Episode 2: June 2005

We would like to thank all of you who read the first edition of the Shorg files, commented on our posting, and are even returning for a second helping. Welcome back! Since our last posting, we have added a new technology. For those who would like to delve deeper into our adventures and look at all our pictures, we have added links to our Ofoto galleries where we post our digital pictures. Simply click on any of the pictures that we post to the blog, and you should be taken to the matching Ofoto site. [Note: In this edition, we will refer to several things in the local currency, the Swiss Franc (CHF). Roughly speaking, the CHF-AUD exchange rate is one-to-one. The CHF-USD exchange rate is about $0.80/CHF.]

Before we get into the details of June, we thought it would be appropriate to provide our first impressions of Switzerland. It is safe to say that day-to-day life in this country is much different from what one would experience over, say, a two-week vacation. First and foremost, there is one thing that never changes: Switzerland is an absolutely beautiful country, and the scenery here never gets old. It seems as though every image of the country has been taken directly from a drugstore (chemist, for our Aussie readers) postcard. (Case in point: We are editing this blog entry from the Starbucks in our suburb of Thalwil. The Starbucks has an open-air patio that overlooks Lake Zurich and the surrounding hills. Even Starbucks has a view!) The lakes, such as our own Lake Zurich, are placid and pristine and make one consider whether it would be better to drink directly from the lake rather than from an Evian bottle. There is hardly a flat spot in this country, with undulating hills leading to snow-capped mountains. The terrain makes for a very healthy populace. Everyone here is either a biker, a runner, a swimmer, or all three. The main roads have separate bike lanes, and it is not uncommon to see a rider pass by on a fully-loaded road bike, wearing a Lycra jersey, and donning a very serious attitude. (Don’t make the mistake of blocking the bike lane and forcing a rider to break his/her stride. You will get a not-too-pleasant ear-full!) For those who watched the Tour de France, you may be familiar with the Phonak Hearing Systems team, which is based very close to Zurich.

The weather in Switzerland is surprisingly temperamental. The winters are cold and gray, much like what Neal is used to from his days in Chicago and Michigan. In the summer, it takes a while to heat up – we had a few nights around 11oC (50oF) in June – and rain and clouds are never far behind a nice, sunny day. Nonetheless, the Swiss have learned to live with the weather and, more importantly, take advantage of a nice day when it presents itself. The locals flock to their sports or the lakeside when the sun emerges, and the area begins to look alive again.

The Swiss themselves are a different sort of people. (Aren’t we all?!) The country is divided into three parts, based on language. The German part of Switzerland (the largest) is heavily influenced by Germany, from the food to the language to the architecture. (Actually, the Swiss will tell you that they don’t speak “high” German. They speak Swiss-German, a variant that has no written form.) After a two-hour drive to the west you will find that all the road signs change from German to French. This part of Switzerland is influenced by neighboring France, and many peoples’ first language here is French. A three-hour drive south of Zurich puts you in the heart of the Italian part of Switzerland. Because the country has these three areas, many of the Swiss are multilingual, though they do not concentrate much on English. The closer you get to a populated area, like Zurich, the more English you hear. In fact, we found it surprising that so many people speak English here, given that it is their fourth language!

In general, the Swiss adopt very Germanic mannerisms. They are very clean and orderly -- you can set your watch to the trains and rubbish collection, and it is frowned upon to show up to a meeting/engagement late. The people generally keep to themselves and like the environment to be quiet and peaceful. (We have heard all kinds of stories regarding how the Swiss deal with what they consider noisy neighbors. One person told us that she threw a party in her apartment and invited her neighbors to attend. One pair of neighbors came to the party and had a fun time, but after leaving the party, the couple decided that it was bedtime and called the police to break up the very party they had just attended!) Fortunately for us, our neighbors keep to themselves. It is rare that when we see anyone enter the building, and no one has reported us to the police despite our habit of doing noisy things like watching television and running the washing machine after 10 pm!

When it comes to work, the Swiss seem to have a good idea about work-life balance, but their adherence to that concept comes at the price of convenience. Very few stores and restaurants are open on Sundays. If you need to do some grocery shopping, you had better do it on the first six days of the week because you will have a very hard time finding a grocery store open on a Sunday. During the week, stores have fixed hours and do not stay open late. The grocery stores close at 6 pm in most villages (8 pm in ours) and the later hours are reserved for restaurants and bars. At work, the Swiss are punctual and usually leave work at 5 pm on the dot so that they can get to their hobbies, sports, and families. Though they live in Europe, the supposed center of fashion, the Swiss do not appear to be too concerned with work dress – many Swiss show up to work in jeans and a short-sleeve shirt.

The work environment in Switzerland plays in favor of sanity. It is a law that every employee in an office building has a view of the outdoors. Consequently, all offices have windows. If you have an office in the central part of the building, your walls are typically made of glass so that you can see through your walls and then through someone else’s windows onto the outdoors. The Dow office is located in the suburb of Horgen (about a 15 minute drive from our apartment in Thalwil) and sits on a hill overlooking Lake Zurich. It is a very beautiful and must have been chosen by a very wise and influential person (‘cuz a chemical company has no business having such a nice location!). Dow has no manufacturing presence in Horgen. The site is only a corporate office (and a fairly lavish one at that). The work culture is fairly relaxed. Few of the men wear ties to work, but Neal insists on doing it for his own principles. People go to lunch in groups and spend nearly an hour there. In the Dow canteen, we even have a separate area where people can sit and have a coffee and a chocolate after they’re done eating lunch. The coffee area has plenty of windows, allowing patrons to view Lake Zurich and the hills behind it. Again, it’s totally unnecessary…but damn nice.

The Swiss appear to be very rich, for reasons that confound us as we cannot pick up a dominant industry in the country, outside of watches and chocolate. It is not surprising to spend an afternoon in Zurich and see plenty of BMWs, Porches, Ferrarris, and Maseratis zipping around town. The Swiss seem to be quite image-conscious, so much so that some people spend one-third or more of their monthly salary on a car lease. (You would think that a BMW would cost less since we’re so close to Germany – not the case.) Taxes in Switzerland are not tremendously different from the U.S. and much less than what one would find in Australia. The taxes are split into three different levels – national, cantonal (state tax), and Gemeinde (city tax). You can be charged an additional tax if you admit that you are a Catholic, with your contribution going to support the local church.

We have not mentioned the famous banking industry of Switzerland yet, eh? Well, we’re still not entirely convinced it’s all that superior. One thing that has become clear to us is that the banking system here is not organized for the common citizen. Credit cards are practically non-existent. The annual fee for a no-frills MasterCard or Visa is around CHF 150-250. If you want to go high-end (e.g., a platinum American Express card), you’ll have to shell out CHF 700 annually! That said, most people do not need a credit card in Switzerland. Most purchases can be made using a debit card, which comes along with any bank account. Personal bank account holders must maintain at least CHF 10,000 in their account or else pay a monthly service fee. Want to buy a home? Well, apartments start at around CHF 1,000,000 and stand-alone houses are much more. The banks usually ask people to fork out a down payment of around 20%! Why such a high down payment? Well, the Germans and Swiss view home ownership as a sign of permanency. When a person finally decides to buy a house, it is a sign that they intend to live in the same location for the rest of their life. A house is viewed as the penultimate investment and one that residents should save for years to achieve.

Whew! That’s all we have to say about Switzerland for now. Now, let’s get into our June adventures.

Very early in the month, Neal became financially independent! We met with a representative form UBS and set him up with a Swiss bank account of his own. The meeting with UBS highlighted to us just how much wealth there is in this country (some of which is no doubt left over from World War II). UBS made a point of mentioning that our account comes with the stipulation that we can “only” deposit a maximum of CHF 100,000 per month (good greif!), though more can be deposited with bank approval.

Early in the month, we bought Neal a new bike. He got himself a Giant mountain bike, which comes from the U.S. (You can take the man out of the US, but you can’t take the U.S. out of the man. How true!) When we picked up Neal’s bike, we also had Deb’s bike (ahem, also a Giant) and rode back home (about 10 km). The ride home is a beautiful one and follows the Lake Zurich shoreline. It’s a relatively flat ride (by Swiss standards); however, the last bit of the journey includes a 200-meter climb from the lake to Thalwil. We did not make it up the hill on our bikes and were forced to walk our bikes the rest of the way. Needless to say, that hill has become our new fitness challenge!

On the first Saturday in June, we went into Zurich to look for a new car. (I have a company car but will lose it at the end of July. Our apartment in Thalwil has also been provided by the company, and we lose that at the end of August.) Despite the fact that cars are generally pretty small in Europe, we had our hearts set on a fairly large one: a Honda CR-V, what the American would call an SUV and the Australians would call a 4-wheel drive. We struck gold at the first Honda dealership we found. At that location we met one of the nicest car salesmen in the world, a guy named Rolf Leiser. After discussing the car with Rolf for 25 minutes, we chose to lease a new, silver CR-V. The whole experience went smoothly for a few reasons. One was Rolf – he was a very nice and agreeable salesman. The second was that people do not tolerate haggling in Switzerland – the price is what it is. The third reason was that we knew exactly what we wanted – we had our eyes set on a reasonably-priced CR-V and not some unnecessarily expensive BMW. We left the dealership feeling good and ready to pick up our new car in two weeks.

That same night, Hart and Adrienne (Neal’s friend from business school and his wife) arrived in Zurich to begin their hiking tour of Switzerland. We picked them up at the Zurich main train station (the Hauptbahnhof) and headed off to dinner for a good catch-up. On Sunday, we took them to Engelberg (translated -- Angel Mountain), which is about an hour from our place. We had lunch there, enjoyed the majestic scenery, and then left Hart and Adrienne to their hiking adventures.

I left Zurich on Monday for a two-day meeting in the Italian city of Stresa, located on Lake Majore in north Italy. I found Stresa to be a gorgeous place, and I’m sure we’ll visit it together in the future. From Stresa, I moved to Lugano in the southern part of Switzerland (near where Neal proposed to me) for a three-day HR conference.

On Saturday, June 11, we picked up our new car. Rolf was truly prepared for us. He had posted a sign in front of our car congratulating us on the purchase. As we got into the car to leave, Rolf ran into the back room and came out with a flower bouquet for me. So lovely (for me, that is)! We decided to break the car in immediately and continued driving to St. Legier (on the far western side of the country, near Geneva) where my dad and stepmom (Tony and Julie) live. The next day, dad suggested that we all go for a hike to a mountain peak known as Dent du Jaman in the nearby area. With a picnic lunch packed, we headed off on what we thought would be a relatively simple hike. The adventure started at an altitude of roughly 1,300 meters and took us up to a height of 1,900 meters. The first three-quarters of the walk were fairly easy and offered us some nice views of the surrounding. The last 200 meters, however, were really steep and more in tune with true rock climbing. When we were finished, we stood at the mountain top, which was only about 20 meters long by 5 meters wide. Despite the haze in the air, we had a wonderful view of Lake Geneva and the surrounding mountains. After taking a few pictures at the top, we slowly made our way down the mountain, careful not to lose our footing on the loose rock. Once we had finally reached a more manageable path, dad informed us that a woman had slipped and fallen to her death on the very same mountain only a few weeks earlier. Thanks for the heads up! We continued to hike down the mountain path and stopped half-way down to have a wonderful picnic lunch in Swiss style with some cheese and wine. After lunch, we walked back to the car, picked up our things from dad’s place, and then drove back to Zurich.

On Saturday, June 18, we took our first “international” adventure together since arriving in Switzerland. We got up incredibly early in the morning to catch a flight to Prague in the Czech Republic. We arrived in Prague at 9 am and caught a taxi to the apartment where we stayed with a good friend of mine from Australia, Lesley Mendoza. After hugs all around, we dumped our bags and hit the streets, taking advantage of the beautiful weather to see the sights of Prague on foot.

Despite being extremely busy with tourists, Prague is a beautiful city, and we can see why so many travelers recommend going there. Possibly the most notable site in the city is Charles Bridge (Karlov Most), an amazing stone, gothic bridge that connects the Old Town and Malá Strana. The bridge is constantly packed with tourists, artisans, and locals selling souvenirs. The bridge is lined with Baroque statues, each one telling a different story.

We finished our first day in Prague with a boat ride on the Vltava River and soaked up the sun. As the sun set around 10 pm, we headed to a small place off the beaten track for dinner. When we got back to the apartment, we were all exhausted and promptly fell asleep.

On the Sunday, we spent the morning at the Prague castle, which overlooks the city and features a huge church. We finished our castle tour just in time to meet up with Neal’s friend from business school, Rado, his wife, Olga, and their new baby, Elisabeth, for lunch. After lunch, Rado and Olga left us in one of Prague’s famous squares that features an astrological clock. The clock is famous for its automated puppet show that goes into action at the top of every hour. From there, we headed back to the apartment, got our things together, and boarded our plane back to Zurich.

Neal’s birthday was June 22, and we celebrated it with some friends. A Vietnamese friend, Dan Thanh, invited us over for dinner, along with a French friend of mine, Daphne, and Daphne’s mom, who was visiting from Paris. A great evening was had by all (especially because Dan Thanh is a fantastic cook) and ended with Neal being serenaded by rounds of Happy Birthday in various languages.

And that brings us to the end of June. It was an eventful month, and we hope you enjoyed reading about our adventures and our take on life in Switzerland. We’ve loved reading the comments some of you have posted, so keep them coming!

Remaining places to see before we die: 987. (Truth be told, the count is probably much lower than 987. We’re working on the official count and will publish in the next edition!)