Gruizi Mit'nand!
Its been a long, long while but I'm back. I am currently suffering from an agonising bout of writers block so please allow me to forego the usual erudite aphorisms that are characteristic of a well-written Stusie blog...
School Life
I live here in Zürich, a stone's throw away from the train station and I am working at - allegedly - the 'best school in Switzerland'. This is apparently what all Swiss schools aver but this claim has been supported by many who do not work at my school. On top of that I once taught a group of highly-talented children who all attend my school: they only have to attend school in the mornings so that they can concentrate
on their talents in the afternoon. Among them were two gymnasts, a musician, a footballer, a dancer and a couple of mountain climbers. They all have to perform at international level to be allowed to skip afternoon classes. I asked one pupil - doubting his gymnastic ability - whether he could demonstrate his skill for the rest of the class. Clearing a space in the middle of the classroom he launched into a backflip and landed squarely on his two feet. Momentarily flabbergasted, it took me several moments before I could utter the words, 'ok, so today we're going to talk about modals of deduction, ok everyone WHAT IS A MODAL OF DEDUCTION?' The rest of the class however, betraying their Swissness, didn't even raise an eyebrow at this remarkable feat.
My school also boasts a politician/teacher as the Swiss democratic system means that all politicians are part time. I must admit though she is rather too left wing for my liking and her ideas about the dictatorship of the proletariat are rather outdated to say the least...
Swissocracy
This brings me to the much touted Swiss democratic system which, despite the complications of having four languages to negotiate in, functions extremely well. Indeed it leaves one with very little to complain about. I recently watched a documentary about the implementation of a new law to curb GM research where the negotiations were spread over a number of days and it was suprising to hear in the interval to one meeting a Swiss farmer/politician calling home to ask his wife if their sons had brought the hay in. These people have not studied political science and, having real jobs aside from their political duties, do not shamelessly pursue their own interests...well not all of them at any rate.
Stereotypes
I have eaten fondue since being here (to be enjoyed with white wine apparently) and raclette. I have also eaten probably a kilo of Swiss chocolate, which I concede IS the best in the world. I also have a Swiss bank account which I am rather happy with but it is unfortunately NOT secret. The interest rates are also rather quite poor but the wages are so good that I'm thinking of staying on as a Putzfrau when my contract ends. Another thing that the Swiss are famous for is insurance. There are more kinds of insurance on sale here than you can shake a stick at - the Swiss even claim to have invented life insurance! Not exactly anything to get excited about, but if you you ARE predisposed to getting excited about such things which COULD possibly lead to an accident then you'll be happy to know YOU ARE INSURED. Health insurance is compulsory but life insurance isn't. One kind of insurance which I don't know if you guys have over there in the U.S. is a personal insurance in the event of you damaging someone else's property. The example given to me by a rather taciturn laughably stern Swiss person - who happened to work in insurance - was that if I was for example playing golf and the ball that I struck hit a ferrari, then of course, there had to be someone to pay for it - ergo this insurance. As for the skiing, I was rather underimpressed by the Swiss. I had a race with some of my snowboarding students and...I won. The idea of a day on the pistes for the Swiss means 2 or 3 runs then a Pfümli, 2 or 3 runs, then a bite to eat, 2 or 3 runs and then call it a day.
Language
The Swiss German apparently is the purest form of German you will hear. As crisp as the glacial ice that leaks down into their pristine mountain lakes, the German that is spoken here is pre-Lutheran. I am no linguist but apparently there were some changes made to German around the time of Luther and these changes were ignored by the Swiss...but all this is conjecture. If its true then we could say the Swiss are living with a medaeval language while the rest of the German speaking world has modernised. Well, if its not broke, don't fix it I suppose. On first being exposed to Swiss German, one can be mistaken for thinking that one is hearing Dutch or a derivation thereof. In the ululations of the conversation one can pick out the similarites between Swiss German and English and I believe these two languages are alot closer than high German and English. For example, a common phrase one will hear when leaving a shop or a library is 'Wiederluege'. Here they have have substituted sehen or schauen with luege which is of course alot closer to the English look. Swiss also 'luege' Fern although Swiss T.V. is light on entertainment, high on dull market information. A form of gewesen is also used here with an almost tiresome regularity. Coffee houses are filled with the constantly repeating phrase 'isht es guet g'see?' (ist es gut gewesen). The other phrase one hears most often is 'en Guete' (guten Appetit). There is also a marked French influence on the language noticeable in such words as 'Abonnement' or 'merci' (märsi). Other than that they just seem to add an 'i' to the end of nouns and call it Swiss such as in 'Gipfeli' (Gipfel), Hüsli (WC), Lööli (Dummkopf), Müsli (Mäuschen and Muesli), Tüechli (Handtuch), and my personal favourite Verhüterli (condom). If any of you are interested I could send you a copy of my Swiss German Wörterbuch its a barrel of laughs although not quite on a par with German Trivial Pursuit.
posted by pfarrad @ 16:31
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