Culture Shock

Hello all, Melissa here.  Eric wanted me to write this one.

According to reputable sources*, there are several stages involved in culture shock.  Culture shock is what nearly everybody goes through when they move into an unfamiliar culture.  This may sound obvious, especially when the new culture is radically different.  Eric and I have found, however, that it also happens in a place like Switzerland.

The first stage is the Honeymoon.  This is what you (hopefully) never come out of on a short-term trip - you are amazed by the awesomeness of the new place.  In our case, awesomeness = incredible vistas, chocolate, and cheese, and the very friendly and polite Swiss people (and sheep).  Many blog posts have already been entered from this phase.

If your visit is longer-term, you will probably reach the second Hostile stage, which I did about a week and half ago.  I’m probably going to spend more time talking about this than the others because you’ve already read a lot of blog posts that are from the happy phases. 

The first straw** was the ridiculous laundry sign-up system in our building, which is DUMB but if you don’t follow it exactly people will GLARE AT YOU with SWISS HOSTILITY which is more intimidating than it sounds.  That culture of politeness goes along with a culture of lots of rules, and if you don’t follow the rules, WOE IS YOU.  Or however you say that in the second person.

Laundry sign-up list - when signed up, you monopolize 2 machines, 2 driers, and 2 clothesline rooms.  Can you see how long people have signed up to do this?  This is for the entire 4-story apartment building.  It does not make sense, and if you miss the list at midnight on Sunday night and it fills up, too bad for you.  AND if you use a machine while no one is using it, and you are not signed up, WOE IS YOU.

The second straw was a trip to the grocery store in which we realized that everything that is not cheese or chocolate (or beer/wine) is ridiculously expensive, e.g., $7 for one chicken breast.  Do they feed the chickens cheese and chocolate?  I paid $10 for a pretzel the other day and $5 for a small Coke.  I mean, no pretzel is that good, plus you get hungry like a half hour later if you try to make a pretzel your dinner, and then you have to buy gelato to make up for it (too bad), and then you’ve spent another $7 and there goes the point of eating the pretzel in the first place, which was that it was the only thing under $25 on the menu. 

The third straw was the weather.  It turns out that summer is the rainy season in Switzerland.  Keep this in mind if you ever plan a trip here - it rains about 5 out of every 6 or 7 days in our experience so far.  On rainy days, you can’t see Alps or anything else, and I still have to bike to work.

The last straw was a work day during which people constantly switched mid-conversation to German, and I could not understand anything being said around me.  It was the same day that I realized that along with the Swiss culture of being very pleasant, social, and polite comes a culture of being easily offended when foreigners don’t know the correct etiquette rules - apparently Americans are considered rude and too direct, and that's a bias that is terribly frustrating to deal with. 

So Hostile Stage was officially on, and I wanted to go home to Blacksburg where yummy farm-fresh food is available for non-millions of dollars and I have friends that speak my language and laundry systems are rational.

What I learned, though, is that this is a phase and it does pass.  A few days later, with lots of prayer and chocolate and support from sweet hubbie, I was fine again (and so was Eric, who was going through this in parallel).  We have figured out how to eat and function in a reasonable way (bratwursts here are cheap and delicious, for one thing), and Eric has mastered the laundry system, and the scenery really is breathtaking when the sun decides to come out.  The Alps are still gorgeous and the chocolate is still delicious, and there are still coffee breaks every couple of hours at my job, which is awesome.

I think the official name for the final, happy phase is “Home,” although there are other names depending on what source you use.  I don’t want to live here permanently, but I am really happy to be here, trying to get to know the great people that I work with.  It’s an incredible opportunity to experience life in another country, especially one this beautiful. 

 Happy in Switzerland!

* Wikipedia, which has been  found to be as accurate as research journals, albeit grammatically impaired, so don’t be snooty about it :)  Other source was Caroline Crouch, who knows everything.

** Does anybody know why the expression for degrees of stress involves straws? I have nothing against straws usually.