring about 1 metre 20 tall. The seat is touching the windscreen. I have to stick my head out of the windows to use the rear view mirror. Everything needs adjusting. Which brings me to the point: mobility drivers can’t drive. We can’t drive. We never drive. The only time we drive is when we really have to drive. Its not our car. So we don’t care that we never shift out of second. We fill the car invariably with junk that we are taking to the recycling hof: Full to the bri, so ze cqnt see out of the windows. We drive our kids around in the mobility cars. Forgetting that we are driving and playing cards with the children, only to realise that all that honking is because the lights went green while you were shuffling the deck. I know this because to my horror I have become a Mobility Driver. Tootling along the other day, I noticed that other drivers gesticulating madly at me. Tooting their horns. Waving. Pointing. What inconsiderate people I thought. Don’t they know that my driving habits are offsetting their air conditioners? How ungrateful. Just because my car is red and I am a mobility user does not give them the right to abuse me on the roads. Only later, when a gust of wind caught me in the back of the neck, did I realise what all the fuss was about. I was driving along the dual carriageway with the car boot open. Oblivious to the effect that my car-sharing antics were having on the rest of the world.

What’s red and green and weaves all over? A Mobility user.

Mirror, Mirror

2008-07-05T04:38:00.000-07:00

I just spent a pleasant and relaxing weekend in a farmhouse in the French countryside, surrounded by the fruits of one woman’s quest for shabby chic furnishings. The owner of this chateau had combed and scoured “brocante” shops for the things that lend a certain style to the inside of the home. The results were quite admirable and quite successful too. A packing case as a table. A day bed as a sofa. Sunhats for dresser decoration. Faded prints for lining the stairway walls.

Sometimes its hard to find the right piece of furniture. You can search and find nothing that really fits. In Zurich, the furniture on sale tends to be either beautiful, modern, Italian and expensive, or ugly, modern, Italian and, er, expensive. Leaving those of us on a limited budget with only one real option: taking a soul destroying trip to the Swedish furniture emporium to select some randomly named bookcases only to get way-laid by the Swedish Shop and coming home with an armful of cod-roe paste and a jar of Senapsil.

There is, however, another option as the landlady of my French chateau would testify to: the Brockenmarkt. The Brockenmarkt is a store where buyers can pick up anything ranging from thickly daubed, brown oil paintings of the nativity to old 1,000-piece Jigsaw puzzles with 134 pieces missing (usually the corners or the sky). There are several in Zurich. Some better than others when it comes to finding things that would serve a purpose.

I admit that initially I was averse to the idea of buying furniture that possibly someone had died in but having seen the inside of several people’s homes, each of them lovingly furnished from other people’s cast offs secured at the Brockenmarkt, I have rather changed my mind. There are good, solid bits of furniture to be had there at reasonable prices, if only I could carry them home.

Traditionally the Brockenmarkt has catered to the poor: buyers whose options are limited and for whom the Brockenhaus is really the only option. But a Swiss friend pointed out to me the other day that in central Zurich at least, the target market of some Brockenhauser was changing subtly, reflecting the growing trend for fashion conscious Zueriwesters and Kreis Druu fashionistas to go in search of those cool, design classics of the 50s and 60s.

As my friend said, the Brockenhaus is really just a reflection of society, both in terms of what gets thrown away and what gets snapped up by those who are keen to avoid the Swedish emporium. Once a place for cheap things, the brocki is becoming a choice location for those looking for a dash of country style.

The Final Whistle

2008-06-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

As the European soccer championships comes stumbling to their inevitable conclusion (I favour Germany over Spain but what do I know), the various media pundits dispatched to the Alps to cover this football fest start to churn out their wrap up stories with a similar inevitability.

These articles attempt, in broadly sweeping arcs and with full use of stereotyping, to extract some grain of truth from a series of unrelated observations. This concept will be familiar to anyone who has listened to my podcasts before: simplify and exaggeration, the first and last rule of journalism.

The result has been a flood of articles in the international press about the success of the Swiss/Austrian hosting of the euro 2008 championship, particularly in the UK. In order to keep my brain infused with news and opinion on what is going on on my Insel, I tend to listen to BBC radio in mornings. There I heard one radio correspondent utter with virtual disbelief how much fun he had over here and how the atmosphere of the matches had almost universally been a positive and pleasant one.

Another British newspaper had an article, which in an almost apologetic tone, was headlined “I love Zurich”. A guilty confession indeed and an indication perhaps that many were intent on coming to Switzerland and Austria and finding fault with countries that rarely get appreciated for what they offer.

In terms of my own European championship experience, I have been impressed with the way that Zurich has managed to integrate the event into their daily lives. Far from being the unwelcoming and miserable bunch that some feared they would be on the eve of the championships, it seems that everyone has pretty much entered into the spirit of the games. Organisationally, of course, the Swiss demonstrated a spectacular grasp of what is necessary to make a public event a success and not a heaving, unpleasant and dangerous mass of drunken louts stoked up by a video wall.

Drinking a beer in the fan mile while watching the games was a pleasant, safe and straightforward experience – and gave Zurich the opportunity do what it loves doing best in summer. Pretending that it is in fact a Mediterranean resort town – which while not strictly true, isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds.

Alongside these furtive admissions of admiration, indignant journalists take back with them a sense of righteousness about things they have witnessed aboard and spend the first week back at their desks writing stories like: “Why can’t Britain host a football championships like the Austrians?” or “Why can’t London be more like Vienna?” or “Why can’t British trains be more like the Swiss?” To which I can only respond, why indeed?

The Big Swim

2008-06-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite subjects this, but one that I will return to again and again because for me it sums up all that is good about Zurich and Switzerland: the outdoor pool. After a winter of generally sloth-like behaviour, during which I did very little towards maintaining a generally acceptable level of health and fitness, I emerged from my hibernation on Pfingsten weekend and decided that swimming would be the thing to do. Ok, I admit I was cajoled into doing it but the achievement is no less notable for that.

As a child I was a keen swimmer. I was a member of a swim team. I was fairly good at backstroke. I never got the hang of butterfly, but I mean really, who does? I dived to the bottom of the pool in my pyjamas to rescue a rubberised brick off the bottom of the deep-end. This seemed significant in 1987. I am not sure I would feel the same way now. I have never, thankfully, had to rescue anyone from the bottom of a swimming pool, least of all when wearing my nightclothes. Who knows though. It may happen.

But then through my teenage years, the thought of appearing in swimming trunks in public clearly become a problem and I didn't really go swimming again until, well, May 18th this year. So there you go. A history of my swimming career. All this to say that now that I have started again I am amazed at what I have been missing these past 20 years. I have also managed to get over the swimming trunks issue just in time for the Swiss authorities to follow their french counterparts in introducing bizarre clothing laws for swimming pools, under which long swimming shorts are banned as unhygenic and skimpy ones favored. Kind of like reverse sharia.

Anyway. Swimming seems to me to be the most natural form of exercise: it works all sorts of muscles that would usually require a fairly specialised piece of gym equipment and the kind of fetishistic attention to bodybuilding detail that no healthy or sane person should be able to muster. It works you out without tiring you out. It is eminently relaxing. Your brain gets lulled into a pleasant state of zombie like peacefulness by the lapping of the water and the slosh from the movement of your limbs. I can easily dispatch my 10 laps of the pool while switching off my brain.

My favourite swimming location has to be the outdoor pool at the Dolder. Now I am fully aware that outdoor pools exist in many different locations on this planet. In London for instance the 1930s Lidos are undergoing a kind of renaissance too. But none are quite like the Swiss in terms of their crystal waters. Their functional changing facilities. Their pristine grounds. Invariably, when I get there, there is not a soul around and I like to imagine that I am in fact a privileged quest of Mr. Dolder himself. Its about the only way it will ever happen.

Co-hosts and rivals

2008-06-14T04:52:00.000-07:00

The jokes are legion and the rivalry runs back for hundreds of years: Switzerland and Austria are traditionally at loggerheads but have put their differences behind them to help co-host the Euro 2008 football fest. As we enter the second week of this goal-scoring bonanza, its worth a look at the relationship between these two countries.

“What’s the difference between downtown Zurich and the Vienna Central Cemetery on a Friday night?” asked an Austrian friend of mine when I enquired about the rivalry between her nation and Switzerland. “There’s more going on at the cemetery.”

As jokes go its hardly original, but it betrays the deeply ingrained rivalries that exist between Austria and Switzerland, neighbouring countries that share just 160 kms of border. To each nation, the others are somehow slow, backward or boring, and representative of the yokel-ish character that both cultures have tried hard to shed in the years since the end of World War Two.

Now the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament is intended to bring the two countries closer together, by dispersing the competition’s matches, and the expected millions of visiting fans and their spending money, across eight cities – four Swiss and four Austrian. But examples of cross-border cooperation appear few.

One exception is the ‘Swiss Beach’ project at Strandbar Hermann on Vienna’s Danube Canal, an adaptation of a popular urban ‘beach bar’ the likes of which have sprung up all over European cities in recent summers. Austrians and their guests will be treated to Swiss flag decoration, rösti, raclette and Swiss music (including hits in dialect) – but presumably not Swiss beer or Swiss prices.

The reasons for Swiss-Austrian rivalry go back years but, as with many other countries, they have been kept alive through sporting events. Austrian football fans gleefully recall the 1954 World Cup quarter final in Lausanne in which the visitors beat Switzerland 7-5 in a 35-degrees-celsius heat wave. Austria’s form has since fallen: they are ranked 92nd by FIFA. That puts them alongside countries Thailand, Syria and Iceland... Not exactly premiere league.

However, Austria has beaten Switzerland in terms of wins in international matches played by 25 to 10. There were 5 draws. But Switzerland is the better exporter of national talent: 77 percent of Switzerland’s home-grown footballers play in foreign teams. Just 29 percent of Austrians do the same.

To my mind Austria offers better cuisine (the Wiener Schnitzel is unbeatable) and its people are the more gracious hosts. The Swiss are far more functional, dare I say it more stylish, and certainly more international. However, Austria's culture is heaving with the richness of its imperial past: you can spend days in museums admiring Sisi's spoon collection or tour the various palaces built and then abandoned by Empress Maria Theresa.

And to end, my favorite Swiss-Austrian joke which manages to be offensive to the Swiss, the Austrians and Blondes at the same time. My apologies in advance therefore. "What happens when the blonde crosses the border from Switzerland to Austria? Switzerland's IQ increases massively. So does that of Austria."

Football's Coming Home

2008-06-07T04:55:00.001-07:00

It's coming home. It's coming home. Football is coming home again. Well, that would be Britain's contribution to footballing culture dealt with then. As the Euro 2008 competition kicks off, I am reminded again that Britain will not be there. No Beckham. No drunken hooligans. And that's just the footballers' wives I am talking about...

My weekly contributions are normally gloriously sports free. I am not a big sports fan and as a child would happily build a scale-version of the Eiffel tower out of Lego bricks rather than kick around a pig's bladder and try to aim it between the two discarded school jumpers that served as goal-posts.

However, like all fair weather sports fans it has fallen to me on this, the first day of the UEFA Euro 2008 Championships, to decide which team to support in this competition. A tough decision at the best of times. And even tougher when you don't have a clue what's going on and your loyalties are split three ways between three countries that are close to one's heart: Austria, Germany and, of course, Switzerland.

Let's begin with Austria: when I lived there eight years ago, a Croatian guy named Otto Baric was in charge of the soccer team. He was full of gloriously incomprehensible theories about playing styles and philosophies about the world. Unfortunately Austria didn't win very often and he was sacked. Still, he was good value and his press conferences made my day. Since then, it doesn't look much like the team have progressed far. Perhaps he needs to return from retirement?

Ranking 101st in the world by FIFA, the Austrians are shall we say a little out of their league alongside their peers from Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Germany. Their choice of black for their away strip kind of says it all. I hope they will do well. But there are many, even some of their best supporters, who fear they will not. A repeat of their 7-5 drubbing of the Swiss at the 1954 World Cup would be fun but appears unlikely.

And so to the Swiss -- a team I should really support if nothing else because somewhere along the line my television license fee goes towards a nanosecond of their wages. I worry though about their form and the pressures of performing in front of a home audience: local support can lift the players up but it can also create additional stress.

Coach Kuhn has other issues on his mind too after the dramatic fire-brigade assisted rescue of his poorly wife from the roof of their attic apartment this weekend. She spent some time in hospital and is hopefully on the mind. We wish her well and hope Khun can return to focusing on making the Swiss national team a success. The apparently misnamed Tranquillo Bernetta and his teammate Alexander Frei are the ones to watch. But very much like their milita army, the Swiss have a reputation for strength in defence and a paucity of attacking spirit... Must be the result of that military service. Christ though, Switzerland beat Liechtenstein 3-0 -- isn't that enough?

Well, frankly, no its not and so finally, in the absence of the Brits, I turn to Germans. Having watched them in action in the 2006 World Cup it is clear that the Germans are on a roll right now. They might have a reputation for arrogance, who knows, but if you want to pick a winner, this one would appear in my opinion to be a safe bet. Guided by Jogi Loew and his amazing head of hair, the Germans have picked the prime spot to spend time during the event -- Locarno -- so they will be the only ones spared the lashings of rain that are forecast to engulf the AlpenNordSeite. And for that reason alone, they will undoubtedly do well.

Zurich's emotional outburst

2008-05-31T04:57:00.000-07:00

You know you are getting old when you don't recognise a youth cult nor understand what on earth it is about. I never really realised that Zurich might be at the cutting edge of the cult of youth: I always, mistakenly it might appear, assumed that the youths in the Limmatstadt were perhaps a little bit behind the curve in terms of their sense of style, and music, and dress. How wrong I could be.

For a couple of months now (years probably if I had bothered to open my eyes) I would have noticed that the was a new movement brewing in the Hauptbahnhof. (You may notice by now that I consider the Hauptbahnhof to be the melting pot of Swiss culture and the ultimate leveller of Swiss style). Back in the day, the HB would play host to the kind of kids who were modelling their look on rappers such as Eminem. Since I am currently sitting in Detroit I can testify to the fact that they were pretty close to the original look. But perhaps a little light on the bling and missing the all important Chevy Escalade.

Now the Eminem alikes have been replaced by an interesting new band: to my untrained eye I would call them 'Kids of Goth'. They have the same sort of dark hair and eye makeup, coupled with a prediliction for piercing parts of their bodies that I wasn't actually aware you could pierce (I mean where does the back of the stud go?). But in a significant departure from the rather dark Gothic norm (dark except for the occasion use of deep purple or if I remember correctly cherry red doc martins), these kids wear colour. Any kind of colour mixed together and thrown on, contrasting with their black hair and black eyeliner.

They also wear amazingly thin drainpipe jeans that I can only imagine they apply with a spatula. Anyone over the age of 21 wearing these things should be shot. On the spot.

I would never profess to be a fashion expert (I own a pair of Chelsea boots and a Barbour jacket after all) but these kids strike me as having a certain style. They also have an attitude. Not obnoxious, not unpleasant but an attitude nonetheless. On a train recently, I was sitting near a couple of these 'kids of goth' whose conversation, since it was in English, I couldn't help but overhear. They were articulate and intelligent. And above all, sensitive. Und wie. Their girlfriends. They feelings. Above all their emotions were discussed and described in huge detail.

I learn now they are called 'emos' (and I thank the tagesanzeiger for bringing them to my attention). Emos because of their emotional sensitivity. I also learn from the Guardian that they are regularly attacked, verbally abused and generally laughed at by their mainstream peers. Sad really. Still, they brighten up a dull corner of the Hauptbahnhof and make a change from Eminem. But I don't fancy their chances much on the streets of Detroit.

The Darling Buds

2008-05-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

There is a time in Switzerland that is particularly nice and it is about right now: the dark and foggy days of the winter are a distant memory, the trees are all budded and the blossoms in bloom, the air is mild but with an undercurrent of freshness still. May. In Switzerland. What could be better?

Of all the months of the year, May is the one that I prefer. The city of Zurich emerges from its cocoon. Within the space of week you can go from wearing your heavy winter coat to wearing shorts and T-Shirt. You shift from living a life indoors to contemplating where the best places are to go sit outside.

Life in the pavement cafes of the Rennweg area or the Rathaus explodes and old Letten Bahnhof becomes a small playground for Zurich’s adult population: space to lounge, to swim, to drink and eat and of course to indulge in the obligatory people watching that the summer months seem to make more interesting.

Not that I have rose tinted spectacles I hasten to add: I enjoy May because who knows what is coming next. As I write I sit here in my flipflop sandals contemplating a patch of grey cloud in the blue skies above me. Nothing is every assured in Switzerland in the month of May and one shouldn’t take the weather for granted.

The footballers and football fans of euro 2008 will be pleased to hear however that the forecast is good for our upcoming football fest. June is unlikely to be cold, say the weather forecasters and the likelihood of warmer temperatures is about 50 percent. IT doesn’t sound convincing to me. Amazingly the median temperature at the four swiss playing locations in June on a long-term basis has been 16 degrees in bern and around 18 degrees in Geneva. Best pack a cardy if you are thinking of coming over…

The lesson I have learned from the past is to make hay when the sun shines because come june the picture may be altogether different. A plunge in temperatures, a permanent curtain of rain, all of this is possible in a country where the summer weather is at best unpredictable.

Of course, we all remember the glorious summer of 2003: the time when the streets baked and the badis became a must-do for most of the city’s overheated office workers. We all live in hope that it will be repeated. In the meantime we will enjoy the slightly cooler, slightly nicer temperatures of May. Who knows how long it will last.

Zurich by bike

2008-05-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Zurich by bike

A few years ago I did something that I felt was quite outrageous. I sold my car and for not much less than the I price I got for it I bought a bike. Not, I hasten to add, a nice BMW motorbike nor even a Vespa. No, a pedal cycle or a pushbike, a bicycle, basically.

It seemed such a huge outlay at the time but it is one that I have never regretted. Having a bike that actually works, that fits me is a true lxury whose value I always appreciate. Everytime I ride it I remember why I bought it: is infinitely preferable to owning an aging audi with a leaking boot and a thirst for expensive fuel.

I am pleased to see in these past few days that fellow Zurichers have returned to their bicycles after neglecting them over the winter months. The streets are once again filled with two wheelers, quite a feat in a city with the topography of Zurich.

Whenever I am at risk of feeling smug about my level of fitness I simply go out on the Zuriberg and wait until a grandmother on her citybike overtakes me. The level of fitness that local bicycle riders have is quite stunning to me.

And so, with some trepidation, I am about to embark on an Alpine cycle tour. I have bought the appropriate kit: the lycra shorts with their disconcertingly heavy liner, the little cut off weight-lifter gloves, the oversized crash hat and the ludicrous panniers.

I could have the clip on shoes, the GPS navigation kit and rearview mirror but somehow I just didn’t see the need. Let us hope that I don’t come to regret it.

This will be the first proper cycle tour I have done with my new spiffy bike, the last major journey I undertook was on a racing cycle I bought from the Veloboerse for 200 Swiss francs. One day 2 of our tour one of the pedals simply fell off. I don’t know if you have ever tried to ride a bike with one pedal? its quite hard. Rather like trying to swim with one arm. You try to overcompensate with the one side that still works but the result is a frustratingly lop sided experience. in the end I resorted to attaching my foot to the functioning pedal with a pair of boxer shorts in an effort to be able to pull the pedal through the upwards phase of its cycle as well as being able to push down. Did it work? no. Did my leg hurt? Yes.

So I am hoping this weekend will not include a repeat of this little incident.

My cycle tour companions will be fellow Swiss: the result is that we know in advance where we will be going and How many days we will need, the downside is that I fear their calculation of our average speed is more likely to be based on their own abilities rather than my own. I knew there was a reason I didn’t need a rear view mirror. There ain't going to be no one riding behind me.

Between the Bread

2008-04-26T05:33:00.000-07:00

We Anglo-Saxons are not known for our culinary sophistication. Apparently, according to most Swiss people I have met, the British Christmas pudding is shaped like a football, because it is, in effect, a football, while American cuisine is all about size over substance. Or so the theories go.

There are many parts of British food culture I miss: one of them is the lunchtime sandwich. A ritual in the UK, the sandwich has become a staple of any workers diet. Egg and Cress. Bacon and Avocado. Shrimp and Mayonnaise. Beef and onion. You name it. you can have it. In a roll, a bap, white sliced or wholewheat. Butter or Marge. Salt and Pepper. With a mug of tea and a bag of ready salted. My mouth is watering already.

A stroll around London’s city and you become aware of how many sandwich stores exist: prêt a manger, Benjys, EAT not to mention a plethora of hole in the wall Italian delis that look as if their vinyl bench seats have not been updated, nor wiped clean, since the 1960s.

So, I wonder where in Zurich are the best sandwiches? I am not talking ciabatta with rucola and parma ham here, that is not a sandwich but an aspirational lifestyle statement. Nor do I mean greasy, mouthburning hot panini (of which a great one can be had on the Zahringerplatz by the way) The sandwiches I am talking about are cold and do not involve melted cheese.

A friend suggested the Manta Bar on Bahnhofstrasse but I can’t go there to check because my Rolex Oyster is getting its battery changed and the Ferrari is having its windscreen washer fluids purified. Currently, my default option is Sprungli who produce the Corn roll with Chicken and Mayonnaise – this to my mind is the closest I will ever get to British sandwich heaven in Zurich.

Now, for an American sandwich, I suppose there is a Subway somewhere in town. Otherwise, there is a burger or two for sure.

My obsessions with hamburgers is a relatively new thing. As a child I distinctly remember going to Macdonalds for the first time, back in the days when the buns still had sesame seeds on them. I remember both the visit and the sesame seeds as I witnessed for the first time in my life, a woman remove her false teeth to dislodge a sesame seed that was stuck to her palette. An amazingly day of firsts for a child of six, I can tell you.

I digress. The Burger went unloved by me for years until recently, when I discovered the joys. My search for a burger in Zurich has lead me up a few blind alleys, one of them ending in a place called hooters that I will not describe in detail here. One of the more successful burger trips was one that ended in the SilberKugel.

Now the SilberKugel, to the unitiated, is a thing to behold. A retro-looking Swiss fast food restaurant, with bar stools and a diner like bar, waitresses that have been on the job since the place opened and round windows that frankly make you feel like you are dining in the mess room of a submarine. The food is – well – functional. The prices reasonable and general atmosphere is pleasant. The day I was there, I sat next to two plumbers, opposite a man who could have been an insurance clerk and next to an elderly, well dressed woman who scarfed a cheese melt like it was a guilty pleasure. I took a Silberburger, I think, a gloriously greasy thing. And enjoyed it very much. Not quite a sandwich but highly recommended. The place looks like it could do with some custom anyhow.

Now, that my appetite is wetted, I am intrigued to find out where there are other burgers and sandwiches in this city… I want to know where your favorite chicken and sweetcorn sandwich is or where you get your best hamburger… Suggestions gratefully received at armitage@hoerkolumnen.ch.

Burning the Boogg

2008-04-14T05:35:00.000-07:00

So here we are, on the cusp of the third Monday in April, eenly awaiting Zurich’s transformation into the set of a 18th Century pagent centered around an exploding snowman.

To the uninitiated, let me explain: the days is Sechselauten – or the striking of six – a Monday in April where Zurich abandons all claims to be multicultural business capital and slides blissfully back into the dressing up box of its past.

Grown men, insurance clerks probably or highly-paid hedge fund managers, dress up like extras from shapre, donn robs, wigs, tricorn hats, carry swords, spears and sticks, take to drums or brass instruments and generally carry on like its 1777. It is as if a historical drama came to town and forget to bring the film crew.

The concept if you will is based around the city’s 25 guilds and the mend are dressed as one or other them. As they walk through the Bahnhofstrasse and down to the Bellevue, their ladyfolk – remember we are in 1777 here – present them with flowers and get a peck on the check in turn.

In the meantime, and this is the part I have never really grasped, there is a procession around the Bellevue involving a visiting canton (invited up to Zurich to marvel at the wonderful costumes and generally be made to feel like the poor cousin). There are large animals, camels for instance and people dressed up like bears (JJ1 or Bruno was booked for 2006 until his untimely demise) and then, to cap it all, a huge bonfire (lovingly constructed by the parks department) with a snowman-like on the top… yep, a snowman. On a bonfire. This part relates not to 1777 necessarily but sometime a little earlier when Zurich’s hunters would head off after winter to slay the Böögg.

Now, you have to remember that we in Britain have had years of practice with bonfires – bonfire night on Nov 5th – the day on which we celebrate the failure (it could only be the Brits) the failure of the gunpoweder plot of 1605 in which guy fawkes, a confessed catholic, attempted to blow up the houses of parliament, allegedly. Since I am from Yorkshire, which is where Fawkes was from too, we don’t burn efigees of Guy Fawkes. Instead we just have fires and eat toffee apples…

As a result I am not as comfortable with the site of burning effigies as others might be… The Boogg rather gets my sympathies, particularly since the poor guy – no pun intended – is dragged through the streets and booed at and also has his head stuffed full of explosives in what strikes me as a particularly cruel attempt to create drama and excitement… he has even in recent years been subject to kidnap attempts…

The time taken for his head to explode is generally seen as a being an indication of the prospects for the summer in Zurich – the longer it takes the better the summer will be. I think. Recently, it has taken so little time that no one has had a moment to start the stop watch and record it… Apparently, it used to be a witch that burned so I suppose we should be glad that this practice has stopped…

I found this description: Suddenly the flames spring upward and the explosive-filled figure of the snow man ignites. White-robed horsemen gallop about the fire as firecrackers explode and parts of Boogg fly in all directions, amid a deafening roar of noise and confusion. Round and round the horsemen ride, forming a magic circle about Winter, to prevent his escape from the flames.The symbolic rite which has come down through the centuries from pagan times is one of Switzerland's many ceremonies to dramatize Winter's expulsion and universal joy in returning Spring.

Mainly though the day is remembered for being a half-day holiday and for the confusion that it creates in the minds of tourists many of whom cannot fathom how they stepped off the train into 1777.

Bribing your landlord

2007-06-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

The best piece of advice anyone gave me about looking for an apartment in Zurich was to treat the process like an extended job interview: wear a suit, do your homework and be prepared for some stiff competition. Last time I lived in Zurich I didn’t follow these pointers and it took me months to find a home. When I did, it turned out to be noisy and located next door to a brothel. I was determined this time to do it differently.

Where I come from, renting a flat is a relatively straightforward process. You find a place that is habitable, hand over half your monthly income to a complete stranger and that’s it. Your landlord doesn’t want to know who you are or where you’ve been. So long as you don’t burn the place down, he’ll be happy. In Switzerland this is different as I soon discovered.

The first hurdle is the flat viewing. After weeks of scouring websites and newspapers, we thought we had found the flat of our dreams. But on arriving at the appointed viewing time, we discovered that 48 other people had the same dreams as we did. As we meekly checked out how many rooms it had, our co-viewers were striding around the place like they lived in it already. They were trying to find the most suitable location for their sofa and where to put the chair while we were still trying to work out if we even wanted to live there. Like all good house parties, the letting agent is hiding in the kitchen, clutching a bunch of application forms and surrounded by a gaggle of desperate flat-hunters. At this point, we decided to move on.

The key to success in finding a flat lies in presenting the right paperwork. In Switzerland, paper has a value, and this doesn’t just refer to bank notes. Paper with a stamp on it or a signature is particularly valuable and personal references even more so: if you can get a Swiss person to admit, on paper, that they know and like you, then so much the better. Bring your work permit, your employment contract, your birth certificate and your bank statements because no piece of documentation is too insignificant when convincing your future landlord of your good character.

If all else fails, then resort to bribery. It seems that many Expats are driven to extreme measures in the quest to get a roof over their heads. Someone told me of one couple who sent chocolates to the landlord to be, a true sweetner, and another who plied the owner of their apartment with a bottle of wine. It seems that a personal touch works wonders in Switzerland, where contacts are built and grow over years. Another suggestion was to send a photo with your application, to prove to the letting agent that you and your partner are not axe-murderers. If you really want to swing it, then a copy of your bank statement should do the trick, assuming you have some money of course.

When we finally found the flat we wanted, we swung into action. Like the job you know you want, we pulled out all the stops. I drew the line at the holiday snaps as I wasn’t convinced that was going to help us. But I did write a letter together with our application effectively begging to be allowed to live under this man’s roof. Amazingly, it worked. We move in next month. And we didn’t have to send chocolates.