April 20-21, 2012
Zurich

Swiss men know how to cook. They also know how to sew --they are taught both in school. This is a useful skill to have, even in cosmopolitan Zurich, because eating out is extremely expensive here. --As is everything, from a train ticket to a piece of chocolate. On the other hand, everything is of impeccable quality.

As to cooking, the fare is not elaborate, as French cooking is. The potato is a staple, which is supplemented with vegetables and meat, or eaten with cheese and bread. Switzerland is a country that exports its image as environmentally progressive, but also practices what it preaches. Middle-class housewives --and househusbands-- buy vegetables produced without pesticides, as well as fruits and vegetables whose source they know, over mass produced items, even if they are cheaper.

The cleanliness of the country is legendary, and in evidence even at the main train station. Today a blind tasting of coffees --Delizia, a Viennese roast sold by Migros (one of the two supermarket chains serving Switzerland, the other being Coop) versus Nespresso, the brand that pays the actor George Clooney to bring his inviting brunette self to bear on behalf of Nespresso's wildly expensive pre-fabricated coffee capsules.

The tasting is set up in the middle of the Hauptbahnhof, not far from the hanging multi-colored sculpture of a giant woman, by Nikki de Saint Phalle, that has graced the station for as long as I have been coming to Zurich. The display is sparkling white, the young women offering perfectly made cups of steaming hot Delizia and Nespresso are dressed in white too, and they are so fresh-faced and clean scrubbed --they might be workers in a biotech lab.

I am handed two large cups of coffee and sip each slowly, comparing the sensations as carefully as possible, seriously evaluating each cup several times. My judgment arrived at, I tell my hostess I am ready to make known my preference. I choose the cup in my right hand, which I am told to place on an inscribed circle on the tasting counter, above which a small screen registers my preference and in a few seconds, tells me which, Delizia or Nespresso, I prefer:

Delizia!

--"Hopp Schwyz!" cheers my hostess. "Go Switzerland!"

The free cups of coffee --which might have run a total of $10 USD had I enjoyed them at Sprungli, Zurich's famous cafe-- take some of the sting out of having had to pay a 20 Swiss franc fine on the way into town earlier.

This unfortunate occurrence was the result of my being pressed for time at the local train station. I rushed to buy a Tageskart, a day pass for local rains and buses, just making the 2:41 p.m. train. --The train system in Switzerland is self-monitoried: it is assumed that passengers buy tickets before boarding the train, frank them at the station to avoid re-use if train personnel does not reach them in time to punch the ticket. Indeed, this is the system throughout much of Europe.

I consider myself a law-abiding traveller, but I made a crucial mistake: instead of buying a day pass from Ruschlikon, my point of departure, to Zurich, good for 24 hours; I have bought a day pass for Wollishofen, about five Swiss francs total cost, versus 12.

Three train officials board the train shortly after the train pulls away from Ruschlikon. All are wearing chartreuse yellow vests with black stripes that announce that they are not conductors, but police. Unaware of my mistake, I happily hand my ticket to the youngest of the three, a man in his early thirties with closely cropped hair and boyish looks. He scrutinizes it carefully, screws his face up, and asks me where I am getting off:

"Zurich", I answer unsuspectingly. After discerning I am not fluent in German, he switches to English.

"This is not a ticket to Zurich, this is a ticket to Wollishofen."

"I will pay the difference."

"No, you cannot. There is a 75 Swiss franc fine for this."

"It was a mistake: I was hurrying to catch the train with one minute to go--"

"You can pay 20 Swiss francs, that would be OK"

"--But was an honest mistake--"

"--Or I can charge you 75 Swiss francs."

Twenty Swiss francs it is, and I have learned an important lesson about traveling in Switzerland: Never, but never, rush to buy a train ticket.

***

To give an idea of the cost of living in Switzerland, movies cost about twenty dollars a ticket. On the other hand, you have an assigned seat, which you can select. The trains are superb: it is easy to commute for ten minutes from one of the suburbs along either side of the Lake of Zurich, although the sunny side --where the zillionaires live live-- commands a premium.
To give an idea of the cost of living in Switzerland, movies cost about twenty dollars a ticket. On the other hand, you have an assigned seat, which you can select. The trains are superb: it is easy to commute for ten minutes from one of the suburbs along either side of the Lake of Zurich, although the sunny side --where the zillionaires live live-- commands a premium.

Notwithstanding, the less sunny side, where Ruschlikon lies, is not inexpensive by any standard. A modest house, newly built, overlooking the lake from the highest point of land on that side of the lake, sells for seven million Swiss francs. There is a housing shortage and many properties to not change hands on the open market, but by private arrangement.

Stone and wood and silvery metals are common building elements, an identifiably Swiss style with few decorative elements that is both austere and luxurious. Luxurious because individual fixtures in an apartment or house are usually state of the art, first quality materials and prohibitively expensive by U.S. standards. To take a small point, the shower fixtures will have inner mechanisms fabricated in metal, whereas in the U.S., even top-of-the line fixtures frequently contain less long-wearing plastic.

In homes and apartments, space is at a premium, so everything is compact, rather than sprawling, as in the U.S.. Giant television screens are not the norm in Switzerland, and watching movies on a computer, rather than a television screen, is not unusual, even for families.

If you live in an apartment building, you will sign up to use the washing machines at a specific time and date during the week, your neighbors staying out of the room then. The hours you may wash are limited to daylight hours, so as not to bother neighbors with the noise of the machines. Indeed, there is a story by fiction writer Max Frisch, "The Laundry Room Key", which pokes fun at the Swiss obsession with punctuality and quiet, which extends to talking loudly in the hallways of your apartment building.

Staying in Ruschlikon, I notice that my unshuttered bedroom window attracts the attention of neighbors across the way. Shutters are opened in the morning, closed in the evening, in full view of everyone. I know I do something similar in my apartment in New York, and I know anyone across the street can observe me, but no one there finds it interesting enough to stop and look, which is not the case in Ruschlikon. Observing myself observed, I firmly close the shutters and blinds in the evening: I want to make sure no one might see me change into my pyjamas, something I never consider in my apartment New York.

Lest this make all Swiss seem prisoners of rigid conformity, I must announce that there are notable exceptions. Across the way from my window an elderly man regularly sunbathes nude on his terrace in the warm weather. This would be of no moment to the Swiss, who consider property rights inviolable. However, the neighbors who live in the flat below --a Swiss, his Indian wife and their young son-- complain to the property manager. The Indian woman is particularly offended by the sight of a naked man's genitals on a daily basis, Swiss property laws notwithstanding. In the interest of avoiding conflict, the nudist neighbor --with whom the neighbors across the way have never spoken-- puts on shorts.

Adult males in good health must do a few weeks compulsory military service every year until they reach later life, a practice that probably honors Switzerland's history as a source of soldiers-for-hire in European wars, more than it contributes to the national defense.