It's the little things...

Sometimes it is the little things that really get you when you are living or traveling in a foreign country; those subtle little things that are familiar enough to make think you know what you are doing, but just different enough to frustrate the hell out of you. One thing I discovered about myself during my first week in Switzerland was that if presented with too many of these things at once, and thereby reaching a critical frustration threshold, my solution was to just walk away. Avoidance is a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem. If I walk away from the problem then it is no longer a problem, right? Or as Bob Marley says, "Tis he who fight and run away, Live to fight another day." I just need a chance to regroup and mount my attack with a new strategy.
There are many variables that can affect the frustration threshold, therefore sometimes it can be reached quite quickly, and other times more slowly. My first day of language class was a low threshold day. After class I was in the train station before returning home and had a sudden urge to use the toilet. I followed the signs in the international language of stick figures to the appropriate facilities and was thwarted by locked doors on the stalls. I remember the days of pay toilets in the US but they seem to be long gone, along with the accompanying "Here I sit all broken-hearted, paid my dime and only farted," graffiti that I still remember from my early years in store bathrooms. (As a tangent, I suspect that there are more Americans who can quote bathroom graffiti limericks and poems than true lines of literary poetry). The toilets required a 1/2 Swiss Franc coin. I reached in my pocket; no 1/2 coin, but I did have a 1 CHF coin. I went back out into the train station and went to the "Change" window. I don't think the guy who sits at the window is there just to make change for using the toilet but I appreciated his services. I returned to the bathroom and looked at the coin-lock mechanism with its foreign instructions. It can't be that hard, insert coin and open door. I inserted the coin and tried every combination of pushing, pulling and turning the knob. The door didn't open. No problem, thanks to my handy change man, I have another 1/2 CHF coin. Insert second coin, try again. Turn knob, push, pull and repeat. Only one thing left to do. Walk away. I don't have to go that bad anyway, I tell myself. By now, it is almost time to board my train so I head for the platform. Once on the train I found success with the non-pay facilities on board. However, I was shocked to find that my waste was just flushed out onto the tracks. So you mean I have to pay to properly dispose of my waste but I can just dump it on the tracks for free?
Upon returning home, I went out for my first solo trip to the grocery store. Supermarkets here are essentially the same, but there are those "little things." I approached the shopping carts and tried to pull one out of the line. Stuck. I pulled again and then looked down to see that the carts were chained together. I briefly pulled on the chain to see if it would come out and looked to see if there was an obvious release button. My low threshold limit already reached, I walked away. I think a basket will do just fine today. "'Tis he who fight and run away, Live to fight another day." Later I found out that the carts are coin-operated. You must insert a 1 CHF coin into the handle of the cart to push out the chain that connects it to the next cart. When you return the cart and re-insert the chain your coin is returned to you. My first thought was "Do they think that someone is going to steal the carts? And do they really think that 1 Franc is enough incentive to keep someone from taking a cart?" I had images of homeless people and bottle recyclers in the US pushing shopping carts full of all of their booty and thought if you really needed a shopping cart 1 Franc would be a "steal." So far the only thing I can think of that I have been able to buy here for 1 Franc was a package of yeast at the grocery store and entry to look at a waterfall that you could see from the opposite side of the river without paying anything. I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that, since there are virtually no homeless people here, the coin system must have another purpose. I think it is simply to get people to return the carts in a nice, orderly fashion where they belong at the front door. No paying pimply-faced kids minimum wage to round up stray carts in the parking lot, clean out the cart corrals and drive the herds back to the front door- like they do in the US. The Swiss are such a neat, orderly and law-abiding lot that I suspect if you told them they had to do it, they would return the carts on their own, without the 1 Franc reward. As an extra bonus of returning your carts, you also reduce one more parking lot hazard for your BMW or Mercedes.
I have yet to return to the train station toilets to see if I can get them to work, but it would be in my best interest to do so before I have the additional stress of really needing to make it work. Kind of like last week in the grocery store. Up until last week I had only paid for groceries in cash. Although I had removed cash from the bank, I had yet to use my ATM card at the grocery store. If I was smart I might have pioneered this usage sometime when I was in there during the middle of the day with only a handful of housewives and pensioners with nowhere in particular to be. There are no grocery baggers at the grocery store (another way to cut out those minimum wage kids) so I usually am trying to bag up my groceries as quickly as possible so that I don't hold up other customers. When my purchase was totaled I had the sudden panicked realization that I was about 7 CHF short of being able to pay in cash. This was the only register open and by now there were 4 or 5 people lined up behind me. I fumbled for my wallet and pulled out my card and then looked blankly at the card machine. No place to swipe the card on either side, nothing on top. The cashier is very patient with me. Somehow I always end up at her register and she knows that I am a dysfunctional German speaker. She indicated to flip my card around and pointed at the bottom of the card reader. Ah yes, you slide the card up from the bottom, but it is hard to see when you are panicked and standing above it. There is no way around it, you look like an idiot when things like this happen. I don't think there is anything you can do to redeem yourself. You can't say "Believe it or not, I scored in the 95th percentile on the problem-solving section of my Graduate Record Exams." Just walk away. 'Tis he who fight and run away, Live to fight another day.

Talkin' Trash

Switzerland is a country overflowing with rules and regulations (but not trash). Everywhere you go there are signs to tell you what to do and what not to do. It makes it easy for those who can't think for themselves, but difficult for those who don't understand the language. The possibility of unknowingly breaking some law or regulation was a large source of stress for me when we first arrived here. (Oh, and we have broken more than a few minor ones, starting with my first day in the country , but we can talk about those later). When we arrived in Switzerland we had to register with our local town office. Upon registering, they issued us, among other things, a guide to local recycling regulations. During that first week, I probably spent a few hours with the recycling guide and an English-German dictionary trying to decipher how to deal with our growing pile of trash. Until I figured it out, I didn't want to throw anything anyway; fearing the "trash police" I had heard about who will go through your trash and fine you for improper disposal.
Switzerland reportedly has one of the highest recycling rates in the world and, due to the fact that you must pay for all of the trash you produce, the amount of unnecessary packaging is generally less than you would find in US stores. The payment systems can vary by where you live, but this is how it works for us. First, we must buy standard size trash bags (35l, 60l and 110l; those little l's are for liters, for those who are metrically impaired) with the sizes clearly labelled on them. Then at our local grocery store we buy stickers that must be affixed to each bag before disposal (see photo). I think the stickers were 3 CHF each (approx. $3 US). You use one sticker for a 35l bag, 2 for a 60l bag and 3 for a 110l bag. Due to my trash police paranoia, I made sure to thoroughly shred anything that had names or addresses on it for the first bag or 2. I also waited until after dark to make the trip to our apartment trash dumpster, so the neighbors wouldn't see me. Now you really think I am paranoid. Believe me they are watching, and they are just waiting for you to do something wrong. And they will tell you when you do too.
Compostable waste goes into a separate bin and is also picked up once a week. I know what you are thinking, it sounds easy so far, right? Now let's get to the recycling. The actual concept of recycling is not a difficult one for me to grasp, I have been doing it for years and have lived many places, with varying degrees of concern for recycling. The trick is to figure out what actually can be recycled, because it better not end up in the trash. Even for those who don't care about the environmental implications of not recycling, the trash police fines, the extra cost of disposal, and the thought of breaking any rules is enough for any law-abiding Swiss person to recycle everything possible. Once you figure out what can be recycled, then you need to figure out where to recycle it. Plastic milk jugs and soda bottles must go back to the grocery store (as do batteries and Brita water filters), glass and cans go to a town collection site that has very limited hours, old appliances must be taken to specific locations, old furniture can be stickered and picked up but only up to certain dimensions and only on a few pickup dates per year. Paper, cardboard and newspaper is also picked up on a few specified dates each year and must be bundled and tied in a specified manner with specific maximum dimensions. Apparently, this is the true test of whether you or Swiss or not (or at least if you are assimilating), if you are able to properly bundle your paper and cardboard for recycling. Since the Swiss distribute massive amounts of advertising flyers through the mail, I had no shortage of newspaper to bundle. We also had a large stash of cardboard in our storage area from our all of the boxed and unassembled furniture we bought at Ikea. In anticipation of our first pickup date last week, I bought a roll of string and began sorting and assembling bundles. For the large pieces of cardboard, I had to fold them multiple times to get them to the required bundle size. I must say I made some nice-looking bundles. I might even be able to pass for being Swiss.
Raven took great interest in the recycling project and helped with shredding some of the cardboard and unrolling the string for me. The part of her lineage that is German Shepherd, may in fact be Swiss German. Once the bundles were complete we proudly added them to the growing pile near our dumpster.
Apparently, the reason the bundles must be of a specified maximum size (and therefore weight) is because it is all collected by the local kids. I'm not sure what they get out of it, but it is a brilliant scheme for the towns to get some free labor. Although I missed the morning pickup, I was able to witness the collection operation in a nearby town when commuting to language school a few days later. It was like when the National Guard mobilizes for a relief operation. The streets were crawling with kids towing garden carts, which they would fill with the bundles and then bring them to a number of designated dumpsters and trucks. Seeing all of the stacks of newspaper made me flashback to when I was a kid and would do my friend's paper route when he was away on vacation. One house I delivered to was owned by an old couple who had a serious hoarding problem. I have since learned that this is not just eccentric behavior but is a form of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. The entire porch (and as far as I could see into the house) was filled with stacks of old newspapers and the whole place was dirty, dilapidated and smelled like litter box. The next house down had a large aggressive dog that would chase you if it was left loose, which was most of the time. The next house after that had a dog that was tied out on a chain and I found out the hard way that in his excitement he would spray sweet-smelling doggie urine all over you if you got too close to him. It was a street fraught with many perils for a paper boy.

Life's a bummer, when you're a Hummer

Breaking news. I was logging on to blog about something completely different when I saw a news story that was just released 4 minutes ago. GM has just announced that they will be closing 4 truck and SUV plants in the US. The move comes in response to lackluster sales in the wake of rising oil prices. American automakers have been slow to respond to the increasing demand for more energy efficient vehicles and will definitely be playing catch-up with foreign automakers now that US consumer demand has finally begun to shift. I am not interested in paying higher prices at the pump, but I have always hoped for increases in gas prices because it is the only thing that will get American consumers and, consequently, automakers to change their habits. We don't all need to be driving around in SUVs and large trucks to commute to work, pick up a few groceries, and drop the kids off at soccer practice. Sure there are people who could really use these vehicles regularly for what they were intended, but these people are a small minority.
The CEO of GM stated that this is likely a permanent market change and the article also states that the "iconic Hummer brand may also be discontinued." Only our culture of excess could turn a vehicle like the Hummer into an icon. With an achieved MPG for the H2 that is lucky to reach double digits and a big hulking mass that will crush anyone in its path, or at least run them off of the road, Hummer owners are narcissistic status-seekers who are basically saying to the rest of the world "I don't give a @#%$ about you, the environment or anything else. It is all about ME, ME, ME." I found this top 10 reasons not to buy a Hummer. However, Hummer owners will rabidly defend their right to drive one. Logic won't work on this crowd. No big surprise but I am not the only one who hates Hummers, there is a whole website devoted to them (FUH2).
Europeans definitely have us beat when it comes to energy consciousness and the use of fuel efficient vehicles. (Fuel costs here are roughly double the all-time high prices currently found in the US). It is not like American companies cannot build more efficient cars, in fact they do. They build and sell all kinds of fuel-efficient models for the European market. Is the current predicament the fault of the auto manufacturers for not producing energy efficient vehicles for the US market, is it the fault of the US consumers who have been buying SUVs in record numbers up until recently, or is it George Bush's (and cronies, Big Oil, auto industry lobbyists etc.) fault? It is of course very complex but I will break it down to a one word answer. Yes.

The Dinosaurs are Not Extinct

I had a bit of a time warp experience this past week. I went to see Dinosaur Jr. at the Abart club in Zurich. Dinosaur Jr. was one of a handful of very influential bands who are credited with establishing the alternative or indie rock music genre that we know today. Indie rock refers to the independent record labels that helped to spawn and support this movement. If you are interested the roots of indie rock, I highly recommend a book called Our Band Could be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground (1981-1991). The book chronicles several influential bands, leading up to 1991- the year that indie music really broke into the mainstream with the release of Nirvana's Nevermind. Unfortunately, I missed the early era of Dinosaur Jr., because where they formed (Amherst, MA) is just a stone's throw from where I grew up. When I started college in 1991, I quickly discovered Dinosaur Jr., among a host of other indie bands when I began working at the college radio station. Green Mind was released just a few weeks after I started college and would become one of the soundtrack albums for my college years. By this time, the original lineup of Dinosaur has disbanded and J. Mascis (Singer/ Guitarist) wrote and recorded almost the entire album himself (including drums! he was a drummer before picking up guitar and starting Dinosaur). Cassette copies of Dinosaur's previous albums (with the original lineup), Bug and You're Living All Over Me, lived in the Blue Camaro during those years and were staple road trip tunes.
Although I saw Dinosaur Jr. live in the 90s, it was always more of a one man show, since J. was basically the band and drummers and bass players came and went. Lou Barlow, the original bass player, and J. had an acrimonious relationship and after leaving the band Lou came into his own as a songwriter, heading up another band called Sebadoh. Dinosaur Jr./J. continued to produce albums in the 90s but slowly started to fade. I never really expected the band to ever return to its former days of glory, much less reform with the original lineup. In 2005, they got together and played some reunion shows. They must have rediscovered some of that energy that made them great because they released a new album in 2007. Here it is now in 2008, 20+ years after the band formed, and 10 years since I last saw them, and I finally get to see them in the original lineup. The cynics among you are probably thinking that they just reformed for the money, as so many washed-up has-been bands will do. Maybe that has something to do with it, but not only are they putting on spectacular shows, but they are also creating some powerful new music.
Enough with the history lesson, on to the show. Let me preface this by returning to how I started this post, which was to say the whole night felt like a bit of a trip back in time. I met one of the guys from my language class at the train station. He produced a couple of cans of beer from his backpack, which we drank on the train on the way to Zurich (you can do that here). Since he is about 10 years my junior, I also gave him a bit of a history lesson and we talked about indie rock of the 90s and the current state of music. When we arrived we packed into a crowded club and caught most of the opening band. The local opening band was nothing special, derivative and unoriginal. The difference between the two bands was even more obvious when Dinosaur launched into their first song with a tightness and power that was well above even what I expected. You could feel the energy erupt in room. (Someone there shot a short video. Not the best representation but you can see a short clip anyway. The sound was much better live). The combination of the old songs, of which they played many, and the atmosphere there brought me right back to college house parties. People crowded together, sweating from every pore of my body, drinking warm beer from plastic cups, thick, thick air. After the show, we poured out onto the street with the rest of the fans and headed to catch the last train home. Once we arrived at the destination station, I still had a 40 minute bike ride home since the local train to our town had already stopped running for the night. All the way home, the songs ran in my mind, mixed with thoughts and memories from my college days. The strength of the effect of music on the brain and its ability to link so closely to memory is a beautiful thing.