Upgrade Life!
Switzerland has changed little since the last time I was here in 2007. The women still have generally terrible haircuts that are still paired with hair coloring that seems to have been selected after a not-so-lucky game of ‘Truth or Dare’. Efficiency, order and cleanliness still permeate every crevice of society: the baggage carrousels accurately count down the minutes before your bags get spit out for collection, the car rental clerk seems more organized than your average air traffic controller and the floor of any gas station could double as your dinner plate. A pleasant departure from the occasional “your boarding gate has changed…again” that we find all too often in New York (if only because the same people here who may have been inclined to have changed your boarding gate in the past have all probably been shot.) This is still a nation that, not surprisingly, operates like clockwork.
The Swiss seem to harbor a perpetual passive aggressiveness that seems mostly rooted in the literal translation from Swiss German to English but with just a small dose of intentional pushiness. The first question asked of us as we pulled into the hotel, “You will join us for dinner, yes?” was quickly followed up with “You will sit with another couple, yes?” Your answer cannot be no. No means there are other options. No means you’re deviating from the plan (even if you didn’t know there was a plan). No would greatly affect and probably ruin the order of things. So of course we ate at the hotel (which was delicious) and the only reason we didn’t manage to eat with said Swiss couple was because we took too long to wash up before dinner. This is, and always has been, a country where Inefficiency is not tolerated and as much as I appreciate the chaos of the world, the Swiss order of things is still much to my liking.
