Happy Swiss National Day!

I’ve been in Switzerland for 15 years. I planned on staying two or three. Alas, life happens in unexpected ways. In honor of 15 years in this country, here are 15 things about Switzerland you might not know.

1. It’s Switzerland’s 733 birthday today!
2. Handshaking is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS here. During the pandemic when we were not allowed to shake hands, it freaked everyone out. How on earth do you function if you can’t shake hands? There was even a lawsuit about handshaking.
3. There are four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The latter is spoken by only a few people.
4. If people from different language regions need to communicate, they typically do so in English–especially the younger crowd.
5. They LOVE rules and neatness. But they will just pay people to clean up after them. Swiss people throw cigarettes on the ground just like everyone else.
6. Speaking of rules, you’ll see things saying it’s illegal to flush your toilet after 10:00, but it is not. Your apartment building may have such a rule.
7. But there are many laws about pets. Switzerland has some of the strongest animal protection laws out there.
8. Kindergarten is two years and starts at age four. Swiss kindergarten is the best thing in the whole world. I wish every kid could go through it. They roast hotdogs on sticks, learn to use pocket knives, do a ton of outside play, and don’t spend even five minutes learning to read. Yet, they all learn to read just fine in first grade.
9. Basel (where I live) has a 3-day Fasnacht celebration. This is the Germanic version of Mardi Gras. However, Basel’s Fasnacht is held after Ash Wednesday because it’s a Protestant canton, and 500-plus years ago, the Protestants didn’t want the Catholics to join in the party, so they moved the celebration so it happened during Lent.
10. It’s incredibly expensive here. This is tough for me because all my clients but one are in the United States and pay in US dollars.
11. They are part of the Hague Treaty on International Child Abduction, which is why I still live here. When my husband and I separated, I wanted to take my kids back to the States, but because my ex wanted to stay here, I either had to stay with my kids or go back to the US myself. Obviously, I stayed.
12. The public transportation is amazing. I don’t own a car. I love it.
13. The Swiss don’t believe in air conditioning, especially in private homes.
14. Yes, the chocolate is good, but they don’t believe in chocolate fillings. It’s pretty much chocolate or chocolate with hazelnuts. It’s pretty boring.
15. High German is an official language, but no one speaks it at home. Everyone speaks their local dialect. In Basel, as a general rule, people prefer to speak English over High German. But, you have to pass all your tests in High German to have your residency permits and eventually get a passport.

The post Happy Birthday Switzerland! appeared first on Improve Your HR.

Because my sister-in-law doesn’t speak any German, I filled out the paperwork. It was pretty standard until I came to the part about the parents. It asked:

• Father’s name
• Father’s birthdate
• Father’s occupation

and then

• Mother’s name
• Mother’s birthdate
• Mother’s former occupation

Because, of course, mom couldn’t be currently working, right?

I shared this story on one of my Facebook expat groups and several other women who live in Switzerland piped up. One wasn’t allowed to be the primary renter on an apartment–her husband had to be–even though her husband was a stay at home dad and she was the one working. Another noted that their apartment rental agreement had asked for the husband’s (or male partner’s) occupation followed by wife’s (or female partner’s) occupation and added on a percent for the female. (No one says I work 20 hours a week here–if you’re not full time you talk about percent, so 20 hours a week would be 50 percent.)

Now, I for one, love that so many Swiss (and it’s mostly women) have the opportunity to work part-time. Anecdotally, I see a lot more professional part-time work available here than I ever did in the Us. (One I see often is 80 percent–which usually translates into a four day work week.) But it bugs me that that is the assumption. Which is kind of ironic because I, personally, work 50 percent. (Officially–lately it’s been creeping up to the 60-75 percent range, but I’m smashing it back down while my kids are on summer vacation.)

The other irony is that our pediatrician’s office is 100 percent female staffed. There are three pediatricians–all female, and two assistants (techs/receptionists), all female). While I haven’t had many conversations with two of the pediatricians, our main one (who I adore and think is fabulous) has multiple children and grandchildren. Incidentally, all three pediatricians work part-time, as does one of the assistants.

I’m sure one of the things that contributes to women working part-time or not at all is the school system. Children come home for lunch every day. And my son, who will be entering 5th grade in August, still only has afternoon school three days a week. Wednesdays and Thursdays he’s done at noon. While I think this is developmentally great for children, it’s a pain the behind for working parents.

Yes, you can find childcare for the two hours the kids are home for lunch.  Yes, it’s expensive. Some schools offer a “lunch table” so the kids don’t have to leave the school, but in others, you’re on your own.

I’ve wondered why Swiss women haven’t risen up in rebellion, but perhaps they like it. Women do value flexibility over money, so perhaps this system forces businesses to offer that flexibility if they want more employees. I’m not sure.

Regardless, for the record, my sister-in-law teaches English at a university in Turkey, where she lives. And she’s very good at it.

And my nephew is doing just fine. One of those random toddler fevers, undoubtedly caused by a virus.

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BERLIN — While airport security officials around the world check for weapons and identification before letting passengers board a plane, the police in Germany are checking for school-age children — and reporting families who take their youngsters on vacation without a teacher’s authorization.

Before school ended on Friday for the two-week spring vacation in Bavaria, officers caught 21 families allowing their children to play hooky, the police confirmed on Wednesday.

Offending parents were reported to the school and to the local authorities. In Bavaria, that could mean a fine as high as 1,000 euros, or about $1,200, in the mail that piled up during a trip.

Schools don’t want your children to miss school and especially not on the days right before a holiday.

Swiss schools (at least in my region) have the same policy.

Now, I will say that my son’s teachers have been very accommodating with us. We took my son out for two days (a Thursday and Friday) to go to his Aunt’s wedding in Turkey And a couple of years ago, he missed the last two days of school to travel to a family reunion in the United States. (The reunion started on Saturday, but I explained to the teacher that I wanted to fly out on Thursday so we had a day to recover from the flight before driving an additional three hours to the reunion.)

In both cases, we filled out the forms and the teacher approved them.

The schools my son has attended has an allotment of “Joker” days, which are days you can pull your kid out of school for whatever reason. He’s changed schools this year, so I don’t know if his new school has the same thing. His old one allowed two full days (or 4 half days).

If you want more than that, the approval process is much more difficult. People get approvals, of course, but if you don’t, you will be fined. One acquaintance was fined 2000 francs (about $2000, give or take). They appealed and got it lowered to 500 francs.

Now, I’m all in favor of kids not missing school. But never in my schooling experience, either as a student or as the parent of a student in three different school systems in two different countries, has the last day of school ever involved academic anything. There’s no reason to require a student to attend the last day of school except because we can.

It appears Germany takes this far more seriously than Switzerland does. No one at the airport checks for vacation times. Of course, our local airport serves a community with a large expat population who attend private schools that don’t have the same rules. Maybe if I presented Swiss passports at passport control they’d ask if we had permission from the school to be out.

This is one of the things I don’t like about the Swiss school system. The level of control. In our canton, homeschooling is also illegal unless the parent teaching has an education license. (Not all cantons have the same rule.) In neighboring Germany, homeschooling is flat out illegal. Period.

While homeschooling would never by my first choice for my children, I know some moms who do amazing jobs homeschooling their children. I also know some who did a totally craptastic job–but thankfully they eventually realized their own ineptitude and put their kids back in school. I do think parents should have that right.

I also think that missing a few days here and there isn’t a big deal. I like the Joker Day system.

How do your children’s schools handle absence requests for family vacations?

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In the US, you pack up and you move. You change your driver’s license address and your car registration and all that jazz, but there’s no official reporting in and out.

In Switzerland, that is different.

Yesterday, I went to our current township office to deregister. I presented our residency cards and the woman disappeared for about 30 seconds and came back with a file folder for our family.

Yes, our town had a file folder on us. In this was all the immigration paperwork we filled out nine years ago. It had copies of our passports, the children’s birth certificates, our marriage license, and who knows what else. She clicked a few buttons and printed out a sheet of paper for me to review that contained all our pertinent information on it. Turns out or marriage date was off by one day in their system, but since she had the marriage license right there, I pointed it out and she corrected it.

I signed it. She signed it, stamped it, and gave me a copy and told me I had 14 days to register in the new town.

I then went over to the new town hall to register. There was a very nice lady there as well, along with a teenage intern who was clearly new to the job. He was adorable and I love the internship system here.

Anyway, I messed up because I didn’t have enough documents to register completely. While I had my husband’s residency permit, I didn’t have his passport or his insurance card or his work contract. She made new copies of all our permits and the passports and insurance cards for me and the children and gave me her email address to have my husband email her copies of his information. I also had to provide her a copy of our rental agreement for our new house.

The only thing this doesn’t do is change our drivers’ licenses, which we can do online, she told me.

She said that anyone who wants to can come in and get a print out of all the information on anyone in the town. If we’d like to have our information private, we have to tell her. I said yes, please, keep that private.

This isn’t just because we’re foreigners, by the way. The Swiss have to register when they move as well. Although, I doubt they have to present work contracts when they do so. (Switzerland doesn’t have at-will employment like they do in the US. Everyone has a contract.)

With this system, the Swiss know where everyone is, all the time. For foreigners like us, it makes it much more difficult to overstay your visa because you’re super easy to find. (The new town was able to pull our electronic records from the old town. This may be because we didn’t change cantons, so it might be a cantonal thing. I don’t know.)

I was fortunate to have a Swiss friend, whose first name is Lukas, which causes all sorts of hilarity, come with me. He does professional relocation assistance for his job, so he knows the ins and outs of most everything.

The whole process was quite smooth, but I don’t know how I feel about it. I know Americans would never stand for it, but it didn’t feel invasive. It was weird, though, that there was a paper file on us. Of course, the Swiss LOVE paper. They love it. Teachers rarely use email to communicate and still rely on 9 years olds to get notes to parents rather than leaving them smashed in the bottoms of their bookbags.

As for me, right now, I should be packing, but I thought this was infinitely more fun. The movers come on Tuesday and I’ve already packed 3/4 of the kitchen. My teen said, excitedly, “does this mean we get to eat junk from now until we move?” I said no, but the real answer is probably yes. Thank goodness for pizza delivery.

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Alkon says that teaching Ebonics in schools is “dooming Black children and pretending it’s progress.” Hobbs argues for more teaching in Ebonics. He worries about “the idea that Standard English must be constantly defended against marauders is an example of what linguists call ‘dominant language ideology,’ and even well-intentioned, otherwise open-minded people display it without noticing.” This, is a bad thing, as it makes teachers think children who speak  African-American Vernacular English (AAVE or Ebonics) are unintelligent.

I come to this with a different viewpoint, after having lived for many years in a country where the native language and the official language are two different languages. Here are my two points. 1. Standard English must be taught and defended against marauders in the classroom. 2. Speaking AAVE has nothing to do with intelligence or potential. Here’s why.

The native language in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is Swiss German. Except saying that makes it sound like there is one Swiss German language. There is not. Each region has their own dialect, and differing dialects aren’t unique to Switzerland. The Germans and the Austrians have literally hundreds of different dialects. Where I live, the dialect is called Baseldeutsch (in high or standard German) or Baseldytsch (in dialect). Being that we live right on the French border, there are a lot of French influences in this language. When we greet people we don’t know on the street we say “Grüezi.” People we do know we greet with “salli!”

Contrast that to other areas of Switzerland where they may say “Grüess Gott, Grüessech, or Grüezi wohl.” Is one better than the other? Are people from Bern more intelligent than people from Basel? Are people who are raised in rural mountain areas and who have such a distinct dialect that my native Swiss friends can’t even understand them somehow less intelligent than people whose dialect is closer to standard German? It’s a ridiculous question.

But, the Swiss (and the Germans, and the Austrians) all recognized that if they want to be successful outside their villages they needed a common language. So, while very few Swiss speak high German (or standard German, or sometimes referred to as written German), at home, they all learn it at school. Textbooks, newspapers, romance novels, and legal documents are written in high German. This allows the person from the Berner Oberland and the person from Basel to understand what a person from Berlin says. It allows the school system to make one set of textbooks instead of spending millions of dollars to translate textbooks into every dialect. (And, incidentally, Swiss German doesn’t have a standard written form, so that makes it even more difficult.) It allows a family to move from one village to another and still conduct business.

Dialects and Creoles deserve respect. But, standard languages must be taught in schools if we want children to succeed outside their own villages–whether that be a Swiss mountain village, a few blocks of American inner city, or a town in Appalachia. Code-switching between languages (a term I realize is not accurate for every dialect and linguists debate over what is a language and what is not a language, but I’m using it as a catchall for dialects, creoles, and pidgins) is commonplace where I live. Someone will speak to me in Swiss German, I’ll answer back in high German, and they’ll recognize that I’m American and switch to English. (Okay, the Swiss are really, really, really good with language.) Actually, often now they’ll continue on in high German without missing a beat as my high German is acceptable.

So, while I agree with Hobbs that AAVE needs to be respected and especially that educators need to understand that it is a legitimate language, I also agree with Alkon that not requiring all children in the United States to learn standard English is dooming them to an insulated life without the possibility of greater success. The assumption needs to be that all children are capable of learning a standard language and that learning one does not mean anything negative about the language spoken at home.

In that regard, they need to take a page out of the Swiss playbook.

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With 27 other children.

In the school library.

I admit I’m kind of jealous. It was Lesenacht–Reading Night. The kids brought their sleeping bags, pillows and a bag full of books. Oh, they also brought flashlights and the teachers took them outside for a game in the dark. Then they changed into their pajamas, spread out their sleeping bags, and read books until they fell asleep.

The next morning, they had breakfast, and could come home at 10:00 or they could stay and watch a musical that the fifth graders wrote themselves. My son declared, “It was the best play I’ve ever seen written by fifth graders.” I should probably add, it’s the only play he’s ever seen written by fifth graders.

I haven’t heard of American schools doing something like this, and maybe there are some that do. I think is awesome. I loved reading at that age and would have died of happiness to sleep in a library.

On the other hand, this further cements my desire to not ever be a teacher in the Swiss school system. There’s hiking, going out in the woods, and now, supervising a sleepover. Shudder.

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Many towns have a Fasnacht celebration, but Basel’s is the biggest and the latest. And it brings up a question: Why celebrate Fasnacht after Ash Wednesday? Well, I’ll tell you. Please note, I am not a historian and I’ve put this together after living here for 8 years and so there may be some errors. Forgive me.

Each Swiss Canton is either officially Protestant or Catholic (except for Geneva and Neuchatel). Basel is Protestant, but it used to be Catholic. The Catholics had this great Fasnacht tradition and when the Protestants took over they wanted to keep the party, but they certainly didn’t want the Catholics to participate. So, what to do, what to do…

The easy solution was to move the party to after Ash Wednesday when the Catholics would be in Lent and really shouldn’t be at a big, 3 day party, that involves a lot of alcohol. So, that’s why Basel celebrates so late. It’s all to keep the Catholics away.

How true that is, I don’t know, but it makes sense! Of course, today’s Catholics don’t tend to be quite so strict about Lent and I’m sure they are all participating.

Anyway, here’s how the party goes down.

At 4:00 am on Monday, the entire city goes dark. If you leave on a light, expect to have your window smashed. When everything is dark the flutes begin to play and “Cliques” (local clubs) begin marching with huge lanterns.

Photo credit: Zak Greant

These are amazing lanterns: large and heavy. There is usually a team of men–4 or more–who carry these through the city.

Later on Monday, the Cortege (Parade) begins. The Lanterns are brought along with Guggimusik, which is pretty awful music. But, it’s supposed to be awful–they play off key on purpose. (Or so they say.) Most Guggimusik groups are only piccolos and drums, but some have full bands.

Everyone is in full costume with masks. It’s quite spectacular, if painful on the ears.

In addition to the music, there are the Waggis. Waggis ride around in wagons and throw candy, confetti, oranges, onions and flowers into the crowd. Little kids and cute girls are the recipients of the most goodies.

Photo credit: Noel Reynolds

If you’re unlucky, you might get a ton of confetti dumped directly over your head. If you’re super lucky and you might get a beer can (unopened!) tossed your direction. Everyone, children and adults alike, beg the Waggis for their treats. If you’re not wearing a Fasnacht Blaggede, though, you probably won’t get anything but onions and confetti dumped over your head.

Each year has its own Blaggedde. You buy one and wear it on your coat to show you support Fasnacht and that you are helping to cover the costs. Some of the money goes to the town for clean up and such, and the rest goes to the Cliques. You can buy them on the street anytime from January, up to the end of Fasnacht.

And why is the clean up such a big deal? Well, confetti.

Photo credit: Thomas

There are literally tons of confetti thrown every day of Fasnacht. If you go to a parade you’ll come home with confetti in your hair, your coat pockets, and your underpants. You will pull out your coat next winter–the coat you had dry cleaned and put away for summer–and you will stick your hand in your pocket and find some leftover confetti. It is everywhere. You can’t avoid it. But, being Switzerland, every night, bulldozers go through town to clean up the confetti. Then it begins again the next day.

It is also only sold in single color bags. It’s illegal to sell or throw mixed confetti. This keeps people from picking up gross confetti off the ground and throwing it, although kids are known to do so.

So, that’s what my neighboring town has been up to. The little suburb I live in doesn’t really do Fasnacht. They do have a children’s parade (prior to Ash Wednesday), but nothing major. We’re just a 10 minute tram ride into Basel, though, so no need to have our own party when we can borrow someone else’s.

The post Swiss Saturday: Fasnacht (Mardi Gras) Basel Style appeared first on Improve Your HR.

I read about reusable shopping bags in America and how they are so dangerous because of E. coli and blah blah blah and I have to laugh. Would Swiss people use something dirty? Of course not. So, how is it that the entire nation hasn’t died a horrible death due to dirty shopping bags?

This, I believe, is what makes the difference. Unlike in the US, where meat is wrapped in plastic wrap that sometimes drips, Swiss meat comes in these neatly sealed packages. If you buy meat from the butcher counter they wrap and seal it. Even meat from the discount grocery store is packaged this way.

So, the result is, you aren’t contaminating your vegetables or baked goods with meat because everything is sealed up nicely.

So, I laugh at the arguments about reusable shopping bags in the US and say, “It’s not the bag that’s the problem, it’s that you people don’t know how to wrap meat!”

Now, I realize, it would be obscenely expensive to change how meat packaging plants package meat, but that doesn’t change the fact that the problem is not with the bags but with the meat.

That’s not to say that bags can’t pick up bacteria from other sources. (Not that the Swiss actually believe in bacteria!). We do wash our bags from time to time. At least I do.

And on another note, the Swiss Frank and the US dollar are pretty close, so if you’re looking at prices on that chicken, yes I paid about $13 for less than a pound of chicken. This may also be why Swiss people are skinnier than Americans–we can’t afford food around here.

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Anyway, a Swiss school parent-teacher conference is pretty much identical to an American parent-teacher conference except for the sheer amount of time spent focused on how he puts his folders in the desk.

Lots of demonstrations on how they should be stacked “this” way and not “that” way and certainly not some “this” way and some “that” way. Also lots of discussion about his handwriting, which he, unfortunately, inherited from me. (Sorry, kid.) And how his presentation on Ants was excellent, except that the corners of his papers weren’t completely flat on his poster board.

If you’ve ever wondered why Switzerland is so sparkly clean it’s because their teachers really push it. It’s part of the curriculum, and they consider it absolutely critical to their schooling. They don’t wear outside shoes inside. They clean up every day. Their folders need to all be put away properly. And, heaven forbid, your paper edges should curl on your poster.

I’m not opposed to any of this, by the way. I probably could benefit from a 3rd-grade teacher following me around all day saying, “aren’t you going to put that back?” Maybe I can hire one.

In reference to last week’s Swiss Saturday about handshakes, I will note that as we were going in another family was going out. The kid (who shall remain nameless so that this revelation doesn’t prevent him/her from getting a job in the future) tried to take off without shaking hands. His parents steered him right back to shake hands. No way, no how do you walk out without shaking the teachers’ hands.

On another educational front, I started another German class on Friday. I have a B2 certificate which means I’m an “independent communicator.” I shared with our teacher that I was a bit disheartened because a young Swiss woman asked me to edit her English paper on a James Joyce short story and her English was very good. She had, of course, some weird vocabulary choices (which comes from looking things up in a dictionary), and a few grammar errors, but overall, an excellent job. My teacher tried to console me by explaining that she used to teach high school English and French and that she had the same students in both classes and they all picked up English quickly and struggled with French. This was to show me that English is an easy language and she conceded that she’s glad she doesn’t have to learn German because it’s a very hard language.

I’m glad that I don’t have to write papers on James Joyce stories in my non-native language. Heck, I’m glad I don’t have to do that in my native language.

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First, there’s the lady described in this article: Left-wing Dutch vegan who moved to Switzerland is denied a Swiss passport because she is too annoying

Now, all of you might be saying, “Hey, that’s a great idea! Let’s deny citizenship to anyone who is annoying!” while fully understanding that “annoying” is a little hard to put into statutory law: Who decides who is annoying and how annoying does it need to be before you get denied due to getting on everyone’s nerves?

The process for obtaining Swiss citizenship isn’t consistent across the country. It varies from canton to canton (a canton is like a state, except because Switzerland is so small, they are quite tiny compared to US standards). The Swiss really believe in Federalism, and so each Canton gets to vary the rules to fit their local culture and needs.

Some things are standard–like the number of years you need to live here to apply. (For US citizens with no Swiss relatives, like us, we have to be here 12 years to apply.) The language requirement is also fixed: You have to have a B1 level in an official language (German, French, Italian, or Romansch.)

But, the wild card is the vote. Some cantons require your town to give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down. To be honest, I don’t know if my town gets to vote on us when that time comes.

As you might expect, in a larger town, this can be used to weed people out by their “undesireable” last names. (I’ve been told we’ll have no problem, because people will think we’re Germans with the last name of Lucas.) However, this woman appears to have lost her town’s support–twice–because she’s annoying.

This does not mean she sings loudly while walking the aisles of the grocery store, or that she paints her house purple (which would also be bad, by the way), but because she is actively trying to destroy Swiss Culture.

I used a capital C for Culture because it is a Very Important Thing in Switzerland. She specifically wants to get rid of cow bells. This is not funny for Swiss people. It eats at the heart of Swiss culture and people don’t want it.

Switzerland is a small country and the cantons are tiny, and the people want to maintain their way of life. I don’t see this as a bad thing at all. Why shouldn’t a country be able to maintain their identity? Cow bells are part of their identity. They just are, and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t be a Swiss citizen. Notably, they aren’t kicking her out of the country–they are just saying you can’t be Swiss because you reject Swiss traditions.

The other story sounds like a case of religious discrimination, but it’s really another culture thing.  Here’s the NYT article: Muslim Girls in Switzerland Must Attend Swim Classes With Boys, Court Says.

From an American viewpoint, this freaks me out. The girls say it’s against their religion, so dang it, it’s against their religion, and they shouldn’t be required to take the swim classes with boys. The Swiss (and the European Court of Human Rights) see it as a culture issue.

Treating boys and girls the same is part of Swiss Culture–you can be denied a residency permit if you don’t subscribe to that philosophy. This all went down in Basel–I live in suburban Basel–in 2008, but the court just issued the final ruling.

Now, one note of interest: the parents are Swiss and Turkish Citizens, so they weren’t denied citizenship like the cow bell lady, but the community pushed back when they attempted to circumvent a school tradition. (Incidentally, my son’s school does not have swimming lessons, which makes me sad because dragging kids to swimming lessons is one of the worst parts of parenting.)

The court ruled that “The public interest in following the full school curriculum should prevail over the applicants’ private interest in obtaining an exemption from mixed swimming lessons for their daughters.”

But wait, isn’t this a religious thing? To the Swiss, no it’s not. Why? Because the parents admit that Muslim rules would only require that separation after puberty, but they wanted to get their girls used to the separation before that. Since the girls (7 and 9 when this started), had not yet gone through puberty, the Swiss saw it as a Culture issue. Essentially, the policy is you can practice your religion, no problem, but you better make sure it’s actually your religion and not your culture. Since their religion doesn’t officially require separation at this age, they aren’t allowed.

When I wrap my brain around that, it makes more sense than my immediate reaction of “what in the heck?” And it reminded me of growing up in Mormon-heavy Utah and having Mormons saying they want a religious exemption for vaccination when the LDS church has a worldwide immunization program through its charitable arm. It kind of made me want to slap those people. (Also, for the love of Pete, vaccinate yourself and your kids!)

But, I also have a lot of empathy for the parents of these girls. They want to choose the way to raise their children and it’s frustrating to have the government push back and say “you’re doing it wrong.” They could, of course, move back to Turkey, and Turkey is a lovely place that is politically unstable at the moment. I’d pick Switzerland too.

There’s another Swiss rule that’s mentioned in the article–shaking teacher’s hands. The case involving that also involved a Basel suburb. (Basel and her suburbs have an incredibly high immigrant/expat population, which is why these things pop up here.) Hand shaking is so, so, so, important to the Swiss. I still don’t live up the expectation, which is to shake everyone’s hand when you enter a room and shake it again when you leave. I’m known to sneak in and out. Also, they like hugging and kissing on the cheek (3 times!).

When I was working with the children at church (I’m now doing the adult music), every Sunday all the kids would line up to shake my hand. They wouldn’t leave until they had done so. I was a teacher, so they must shake my hand. If I was trying to do something else, they’d wait until I was done, so they could shake my hand. Culture.

Hopefully, this was interesting and helps you understand where they are coming from. Also, more cow bell!

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