It's a Swiss Thing

Before coming to Switzerland, I did my best not to have a lot of expectations of how it would be. When I went to France, the movie Amélie had just come out, so it was pretty tough not to expect it to be just like that. The thing is, in France I was a long-term visitor, and for the first weekend in Paris, a bonafide tourist. So, for me, it was like Amélie. Studying abroad was magical in a way no other trip to another country could be. Life was like the movies.

I can't recall a movie set in Switzerland, but I'm sure it would paint a picture of ultra clean and tidy streets, organization and punctuality, chocolate for everyone and content cows in alpine meadows. HA! What a joke! Switzerland, as least the Switzerland I am living in, is none of the above. Last night my bus was 12 minutes late, last week, my insurance man was more than 20 minutes late. I see grafitti, trash and dog poop in the streets everyday. Getting my phone hooked up took no less than 8 phone calls to the same 2 offices and as many return calls (let's keep in mind I was in a phonebooth) just to get an appointment with an electrician, who in the end, I was told, would show up between 8 and 5! No, no, no my friends. That is not organization. That is not punctuality! That is not ultra clean and tidy and I have yet to see a cow or alpine meadow. No, Switzerland is none of those things. None, except the chocolate thing.

Swiss people eat more chocolate per capita than any country on earth with the average person eating nearly 25 pounds a year. In the grocery store, there is a separate chocolate section all on its own and always crowded. A couple days ago, I went in to pick out a few bars of chocolate. I noticed that Coop has some really cheap varieties (pictured at the right). Lindt is 3 CHF a bar at least. It's good, but so is cheap Swiss chocolate, so I thought it best to stick toward that end of the chocolate store. Just then, a sneaky little man ducked and dove at the cheap chocolate. It's really cheap -- we're talking .45 CHF a bar. He deftly counted them as he stacked them up his arm and took all of them! He walked away with 16 chocolate bars! They're 100 grams each. That right there is a hefty chunk of the yearly quota and based on his skill getting them off the shelf, I don't think he's stocked for months.

It's true, the Swiss love their chocolate. The other stuff is not holding up, not at all. But that's not to say I don't love it here. I do. Especially the chocolate.