Power Out? And Other Times It Would Helpful for Swiss German to be a Written Language….

Yesterday, I had a wrinkly skirt.  I told Tony I was going to run it down to the public “tumbler” or dryer to run it through wrinkle release for 20 minutes.  Given that we have an iron but are too cheap to buy an ironing board, Tony conveniently reminded me we had a steamer available that claimed to host the appropriate European voltage.  Why not save time and use that instead?

Well as soon as we plugged it in, the lights in half the apartment just shut off, and Tony tried unsuccessfully to flip or change the fuse.  No use.

Our neighbor gave Tony the 24-hour number to the power company to request someone stop by the following day to assist.  A call that should’ve taken 5 minutes ended up taking 15 as the person on the other end only had a small understanding of English.

“Tutaj.  No, J.  J like, um, jack,” I heard Tony saying into the phone.

“Yes and we live on XXXX street.  Yes, L.  No, I said L.  Like lake.  Or lederhosen.  No, not L-E-L-L, B-E-L-L like, uh, bitte.”

This went on for 10 more minutes and God bless my lovely husband and his kind nature and patience, he finally got his point across.  Of course, in true Swiss fashion, the power company showed up early the next day and got everything fixed in a jiffy – love that efficiency! – but wouldn’t it be nice to even have the option of learning Swiss German if we really wanted to?  To avoid situations like this in the future?

Tony has been a diligent saint in his German studies, but German will only get you so far here.  Swiss German is the dialect and sounds more sing-songy and Dutch, plucking words from a variety of other languages like French and Italian.  How confusing!  To make matters even more difficult, when Tony tries to speak German to someone, they will respond in English because in many cases, they know English better than what is called high-German.

I love so much about Switzerland, really and truly, but if only they could formally write down their language, we would have better success at learning it and adapting to their culture.  But I shouldn’t complain – I’d take efficiency, public transportation and low taxes over a written language any day – they can’t make perfect sense 100% of the time, can they?  Then all the other countries really wouldn’t stand a chance at making the “best places countries to live in” list.