Various soccer-related thoughts

I watched the second half of the Germany/Spain semifinal with some ETH colleagues at Paddy Reilly's, where I'd also taken in both US games. I'd been absolutely confident that the Germans would win after watching them chew up England and spit out Argentina, especially since Spain looked good but nowhere near dominant in beating Portugal and Paraguay. And of course this didn't happen, because I'd made a foundational error. Just as they say in stock ads, past performance doesn't assure future results. It's easy and familiar to assume that a team will continue performing at the same level that they have in previous games, and that often happens, but here Germany somehow couldn't muster the magic it showed against Arg, Eng, and Aus, and Spain deserved their 1-0 win.

The loss humanized Germany for me, for a couple of of reasons. First off, it's easier to root for a team that's struggling. It's something about the underdog instinct that animates general support for longshot teams. When Germany steamrolled Arg last Saturday, they seemed almost predictable in their dominance, and it's hard to be too excited when a team you have no connection to gets yet another goal. But this time, Germany started out tentative, and never really got consistently into the game. It reminded me of the US against Ghana in the first half of the R16 game. We all kept wondering what on earth was holding them back, and why they looked so different on the day. It's all part of the vagaries that make soccer frustrating and compelling; if teams were consistent and predictable, it wouldn't be very interesting to watch.

Second reason I was pulling for Germany was that my Deutsch compatriots were really, really into the game. This was not in a swaggering-Bavarian "we're better than you, Deutschland-ueber-alles" sort of way, but in a sincerely pleading, pre-game-nerves sort of way that I could really relate to. They wouldn't even agree with me that Germany was favored heavily (a fact you could verify by looking at online betting sites, and boy am I glad I didn't wager anything), because they didn't want to get their hopes up. When Puyol scored in the second half, our table became funereal, and I found myself--probably for the first time--sincerely hoping Germany would score so my terribly terribly sad German friends would be less terribly terribly sad. But they didn't, and I sat with them for a long session of post-game commisserating. I wish there were a German version of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien." I don't think they're a people that can find glory in sadness, the way Latin folks do.

Finally, Bill Simmons has a typically great feature on the US Soccer team's run in the World Cup. It's worth reading, as most everything he writes is, but there's one line that stands out. He says (and I'm roughly paraphrasing), "Following the US in this World Cup was like pining for a girl all through college, finally hooking up with her one night, and then getting kicked out of school the next day."

Exactly right, because it illustrates the double body-blow of getting knocked out of the WC: a loss is always sad and disappointing, but a knockout loss is doubly so because it removes the context on which you've been depending for sports consciousness for weeks. I was looking forward to the WC for months, and when it finally came, it was an on going presence in my life. There were highs (Alg, obv., and also the comeback v. Slovenia), lows (first half against Slovenia), but there was always something. When the US lost to Ghana, though, the ride was over just like that. Normally the sports fan can say "we'll get 'em tomorrow," but when you're kicked out of the world cup, there's only a distant possibility of redemption, and not a whole lot else.

Image: crowd spills onto street in front of Paddy's during second half of Germany/Spain WC semifinal.

Where I'm writing from

I have been staying for my time in Zuerich at a place called the Villa Hatt, and I’m completely obsessed with it. The Hatt is an ETH-affiliated residence, though if there are other visitors staying here, I haven’t seen too many of them. But the house is conspicuously awesome in a way that makes me continually conscious of it. The VH is, I think, a place of some historical significance. There’s a plaque out front that says, in German (so it’s only an approximation) that some rich family gave the place to ETH some years ago, and sometimes people will wander by and stop to look at it, sometimes even snapping pixes (which makes DF feel vaguely famous, and you know how he likes that).

Now all you in the broad readership know that DF’s general indifference toward the indicia of adulthood stops when it comes to real estate. Despite my general aversion toward bourgeois materialism, I covet fancy dwellings. And perhaps this is why I’m so into the Villa—as houses go, it’s an absolute beauty. This is not in a cheesy American way (overbuilt, ostentatious, tackily decorated), but in a stately and (seriously) classy way. The Hatt has gravitas, literally and figuratively. This entire area—Rigiblick—is upscale even by Zurich standards, and often when I’m out on the deck I can see into the house across the street and the family that lives there just glows with wealth. They even have a pool, and I can’t stress how rare this is in crowded, cold European cities.

The Hatt is basically a mansion that’s been turned into a residence for academics, and this makes me worry that the itinerant nerds who pass through here don't appreciate it as they should, their noses being buried in books and/or their aesthetic sensibilities having been dulled by too many experiments or theoretical economic models. Geographically, the Villa's located high up above the city in Zuerichberg. There’s a deck out in back, where I have a tea and read sometimes, and the views of the city and sea sweeping out below are so awe-inspiring that I’ve photographed them countless times, knowing full well that the pics are not going to do justice to the views. Taking all the pix is just sort of a way of acknowledging how awesome and rare it is that I get to enjoy a view like this. (And the views from my room are similarly awesome--there are tree-enshrouded vistas that stretch down to the city and sea, and to the mountains beyond them.)

A staircase leads from the deck to a lower level with perfect hedgerows and roses, and when I sit and read and look at the view beyond and the hedgerows below, I feel like a low-class interloper into European gentility. (I am also, for what it's worth, like the only person who ever goes outside to enjoy this deck, and it makes me wonder if the deck is haunted or somehow off limits--if I lived here, I'd be on this deck ogling the views all the damned time.)


John Waters said that Switzerland is the only country where the rich know how to act. I only vaguely understand this aphorism, but as applied to the Villa, what one can sense is that it took enormous wealth to create the place, but it's not obvious or conspicuous-consumption-y. Aside from the location in the fanciest area of a very high-end city, there are two rooms with enormously high ceilings, one of which houses a flatscreen TV the size of a small movie screen (seriously, the ones in the Beverly Center may be smaller), though it’s unclear whether I’m allowed in these rooms (more on this later). There’s the de rigeur spiral staircase with wooden banister; the numbered prints of some famous artists; mini-sculpture garden in the side yard; and fresh fruit and Toblerone on tap at all times.

I’ve already written about the breakfasts, which make me look forward to waking up every morning, and the walk to the funicular, which delights me on a daily basis (though sometimes I walk for variation and exercise). But I would be remiss in not mentioning the Villa Hatt’s manager, Frau Erika. Frau E is a sweet and very well-presenting older lady who runs the establishment. From what I can tell, this mainly means getting breakfast ready in the AM and doing upkeep on the property. They have maids to clean the rooms (and one of them barged in again today when I was in a state of undress, walked into the room, indicating that she had to put a box of Kleenex into the bathroom, and then apparently lost heart halfway into the room and left, taking the Kleenex with her), and there’s hardly anyone here, so I can hardly imagine that her job is terribly exhausting.

Still, Frau Erika executes her duties in a classically Swiss way—that is to say, with a nearly frightening attention to detail. She has breakfast impeccably prepared at 7am sharp every morning, and will typically ask me 2-3 times whether it’s good (and since it’s the same food every morning, obviously my answer is yes). She seems unsettled by my tendency to occasionally get a tea from the kitchen at off hours, and has explained in a mix of German and English that there’s some official procedure for doing this, which I’m going to simply use as an excuse to not get any more tea in the afternoons. {Edit: just this AM I realized that the coffee/tea machine had been moved from the guest dining room to the kitchen, and I can't help but think they did this to stop me from using it at off-hours, which kind of mortifies me.}

The only downside is that Frau E speaks virtually no English, and with DF’s weak-ass German it’s a struggle to communicate. There is a lot of waving and smiling and nodding between us, all very good-natured. So for example, when I visit aforementioned back patio, it causes Frau E to act ever so slightly agitated, hence my worry that parts of the Hatt are off-limits to guests (I wonder if this area is part of their residence, so me hanging out there would be like barging into someone’s living room).


Long story short, I am madly in love with the Villa Hatt, and my only reservation is that it will make my living situation seem meager upon returning home. But hell, at least I’ll always be able to say I spent a few weeks rubbing elbows with the well-heeled Zurich elite in a famous estate high up in Rigiblick. Not terribly shabby, eh, broad readership?

Images:

1. Exterior of Villa Hatt

2. Zueriberg-ward view from DF's VH room (or, as the case may be, "raum")

3. Zuerichsee-ward view from DF's VH room

Zermatterhorn

DF’s schedule in Switzerland has been a hectic one, with the seminars and the reading for the seminars, and … well, that’s pretty much it, actually. But to spend an entire three-week stretch in Zuerich alone without seeing any of the outlying areas would be a waste, so DF decided to devote one day to a trip to another Swiss area.

Which townlet to visit turned out to be an easy choice. Disneyland’s Matterhorn is one of the emblematic icons of DF’s beloved native SoCal. Trips to D-land as a tyke were always characterized by a contest designed to augment the delicious anticipation of the forthcoming trip: Who can spot the Matterhorn first?

Hence, DF planned a trip to Zermatt, located in southeasterly Switzerland, only a few miles from the Italian border, where the original Matterhorn is located. I got a ticket a few days early, being responsible and all that, and would certainly have done a spit-take had I had a beverage at the moment that the nice Swiss girl at the ticket counter quoted a price of $225 SFR for the round-trip ticket. As it happens, weekend travel is more expensive, Z-Faescht drives up prices further, and DF has no discounts available. This better be some damned good Matterhorn.

So: up early to catch a 9am train. Route: Zuerich to Visp via Bern, then from Visp to Zermatt. Total travel time about 3hr each way. I’d been warned off the voyage by some locals who stressed the long trip. But the length of the trip was actually part of what appealed to me. Train travel in Europe has often been a great pleasure. There’s something langorous and kinda romantic (non-sexually, obv.) about riding the rails through Europe, maybe getting a coffee and watching the countryside fly by.

Ahem. The key watchword in the above paragraph is “often,” and the second I boarded the train, I was reminded that train travel is not always a great pleasure, especially when the train is crowded and dirty and smelly, as it was during the leg from Zuerich to Berne. I found myself wedged at an angle into a tiny seat facing an old lady, right behind a group of five Swiss boys doing their compulsory year of military service. It was actually a pretty Swiss moment: the old lady was reading a paper in German, and the soldiers were nattering at each other in French until they drifted off, two of them slumping against each other in exhaustion. When I looked over I realized to my surprise that they were Swiss Italians (based on their names at least; “Dall’Agnolo” is the one that I remember), but you wouldn’t have known given the fluency of their French.




But then bit by bit the voyage improved. At Berne, more people exited than entered the train, and I got a big seat all to myself. Plus, the truly eye-watering BO smell that had dominated the area while the military dudes were there left with them, so I could start breathing through my nose again. Then at the transfer to Visp, things really took off. The train was as gorgeous as the one from Zurich was grotty. It had high ceilings with angled windows up high to afford views of the increasingly breathtaking Alpine landscape, and the air began to feel crisp and clear as we ascended the mountain railway to Zermatt.


Then, Zermatt itself: the town looks just like all those ersatz mountain villages you’ll see in the US, which are trying to cop an Alpine-resort feel, except that here, the aesthetic is authentic. Cars are verboten on even the main street, which leads up to the mountain region, and every building is named “Chalet” something or other. I stopped for a snack in a pub on the main road and sat for a while, watching the modest pedestrian traffic.



Well fortified, it was time for the ascent. Not of the Matterhorn, obv. The standard move is to take one of the hanging cable cars that bring you up the mountain and then walk down among the various picturesque paths. DF, though, decided to do it the hardcore way: walk up the hiking trails, and then descend in a cable car. And that’s exactly what I did, sweating and stalking up the steep-ass ascent (this about a year after breaking the tibia, which for what it’s worth, hurts much more on descents than ascents, to the extent it hurts, which is not really that much). It was aerobically challenging but not ridiculously so, and the walk from the base area to the cable car station at Furi took only about an hour, probably a bit less. Best of all, it wound up and around some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever goggled, the kind where you can’t quite believe how impressive it is, and all in the shadow of the Matterhorn, of course.




The Matterhorn, btw, was socked in with clouds when I first arrived, but eventually cleared up, and yeah, it looks pretty much exactly like its Anaheim simulacrum. The Swiss one is bigger, of course, but it lacks a rollercoaster, so I consider the comparison basically a wash.



Anyway: the hanging cable car (what on earth are these called? Sky-balls? They used to have versions of them at Disneyland between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, though those weren’t enclosed, which in retrospect seems really scary) swooped me back down into Zermatt. I wandered back into the city, where I checked out the very famous graveyard behind the church (the location of which I had to identify by describing it to a German girl who did not know what “graveyard” meant; so after trying it in French (“cimitiere”), I said “where they put dead people under the ground” and that seemed to do it). It’s famous because almost everyone buried there died while climbing one of the local mountains. Interestingly, the tombstones often detail the particular circumstances of the climber’s death, and some even include their climbing equipment as little memorials. It was sobering.




And speaking of sober, I then revisited the pub where I’d had lunch and watched Germany eviscerate Argentina in the company of a bunch of enthusiastic Swiss-German folks. I tried to cheer along when Germany scored all those goals, but my heart wasn’t in it; truth be told, I really wanted Argentina to win. It was fun, though—everyone booed whenever Maradona appeared on the screen, and after the game was over they played “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” really loud and we all sang along.



By then, twas almost nightfall, and DF caught the 6.39 train back to Visp, armed with a falafel sandwich and a Feldschloessen tallboy (the latter mostly because it’s so cool that you’re allowed to bring them onto trains). We sped back through the stereotypically Swiss-rural countryside (cows with disconcertingly loud cowbells, chalets a-poppin’, craggy Alpine wonderment, though sadly a dearth of yodeling), and then to Visp, and then DF slept most of the way from Berne to Z-town, and woke in time to navigate the chaos of ZuriFaescht and up to Rigiblick and home. Daytrip? Check and mate.




Finally, suggestion to local merchants: if you want to cash in on US tourists looking to bring a tacky souvenir back from your village, it’s an easy call. Just vend shirts saying, “Zermatt Makes Me Matterhorny” and you’ll make a mint. Can’t believe no one’s thought to do this yet.

Images:


1 Look familiar, anyone?
2. Zermatt town center--note dearth of any cars (not allowed in city limits)
3. Start of official M-horn hiking trail; religious iconography not reassuring
4. This is pretty much what it looked like all the way up; I had to stop
myself from going "wow" all the time
5. Slightly terrifying but mostly fun descent back to earth in suspended cable
car; any sense of height-fear palliated by faith in Swiss engineering skillz
6. Tombstones from graveyard for fallen climbers
7. Celebrating Germans at pub after 4-0 shellacking of Argentina; singing of
"Finale" to tune of "Volare"

Loud noises!!!

DF has never liked loud noises. Hence his systematic dislike for concerts: they are too damned loud. Ditto many (most?) bars and nightclubs, which are awful for their own reasons, but also because they tend to have music cranked to deafening levels. Why do people like this? What is appealing about having to yell to make yourself heard? These things confuse and flummox DF.

I can understand, of course, why one might need to make loud noise, as to call for help in the case of a criminal assault. I can also relate to, say, yelling to celebrate or singing when one feels like belting out a song. These loud noises make sense because they communicate something, whether a need for help or a desire to express felt joy.

For a child, such noises are a source of fascination, and they have no idea what kind of conduct is annoying because they’re presocial. But for adults to think this is amusing utterly baffles and annoys me. There is nothing interesting or entertaining or aesthetically redeeming about loud noises, whether vuvuzela or whistle or god knows what else.

My concern—and, let’s be honest, utter annoyance—is with the kinds of loud noises that people make for no other reason than they seem to like to make loud noises. To wit: when I was at the World Cup back in 2006, I became aware that most international football fans seem to absolutely, positively love loud noises. At the Brazil/Croatia game that year, a Brazilian standing behind me in a ticket line had brought a whistle and kept blowing it, at top volume, and without cease, even when I oh so politely asked him to stop.

This year, the prevalence of vuvuzelas at the World Cup has made even more salient the love of loud noises among soccer supporters. The vuvuzela is, in a way, the ultimate loud noise—it is terribly loud, impossible to ignore, simple and easy to create, and has no sonorous quality whatsoever. It’s about as mellifluous as the death bellow of a sick elephant—an unredeeming aural assault.

And so of course, OF COURSE, it has become de rigeur to bring vuvuzelas into pubs when you’re watching a game and to blow them in support of your team. And I hate this. Oh how I hate it. To illustrate: when I was watching Germany disembowel Argentina in a pub in Zermatt yesterday, I was dismayed to find that two Germany fans brought in vuvuzelas (painted in orange, black, and white, of course).

They blew the vuvuzelas throughout the game, sporadically (presumably to maximize their capacity to unsettle) and loudly. They would blow the vuvuzelas when Germany did well, and when play got into a lull. They blew the vuvuzela to make long monotone noises, and short staccato bursts. And every one of these was like a dagger of annoyance in DF’s brain, on the same level of appeal as having a howler monkey hopped up on methedrine screeching at top volume a few feet from your ears.

And you know what? PEOPLE EFFING LOVED IT. To DF’s utter and complete astonishment, every time these guys tooted their vuvuzelas, people would laugh, or turn and smile at them. I was baffled and still lack any real explanation. All I can do is venture this guess: people laugh for different reasons. Sometimes people laugh because something’s legitimately funny (e.g., a truly well-written comedic TV show or movie). But sometimes people laugh not because something is funny, but because someone is attempting to be funny or, perhaps more accurately, goofy. This happened a lot when I was clerking. My judge would often make jokes from the bench that weren’t particularly funny, but which nevertheless got a laugh because people perceived him to be trying to be humorous rather than actually being humorous (think also, for example, of parents laughing at a horrible school play).

Or maybe I’m overthinking this, and am just in the minority and I should accept that people, for whatever god-forsaken reason that I simply cannot relate to, love loud noises.

How DF stopped loathing and learned to kinda like ZueriFaescht

It is a well-documented fact that DF does not like public festivals. Crowds, bad food, loud music—it’s all about the polar opposite of DF’s scene. So when the ads went up around town for “Zueri-Faescht” (Zurichfest, fwiw, and possibly also obv.), DF was far from excited. The ads featured animation of a night sky lit by exploding fireworks, with the faces of smiling lions in the center of each explosion. This seemed somehow very European and also very unappealing.

On Friday night, the continually generous people of ETH again took DF out to dinner (while I am generally suspicious when others are nice to me, this is getting almost ridiculous—I constantly expect someone to pop up and hand me an exorbitant bill for all this) at a fancy, Japanesey restaurant called “Tao” in the central city. Walking there confirmed all my negative preconceptions about public festivals. The less-than-a-mile walk required us nearly a half-hour, as we had to traverse dense crowds of tweeny Swiss girls, cheesy Eurotrash dudes (which is pretty much all the dudes under 26), celebrating Dutch football supporters (didn’t mind them too much & they are very well-behaved), and all other manner of massed humanity, all pushing to get circus food or to make their way closer to some stage with awful, deafening music.

The dinner was great, as dinners in Zuerich nearly always are. One of the upsides of the city’s expense is that it’s keyed toward and insanely high quality of life, and that means many schmancy places to eat for bankers and the independently wealthy, and when there’s an extra table, some of the hoi polloi get a taste of the high life. The Japanesey fare was on par with anyplace in the U.S. save perhaps Nobu/Matsuhisa. The experience was not, however, enhanced by the proximity of a Polyphonic-Spree-type band performing nearby, belting out American gospel classics in labored German accents.



DF and his ETH compatriot parted ways after dinner, and the plan was simple: navigate the crowds, stop by the office, and get home for an early night (b/c heading to Zermatt the next day, about which more soon). But Z-Faescht thwarted DF’s plans. Hopping the 9 tram didn’t produce the familiar direct route back to Raemistrasse, because streets were closed and the trams were all re-routed. Hence DF found himself on a tram with very drunk and hyper Zuerich teens who were equally confused as to their whereabouts, albeit for chemically-induced, rather than slightly-disoriented-tourist reasons. The ensuing scene was comedic: DF in awful German and the drunken Eurokids in awful, slurred English, tried to figure out just where on earth the 9 had taken us and how we’d get back to the central city (DF to head home, the inebriated Zuerich boys to go to a disco called, apparently, “Caliente”—they asked me if I wanted to join them, assuring me there’d be “hot bitches” there, but I declined for many many solid reasons).

Eventually, the Eurokids and I decided the quickest way back would be to walk, and then I left, sort of having been absorbed into their pack by osmosis (and because it would have been harder to separate myself, since we were all going the same way), and eventually we got to the southern part of town and went our separate ways (despite more entreaties to go with them to “Caliente”; I wanted to be all like, “Do you know how old I am?”). I finally emerged just south of Quaibruecke, and immediately realized that both I knew where I was (excellent), and that the city had gone entirely dark (WTF!?!?!). So now I was disconcerted for a different reason, and just when I was thinking of how to say “power outage” in German, I realized: the lights had been killed because they were about to set off fireworks above the Zuerichsee, and I had just happened into the prime viewing territory for show.



And so I viewed, and the fireworks were really impressive, and it put me in a good mood. They ended, and I strolled back through the festival, less irritated with it all than I had been before. I strolled past the Muenstergasse, all lit up with animation, and felt a twinge of nostalgia for home as American pop songs blared from various outdoor discos. This time, when I got the 9 tram at ETH, beyond the confines of the Faescht, it was on track and dropped me off at Rigiplatz to be funiculared on up home.

Eurotrash

Ha!



(Get it?)

Unrelated, I had a subtle linguistic breakthrough earlier today. I ordered a coffee (in German, but this is no big deal), and the guy asked, "Zu mitnehmnen?" I replied without thinking, "Ja, bitte." For that moment, I did not do any mental translating and simply knew the answer was yes. But then I started thinking, "What the hell did he say? What did I say? What did it all mean?" While he was getting the coffee, it came to me: "zu mitnehmen" means "to go." Simple as that, and hardly on par with understanding a Wagner opera or anything.

But here's why it may be remotely significant: for probably the first time in my entire stint in Deutschweitz, I reacted instinctively to a question in German (as opposed to turning it over in my head like a thorny crossword puzzle), and my instinctive reaction was right. Given the slow rate of progress and my limited chances to practice, the likelihood of progressing too far is slim. But hey, little victories.

Two slightly related linguistic notes:
--Germanoswiss people seem to have no problem with referring to us Americans as, well, Americans. In Spain, for example, this is a big cultural issue. People will argue til they're (literally) red in the face about this, and insist on referring to us as "Estadounidenses" despite very compelling arguments to the contrary. Germanic types seem completely indifferent to this, and actively use the term "American" (or, more accurately, "Amerikaner" when identifying us).

--One of the great things about being in Switzerland is that it's been weeks now since I've heard anyone use the term "douchebag." A few years back, for reasons that remain opaque to me, a massive norm cascade caused this term to be the insult of choice around the States. I found the prevalence of "douchebag" gross and overused when it first happened, and I still do. Blessedly, this term has not yet crossed the Atlantic, and I've been enjoying life without having people refer to lurid feminine hygiene objects every ten goddamned minutes.

Wherein DF dis/confirms some earlier observations about Svizzera

OK, broad readership, you heard it here first: DF was wrong. About one thing. Remember how I said earlier that there is a puzzling dearth of bums in Zuerich? Well, it turns out that there are not no homelesses here, though there are some. Today, DF witnessed a frail old couple, shabbily but not poorly dressed (if you follow me), hobble up to a dumpster near Bahnhof Enge, open it, and root around for cans or god knows what. It not only proved wrong my earlier observation about homelessness in Zuerich (which was affected by an unPopperian black-swan type error anyhow), but may have been one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen.

But DF's surprise at the non-checking of railpasses here continues. I've yet to see a single person checking any tickets, and I'm on trams a lot. Today, I was almost happy to see a cop get on a tram, assuming he was there to check our tix (mine was totally legit, natch). But then the cop just sat in a seat and started texting someone. I wanted to be all like, "Hey, guy, stop sending txts to your BFFs and do your damn job!" But that might not have been a great idea.

I used to have a theory that while Chicago was on average much colder than DC, my subjective experience of DC was much much colder because I prepared for the cold more thoroughly when living in Chicago, so I actually felt much colder when I was in DC (i.e., I'd go out in DC without proper gear b/c it didn't seem that bad, and then freeze my ass off, while I'd bundle up for fifteen minutes minimum in Chicago because I knew that if I didn't, I might die).

I mention all this because once again, it is hot in der Stadt. Someone looking at the average temps in Zuerich might say that it's not that hot compared to the US, but here's the difference: in the US, places are wired for A/C or located to catch cool ocean breezes. In Zuerich, the buildings, houses, and trams are almost uniformly un-air-conditioned, so that you're some kind of hot all the time. This ranges from "sitting in the office and kind of sticking grossly to the seat" to "walking up the hill back to ETH and pouring lakes of sweat." Don't get me wrong, DF loves the Zuerich, and it's only a low-level annoyance, but lord if it doesn't make me pine for the good old US and its environmentally unfriendly A/C addiction.

Did you know?

--The reason Swiss email and web addresses end in ".ch" is that the traditional Latin name for Switzerland is "Confederatio Helvetica," or "CH".

--Swiss-German people often greet each other by saying "Hoi." It's a weird sound for German-speakers to make. DF is beginning to be able to sense how Swiss-German sounds different from standard German, though this is really only an elemental aural instinct and not something I could explain.