Christmas Shopping a la Suisse

 The Christmas Market is a charming European tradition that I have embraced with abandon not only because these markets are just so impossibly cute but mostly because every other booth, or mini-chalet, is serving Vin Chaud (or Gluhwein in the German-speaking areas) which is a delicious hot, mulled wine.  It’s quite proper, even expected, to have a Vin Chaud at, say, 11 a.m. and continue throughout the day into the evening.  One must love a tradition that combines drinking and shopping.

The markets have a variety of offerings by local artists, winegrowers, cheesemakers, toymakers, bakers, chocolate-makers, etc.  They are usually outdoors and set in the old parts of the towns beginning in one of the main squares and meandering along the pedestrian-only cobblestone streets.  It turns the hassle of Christmas shopping into an enjoyable experience.  A chilly experience, but enjoyable.  (The Vin Chaud helps here as well!)

However, my chauffeur to these events, Mr. Big, is really not much of a strolling, shopping, meandering kind of guy.  He is a Point A to Point B kind of guy.  So, we have worked out a system that keeps his antsy self busy while I am shopping.  He is in charge of the camera.  If I see something picture-worthy, I point it out and he shoots.  The rest of the pictures are up to him and I must say the man has a thing for clocktowers.  A high percentage of the pictures are of the back of my head or me turning around, cup of Vin Chaud in hand, because he has called my name.

His other job is planning out the walking route to insure that I don’t miss anything.  This is not an easy task because no streets in Europe are straight.  They are bendy and twisty and involve bridges, alleys and little tunnelish passageways.  He really gets excited when there are booths on both sides of the street—his planning becomes much more intricate.  He also sets a goal for himself that we are not “allowed” to double-back and see the same thing twice.  Consequently, he never actually “sees” anything in any of the booths because he is too preoccupied with where we are headed and not where we are now.  It’s not like he really cares, either.  His feedback is usually limited to “Uhuh, that’s nice” or “Whatever, Trailing Spouse, just buy it” or “Do you need more Vin Chaud?”

Using this system, we have set a personal best of three Marches des Noel in one day in two different countries.  For those of you reading this from the local area, here’s my synopsis of the ones we have been to so far:

Switzerland
Lausanne:           Don’t bother, only about 25 booths.  Vin Chaud, delicious.
Geneva:               Don’t bother, way too many vendors of cheap, crap Indonesian stuff.
Montreaux:        Cute, crowded and very photogenic.
Bremgarten:      Mr. Big gave a big thumbs-up to their Park-N-Ride system.  Gluhwein, excellent.  Large, 190 vendors.  Also, Christmas tree farm 2km outside of town where you can cut your own tree.
Morges:       Covered market inside hall of the train station, big plus.  High percentage of artists, good gift ideas.

France:
Besancon:           Just OK, not worth a special trip
Montbeliard:     Fabulous in every way.  My favorite.  The lightshow is super.  Here’s the link, sorry it’s only in French but the pictures are worth a click.
http://www.lumieres-de-noel.fr/

It is not even 8 a.m. here but today is Sunday so I am already Google Mapping trying to outline our plan of attack for today.  Mr. Big is still lying innocently asleep upstairs, completely unaware that he has yet another day in store stomping around outside in the cold drinking Vin Chaud.  Bless his heart!

Returning "Home"?

For ex-pats on temporary assignment, the word “home” can be confusing.  Is home your new country or is it the place you will return to someday?  For people who have kept a home in their country of origin, it’s even more muddled because they technically have homes in two places.  I have found my answer just listening to the running commentary inside my own head.  Right now I’m packing to return to Switzerland after a Thanksgiving stay in the US.  As I’m packing, I’m going through my mental checklist:

“Don’t forget to bring home more banana peppers.”

“I can’t wait to go to the Colmar Christmas Market when we get home.”

“I wonder if it snowed while we were away?”

See?  Home has subconsciously become Switzerland and away is now what used to be home.  It’s like an Abbott and Costello movie.  Just because you know I like to play “What’s in Your Suitcase?”, I will let you look inside the empty one I brought with me from home to fill up with stuff while I was away.  (If you followed that you are really paying attention!)

2 bed pillows

2 twin sheet sets

5 jars of banana peppers

All of the silver and gold Xmas balls and garland from the attic

A box of brown sugar

A box of Arm & Hammer baking soda

A bottle of Vanilla Extract

The couch cushion cover that got red wine spilled all over it during Thanksgiving

Why, you ask, is she bringing part of her couch?  Because her sewing machine is in Switzerland, of course!  It makes perfect sense to me to tote a stained couch cover 8,000 miles only to use it as a pattern and then throw it away.  Perfect sense.  Although, with the strict recycling laws in Switzerland, I will probably not be able to throw it away at all and will have to bring it back with me next time I return to the US. 

I had to write up a chart to help me throw away my trash without receiving a fine.  There are certain assigned days of the week for yard waste, glass, paper, plastic, etc.  If you dare attempt to dispose of anything on the wrong day, you will be reported to the Trash Police by a “helpful” neighbor.  And, God help you if you attempt to throw away your glass bottles on a Sunday, the National Day of peace and quiet.  Glass bottles make noise, you see.  They clink.  You can receive an actual fine for clanking on a Sunday.  I’m pretty sure you can be deported if you’re stupid enough to fire up a lawn mower on a Sunday.  Here’s a word of warning to any army out there that might be considering attacking Switzerland.  Do not attack on a Sunday.  We will be able to hear you coming while you are still in Austria.  It’s that quiet on Sundays. 

My Trash Chart also tells me the one day per quarter that it is OK to throw away something bigger than our regulation-size trash bags.  Which encompasses pretty much everything and will definitely pertain to the couch cover.  So, if I miss the next Oversized Trash Pickup Day, I will have to “store” it for another 3 months.  Where, I don’t know.  I’m thinking under the bed.

One last word on Swiss trash.  No, not Roman Polanski, the other Swiss trash.  I am only allowed to throw away my “ordures”, aka my non-recyclable trash,  in a regulation-size bag.  All of Switzerland uses the same trash bag.  All.  Of.  Switzerland.  So, Mr. Big, who is not very good with rules, needs to be monitored.  He is forever trying to use yard waste bags as trash bags.  I have explained nicely and also, not so nicely. 

“Mr. Big.  If you put that whomping huge trash bag out on Monday with everyone else’s teeny Swiss-sized bags, you are going to make us the laughing stock of the neighborhood and possibly get us deported.”

“Well, Trailing Spouse, then just put the big bag out on Tuesday with everyone else’s big bags and no one will know and we will live to see another week.”

“But, Mr. Big.”  (Gnashing of teeth).  “Ours will be so much heavier than theirs.  Theirs are filled with leaves.  Ours is filled with coffee grinds, potato peels and a random couch cover that I snuck in there.”

Ahhh! Can’t wait to get home!

 

Misfit Thanksgiving

It’s 5:30 in the morning in South Carolina and I have serious Time Zone Confusion.  I’m wide awake and ready for lunch and the rest of this country is still sleeping.  We came home for Thanksgiving.  We decided we would rather be home for Thanksgiving than Christmas.  Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that you don’t know you are going to miss until you move somewhere where it is not celebrated.  Who knew it was possible to wax nostalgic over a tin can of jellied cranberry sauce?  Anyway, the logistics of preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Switzerland were so mind-bogglingly insurmountable, it was easier and less expensive just to fly 8,000 miles and cook it there. 

Let’s begin with my teeny Euro oven.

It is the size of an Easy-Bake.  Remember those?  You cooked mini cakes and pies with the heat from a little light bulb?  My Swiss oven has two little racks that fit a 9” x 13” baking pan each.  In order to roast a turkey, bake the stuffing, make the pies, brown the rolls, etc., I would have had to begin cooking Thanksgiving dinner in, like, August.  This is assuming that I could even find the raw ingredients.  For a solid month, every other question on the Swiss website englishforum.ch has been from American ex-pats trying to procure the following:

A turkey.  Answer—Must be ordered from a  butcher well ahead of time.  Cost approximately 7 dollars per pound.  Not unheard of to pay 170 dollars for a large bird which will, of course, be Swiss and not frozen.

Brown Sugar.  Answer—Doesn’t exist.  Make your own using white sugar and molasses or special order online at astronomical prices.

Cream of Tartar.  Ditto.

Vanilla Flavoring.  Ditto.

Self-Rising Flour.  Ditto.

Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce.  Answer—Available at the American Market in Geneva.  Cost--$7.30 per can.

Don’t even get me started on Pepperidge Farm Bread Cubes.

Do you see why we have come home?  By the time I got my act together enough to order everything online, it would be Valentine’s Day.  One poor guy on that website was looking for Kahlua to make White Russians for his guests.  He had ex-pats all over Switzerland checking every grocery store and liquor store in the land.  The only place anybody could find Kahlua was in the Duty Free Shop at the Geneva airport.  The problem was that the shop was located inside the security check.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I would change my cocktail choice before I purchased a plane ticket just so I could buy a durned bottle of Kahlua. 

Besides, if we didn’t come home, Domestic Son, Charming Daughter and Small Son would be left to fend for themselves.  I have visions of Small Son eating Ramen Noodles or Kraft Mac & Cheese looking forlornly out over an emptied-out college campus.  Since we have no extended family in South Carolina, every year we invite all of our friends and neighbors who also would be eating by themselves to our house for Misfit Thanksgiving Dinner.  It has become a tradition, Misfit Thanksgiving.  I never know who or how many are coming, so I just set up tables for about 20 and we play it by ear.  We eat, we drink, we play cards, we drink, we dance stupidly to the soundtrack from the Big Chill and then we uh, drink.

One year, Domestic Son, back when he was still Juvenile Delinquent Son, introduced a number of the ladies to Jaegerbombs.  One of the ladies subsequently drove her car into a neighbor’s backyard swimming pool which involved various First Responders.  Domestic Son is no longer allowed to mix the drinks at Misfit Thanksgiving.

One year, we set the house on fire.  The ladies were all in the butler’s pantry dancing and singing along with Charming Daughter’s karaoke machine.  The men were consuming large quantities of brown liquor and watching football in the den.  No one was left in the dining room except one poor chap who had yet to realize that dinner was long over.  Right after “I Will Always Love You” finished and just before commencing with a stunning rendition of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plant”, I heard a little voice coming from the dining room.

“Hey, your mirror’s on fire.”  And then, a little louder, “I said, HEY!  Your MIRROR is on FIRE.”

Sure enough, the candles on the mantle had set the wooden frame of the mirror hanging over the fireplace ablaze.  Well, let me be the first to tell you that throwing a vodka cranberry on an open flame is not really effective.  We eventually put out the fire without the aid of any First Responders.  I was later able to salvage the mirror by scraping off most of the charring and painting the gold frame black.  It’s hanging in the bathroom now and every year on Thanksgiving we have to share that story with the newbies and take them into the powder room to see “The Mirror That Caught On Fire in 2003”.

How the Swiss Eat

I’m not referring to physically how; they eat with utensils just like everybody else, although they do eat with their fork upside down in that veddy British way.  I’m referring to the mindset of eating over here.  They eat according to what is in season.  Take, for example, this week.  I just found out today that it is now “Metzgete” Time and everyone is really excited.  This basically means all of the restaurants and all of the many, many festivals will be featuring pig and all it’s trimmin’s.  Not yummy trimmin’s like applesauce or sweet potatoes.  No, no, no.  I mean trimmin’s as in utilizing all of those odd bits and bobs of pork that us wasteful North Americans feed to Mr. Garbage Disposal.  Their favorite is blutwurst.  (It means blood sausage.)  Just saying it makes me gag, nevermind eating it.  Here is a picture of a typical Metzgete platter:

Yum!  Notice the poor forgotten tomato and zucchini slice tucked under the pigs’ trotters.  Those are the only vegetables, folks.  You can go months in Switzerland without seeing a veg.  The Swiss think a few lettuce leaves and potatoes done 381 ways count as vegetables.  Whenever Mr. Big and I see a side of vegetables listed on the menu, we order it because we never know when we are going to see another one.

The changing of the seasonal foods is a Very Big Deal.  Restaurant menus change and they announce it in large letters on their chalkboard sidewalk signs.  People want to know when, as in what day, these special foods will arrive at the markets.  The street markets become crazy around the farmer’s booth who is the first to pick his WHATEVER.  OK, lady, step away from the peaches.  There are plenty to go around.  That’s it, Lady!  Back off!  No peaches for you today!

This is what took me awhile to understand.  There is such a frenzy because it’s like Cadbury Chocolate Easter Eggs.  Once they’re gone, they’re gone.  If it’s out of season, it ain’t happenin’.  So, you really like that watermelon?  Well, you better gorge yourself, because we don’t believe in importing any foods and you will not see another watermelon until next July.  Sorry.

I didn’t take any of this personally until they stopped selling my favorite rose wine, (that “e” should have an accent over it, but I only have a dumb American keyboard—it’s pronounced ro-zay).  See, in Europe, pink wine is called rose and it is a perfectly legitimate thing to order.  It is very dry and refreshing and doesn’t give me a red wine headache.  It is not that crap sweet White Zinfandel that they sell in the states.  It is, in a word, delicious.  So, I go to the market one day in October to get the stuff for dinner and a bottle of my local rose wine and it’s not there.  Not only is the one I like from a town up the hill gone, THERE’S NOT ANOTHER BOTTLE OF ROSE WINE on the shelves.  I thought I was in the Twilight Zone.  Like, only yesterday there were cases of the stuff in this exact same store.  Sold.  Gone.  I must wait until next year to have it again.  I had to channel my newfound Europeaness in order to remain calm and not demand to see the manager.    Ahh, but I learned, you see.  Next year, when it is in season, I will buy it by the case and hoard it all winter like a friggin’ squirrel.

Other seasonal foods which are here and gone are dent de lion salade, (dandelion greens), white asparagus, Valencia oranges, wild game including goat and horse and kurbis (squash) soup.  I can’t say that I will miss the goat.


Long Live The King

Sorry to have been gone so long.  We had a family tragedy back in the US.  It is every ex-pat’s worst nightmare.  To be so far away when disaster strikes.  Here’s my advice.  Keep a strong support group back at home.  Whether it involves your home, your children, your parents, your extended family or whatever, you need to have people in place to deal with anything and everything because, here’s the sad truth, you cannot get there as soon as you would like.

I cannot describe to you the feeling you fellow Traveling Spouses will have when you get the word that something really, really bad is going on back at home and, even if you book your plane tickets within the hour, you know that you are not going to be back there for another day, at the minimum.  Thank God, I live in a small town back in the US.  Those Southern Mommas rallied around all three of my children like they were their own.  As the Secretary of State once said, “It takes a village to raise a child”.

On a lighter note, I was not aware until last week that the current trend among the younger generation is to commemorate a friends’ death by going out and getting a tattoo in their honor.  Who knew?  Two weeks ago my precious 20-year old baby boy still had the skin he was born into.

Today he has a tattoo on his back the size of a dinner plate.  Ah me.  He and all of his friends think it is the bomb.  They think it is flippin’ awesome.  What do I know?  I am just the mother who endured 16 hours of labor and many stitches to bring him into this cruel world.  I also walked five miles every day in bare feet in the snow to school, but that is another story.

So, to all of the folks back in South Carolina who did my job when I could not be there, I am forever in your debt.  Thank you, thank you for being in my village.

Rest In Peace, Reid Andrew Addy. 
http://web.me.com/jelevan/Reido/Welcome.html

Bridge Days

I need to digress here for a few entries and talk about specific things that are happening to me here in Europe.  My girlfriends back in the States are enjoying my general tips for Trailing Spouses, but they are starving for info about my day-to-day life.

OK, as all of my girlfriends know, I am a bridge addict.  The card game, bridge.  Not viaducts.  You know what I mean.  Southern girls in the US play bridge.  We have bridge clubs and we have bridge night and we drink a lot of alcohol and eat a lot of food and play a few rounds of cards in between.  The best thing about bridge night is the prizes.  Whomever is the hostess that evening is responsible for buying a High Score prize and a Low Score prize.  I love the prizes.

Anyway, I learned online that there was an English-speaking bridge group associated with the American International Women’s Club in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I live.  Well, one cannot just join the bridge group.  One must first attend a “Meet and Greet Coffee” at this women’s club, pay the yearly dues, fill out two forms, yadda, yadda, before one can even enquire about the various and sundry “subgroups”.

I am not a joiner.  I hate making small talk.  I am a Corporate Wife.  Small talk is like, my job.  I have to do Small Talk all of the time and I’m quite good at it until I’ve had a few drinks and then the real person emerges and my Small Talk quickly becomes loud, profane, Large Talk.  That is usually when Mr. Big calls for a cab.  “OK, time to go, dear.  You just called that nice 34th wife from Abu Dhabi a Burka Durka.”  And away I am whooshed.

So, here I am at this Meet and Greet and there are only 9 other women there and I drink my coffee out of a dainty cup and saucer, as one does, and mingle and try to look interested when all I really want to know is “WHO PLAYS BRIDGE HERE?!”

I asked all 9.  No bridge players.  I go into the little reception area/office and politely inquire about the bridge group.  Well, you would have thought I was the Second Coming.  The woman in the office looks at me and asks if I am a beginner.  No, if I am being modest, I would say I am intermediate.  If I am being honest, I would say I am a cut-throat, take no prisoners, queen of bridge bitches, but I don’t say that.  C’mon give me some credit!

“Oh!”, this office woman says.  “We are looking for some new (read younger) players for the advanced group.”  OK, great, sign me up.  Then she asks me if there are stairs involved with my domicile.  Huh?  I’m like, yeah, about 20 or 30.  Too bad, Charlie.  The advanced bridge group is comprised of so many really, really, really old ladies that they are dying off like fruit flies and cannot see and cannot hear and, most importantly, cannot walk up stairs.

But, but!  They are looking for fresh blood.  So, there is hope.  In the meantime, I am going to be playing with a bunch of blue hairs who cannot see or hear and have to be carried up the stairs to my apartment.  But I am down with this!  I will install one of those chairs that travels up the walls to get these crones up there.  I will provide magnifying glasses and ear horns.  At this point, I just don’t care.

And then my baby sister pointed out to me that I could just join the BEGINNER’S group and fake it.  Girl, I can do me some fakin’.  I’ll be like, what?  I bid 3 no trump.  I bid 4 hearts.  I bid 5 diamonds.  Right out of the shoot.  I bid BABY SLAM!  I bid whatever it takes to keep me in this beginner group so I don’t have to carry no old ladies upstairs or buy any ear horns.  I don’t even know the word for ear horn in French.

I bet these Swiss women don’t have prizes, either.  And if they do, it’s probably some cheese.  With holes.

                                                                     That smells.

Language Issues

The Language Issue

This is always the elephant in the room when you move to another country.  When any English-speaking ex-pats get together either in person or online, the third question after “Have you found an apartment?” and “Where’s home for you?” is “So, how’s your –insert new language—coming along?”

Oh, everybody arrives with big plans to jump right on the language fast track.  From where I am sitting right now at my desk I can count four French dictionaries and three different brands of French CDs.  I can also see the Big Red Book from my actual French class that I attended a whopping 13 days sitting there taunting me, “Oh, Riki, ma cherie, here I am.  Over here on the shelf, Riki.  Why have you spurned me so, dear Trailing Spouse?  What did I ever do to you, besides give you anxiety attacks and make you feel dumber than dirt?  Come back to me, Riki, come back, sil vous plait!

I remember thinking that I would be fluent in French in six months.  OMG, that is such a joke.  There are ex-pats here in Switzerland who have been here FOR DECADES who are not fluent.  (I know, because I checked because I felt like such a doofus that I was just not getting it.)  I am blaming it on the fact that I am American. 

Top Ten Reasons Why Americans Suck at Foreign Languages

10.  It is really hard.  We are, by nature, lazy. 

9.  There are 8 different ways in French to say “this one” and “that one”.  That’s right, eight.  (That was my lesson #13 and the day I threw up my hands in defeat and quit French school).

8.  For some unknown reason, nouns have a gender.  Why is that, you say?  Why is “rug” a boy (le tapis) but the “chair” (la chaise) that is sitting on it is a girl?   There is no answer to that question.  It is what it is.  Americans hate that answer.  We want to know why.

7.  Some/many languages are in another alphabet.  Don’t even get me started.  I cannot wrap my mind around that one.  I think Americans who manage to become fluent in Mandarin or Farsi should have automatic membership in Mensa.  Hello, ma’am,  that says “How are you”.

Yes, I know it looks like Pick-Up-Sticks tossed down on the sidewalk, but they are, in fact, actual words. 

6.  We do not learn it in school.  HA, parents, pay attention.  You might think we are actually learning something in 10^th grade Spanish class, but the joke is on you, we are coasting through for an easy “A”.  We can take 4 years of Spanish in high school and not be able to tell our maid that we are unhappy with her vaccuuming skills by our 10-year reunion.  Hell, we don’t even know what “yo quiero, Taco Bell” means, well, except for the Taco Bell part.

5.  We do not tend to marry/date people who don’t speak English.  I still haven’t figured this one out.  I have talked to soooo many people in Europe who do not speak the same language as their spouse/boyfriend.  I’m like, uh, OK, so how do you communicate?  Well, he speaks Languages X and Y fluently and a little bit of A and B.  She speaks Languages N, O and P fluently and a little bit of A and Q.  So, they speak Language “A” to each other.  I think they must all have great sex lives because there ain’t a lot of conversation goin’ on, if you know what I mean.

4.  We do not hire au pairs or nannies who speak a third language to our children.  They do this over here.  Mom is a Brit and speaks only English to the kiddies.  Dad is Swiss and speaks only Swiss German to them.  Then they hire an au pair from some other country, specifically for the purpose of teaching the children a third language. 

3.  We have enough trouble simply learning correct English.  Y’all know whut ah mean?

2.  We cannot make the sounds correctly and risk sounding stupid.  The French letter “r” and the German “ch” come immediately to mind.  They sound like when your disgusting Uncle Bertie coughs up something unmentionable.

And the number ONE reason Americans suck at foreign languages is because we don’t need to.  We are spoiled rotten.  Everybody else speaks at least a little bit of English and if they don’t, then we probably don’t want to talk to them anyway.  We had the good sense to organize our country so that all of the states have the same native language.  You can travel 5,000 miles from Anchorage to Miami and still order a burger and fries and be understood.  In Switzerland, they have four native languages just one country.  This is just poor planning on the King’s part, I’m thinking.