I Am Often Wrong About Switzerland
KEYS to Rejecting Stereotypes
I got a message from an old friend the other day who has lived in Switzerland for a long time saying that while my writing is sometime funny, but lately not, I am getting a lot of things wrong about Switzerland. As she is an extremely smart person whom I both like and respect, and not some internet bozo (note: just kidding, I like and respect you all and dwell upon every criticism you have of me as if it were a bad Air BNB review), I took her critique to heart.
I have long prided myself on being open to the prospect that I have things completely wrong, and that includes things about which I have very strong opinions. Maybe it’s my belief in the scientific method, but when provided with actual reproducible experimental data, I will change my mind. Sometime I will change my mind even without that kind of data. But not on vaccines. Or HIV causing AIDS. Or… well you get the point. But I will absolutely change my mind about my conceptions, preconceptions, and misconceptions of a country based on strong anecdotal evidence. Since preconceptions, stereotypes really, are pretty much based on anecdotal evidence, dropping them based on anecdotal evidence seems fair.
Once upon a time, I invented a bar game called “Least Accurate Stereotype.” The idea was that you come up with a stereotype that is completely at odds with reality, and… no one wanted to play.
No one wanted to play because it was a terrible idea. Just plain dumb. And even if I conceived it with the intention of having conversations debunking stereotypes, that can get into ugly murky territory, very, very quickly, and even faster at a bar.
See, I had a stupid, stupid, stupid idea, and I changed my mind when faced with evidence of my own stupidity. I am capable of learning and growth!
Another bar game I invented was called “Would They have been a Nazi?” You name a public figure and ask, whether, had they been living in Germany in the 30s, they would have been a nazi. The choices were “goose-stepping nazi,” “go with the flow nazi,” and “not a nazi.” This is not a game one can play anymore, because you can see the answers on twitter every day.
But the point is that I am right about some things, wrong about other things, and I think it’s important to try to know which is which.
In seventh grade, my English teacher, a Korean War vet who loved literature so much that we could learn the ins and outs of a book from him without reading a single page shared the following quote, which appears to be unattributed but Persian in origin
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child; teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; wake him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise; follow him.
I always liked it, and it’s stuck with me all these years. While I would love to be wise, I think my best case scenario is asleep. Though child is certainly in play. Regardless, there is a lot of “knows not and knows not that he knows not” going around these days, and I really, really don’t want to fall in that category. I think I’m safe though. I can’t think of how many times I’ve gone into a library, started at the stacks and thought “there is so, so much that I will never, ever know.” Including, apparently, who said the above quote.
So today, I’m going to take an honest and self-reflective look at some of the conceptions I had of Switzerland and the Swiss before I moved here and what I’ve learned about their veracity in my first 18 months here. If you think I’m wrong, comment below and prove it to me. If you win me over, I will publicly recant in an upcoming piece.
The Swiss are well-organized. Mostly true
This is perhaps the quintessential Swiss stereotype, the quirky mountain confederation where everything works, everything is on time, and everything functions like a well-made watch. As a general rule, I have been delighted and occasionally a little frightened by how well-organized things are here. I send emails to government offices and get prompt, personalized responses. Buses and trains overwhelmingly come at the right time. People largely do not speed. People show up on time, if not early.
But they are not perfect. Yes, yes, some of it is completely forgivable. Busses here, like everywhere else, do not run on time in the snow. (Note: Though it might be better in the mountains than in Geneva where it snows twice a year.) My wife and daughter got stranded between buses at a bus stop for an hour during a storm last year. They were miserable. But there are other issues that you would expect to be solved by a highly organized people. I am speaking, of course, of the road signs. Highway signs in particular are confusing here, with arrows pointing in odd directions, multiple signs for the same exit, and so, so, so much information. Sometimes a single road sign appears to have direction for four exits. Other times, there are two road signs for the same exit.
I think this may actually be a function of the Swiss defaulting to having more information rather than less. I think that’s a natural function of an interest in precision. I’d defer to people who have been longer, but, in addition to labeling being in three languages, I find labels tend to be very long here… But not always. I have yet to find a package of bulgur wheat that tells me how long to cook it for.
The Swiss are inflexible. Partly true.
I think this is really a function of organization. Because it is mostly true that the Swiss are well-organized, it must be at least partly true that they are inflexible. After all, organization is fundamentally about having rules, and flexibility is fundamentally about deviating from them.
The best example I can come up with is from the Office Cantonal de Vehicules, the DMV. My one experience at the OCV here was excellent. I breezed in, breezed out, and they sent me my Swiss driver’s license a week later. The only problem was I forget to feed the meter and got a CHF 40 parking ticket. See well-organized meter maids/men.
The flip side of this, however, is a Canadian friend of mine, a stay-at-home husband of a diplomat. He said he had to go the OCV seven times to get his car registered. Every time he went the staff were unfailingly polite, courteous, respectful and helpful… right up until they said the word “mais.” At that point the courtesy remained, but the helpfulness abated. “Mais” is French for “but” and every time he went they’d go over his forms and praise how he’d filled them out right up until they reached some minor issue, at which point—mais.
I do wonder if he actually went back seven times, but it’s not completely implausible. I sent in my application for a work permit in October and then heard nothing. When I finally found an email address four months later and then mistakenly sent my query to the office that deals with Ukrainian asylum seekers, they, in a well-organized manner, got it to the right office. But that office informed me that I needed to send additional documentation. They had my information. Were they ever going to tell me if I hadn’t asked? Probably not. Not in the manual.
The Swiss are not fun. Completely totally false.
It was dumb of me to think this from the get go. People generally think of highly-ordered societies as non-fun, but I think that’s completely wrong now. When people from highly-ordered places let loose, they really let loose.
But I have an excuse. Sort of.
One of the worse dates, I ever went on was with an American woman of Swiss ethnicity (note: whether Swiss can be an ethnicity versus a national origin is a whole other thing that I’m not touching.) There wasn’t anything wrong with her, per se. She was nice enough, but she was among the most boring people I’d ever met—and I’ve been at cocktail parties in DC that devolve into discussions of the federal pension system (note: every cocktail party in DC). Drawing her out was impossible, and she made no effort to draw me out. Still, this is terrible practice on my part. Especially since one of the most fun people I ever knew was also Swiss.
In graduate school, there was a Swiss guy in my class, and he loved being in America. You could get him to do almost anything with you by saying it was an authentic American experience. That’s how I got him to go see independent wrestling at a gym in Raleigh, North Carolina. We got our picture taken with Jake “The Snake” Roberts. He loved it. Didn’t know who Jake was, but he loved it.
Another time, he went on a spring break road trip across the south with me and a few other friends in my light blue 1994 Toyota Corolla. I have two enduring memories of him on that trip. First, we went to see The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s estate in Nashville, TN, and he could not have been more bored.
“I thought you’d like this,” I said. “A little antebellum history…”
“I did not come to American for history,” he responded. “I came here to drive a Mustang and eat hamburgers.” And so he did.
The other memory I have is of being in Little Rock, Arkansas late at night when he had a craving for cookies. Trying to sate his sweet tooth, we went to a McDonald’s drive through, where, from the back seat, he shouted “I WOULD LIKE MCCOOKIES PLEASE!!!” When we got our order, he was annoyed that they had given him lemony cookies in the shape of Mayor McCheese, the Hamburgler, and so on. I think he was expecting chocolate chip cookies.
“THESE ARE NOT MCCOOKIES!” he shouted indignantly for the rest of the night. Oh and he hardly drank at all, so this was real.
He was Swiss and he was really fun, so shame on me for forgetting. He got sick and passed not too many years after grad school. I can’t imagine how much fun I’d have had with him if he’d still been in Switzerland when I moved here. I miss him.
The other defense of the Swiss being fun is that we went to Saint-Croix for Carnival yesterday, and it was a blast. We went to a different place last year. There’s no Carnival in Geneva, thanks, I presume, to the Calvinist killjoys, but they have it almost everywhere else in Switzerland and it’s a blast. It lacks the debauchery of Mardi Gras or Rio Carnivale, but at this point in my life that’s for the best. I mean look at that confetti. And the weird guys playing the sousaphone. Fun!
So in conclusion, I really do have still have a lot to learn about Switzerland, I mean I only got through three stereotypes today. I also have a lot to learn about everywhere else. It’s clear that I don’t understand American anymore.
If you have a Swiss stereotype you’d like to debunk, put it in the comments below.
