Switzerld
andI went to Switzerland the other week. I was working on my computer, error testing the software program that I was working on for the past year, when I got a call from my work partner. “Would I like to go to Switzerland?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. And then we went, five days later.
The premise for the trip was that a UN conference on ICT, development, and youth was taking place in Geneva. My work partner and I had entered into a contest for IT projects, and we had written an article about the school management program we had created. Winners of the contest were announced a few months ago, with hearty congratulations and the promise of some unnamed prize. The unnamed prize, of course, hadn’t been thought up when the winners were chosen, so when a UN IT conference came up and volunteers were needed to spread the good word about PC, the prize suddenly crystallized into a trip to Switzerland, UN-funded stipend included.
The four-day UN stipend came out to approximately our salary for 4 months. Of course, that sum was blown through slumming it in Geneva, but that’s not the point. This is why I hate the UN. Something like half a million dollars was spent to draw up wording to a UN resolution including the participation of youth in the decision-making process of the UN’s IT development projects. The assembly was exactly like Model UN, only it was the real thing.
What to say of Switzerland? There are only a few places in the world that billionaires prefer to reside, and one of them is Geneva. But besides how expensive it is? How about the fact that you need reservations even to go. Switzerland is perhaps the only country in the world where you are forced by circumstances to spend a night in a homeless shelter, even though you have 400 dollars cash in your pocket. It is also perhaps the only country in the world where the nightly rate and clientele of said homeless shelter rivals that of an average Super8 motel in the States. If you really have you money, you will be kindly asked to leave the national borders and never come back.
Any list of Switzerland’s oddities could not possibly succeed in being definitive. I expected it to be more or less like any other European country I had visited; perhaps less rough around the edges, but similar in disposition. What, then, to say about a country that’s graffiti, scarce though it may be, carries slogans such as “Germans go home” or whose mainstream political posters depict six white sheep standing on a map of Switzerland and a black sheet being excluded with the slogan “Keep Switzerland pure”. When Germans form the top ranks of the underclass, you know something is wrong.
The Germans most certainly would go home if they didn’t earn so much being day laborers. That may also be said of the 25% of the country’s workforce who is not Swiss. Non-citizens face discrimination in a myriad of small ways- being forced to pay for drinks upfront in a bar; waiting eight months to rent an apartment; not being allowed to drive. The white collar imported workforce is treated equally poorly as the blue collar part. Executives earning 90,000 dollars a year, for example, get about the same going over as a poor North African in Paris. Which is not to say that the Swiss are openly discriminatory- that would go against their national values and political correctness! They are far too polite to overtly discriminate.
What are Swiss values, besides politeness and political correctness? It just became legal to beg on the street, so long as the proceeds are taxed accordingly. The problem with begging it’s a public nuisance, but that its offensive to the Protestant ethic. In a country where the super-rich are forcing the rich into middle-classdom, even those at the top feel guilt over hiring cleaning ladies.
The night before the last, we had met up with a refugee of Burundian royalty, who took us around town, We walked into the symphony, a high rise apartment complex, the law library of the university, even, for whatever reason, Smith College’s European campus, because people just assumed we had a good reason for being there. That, and a pleasant, conversational tone, will open just about any door you need. We visited the grave of John Calvin, noted father of Protestantism, in a well-kept cemetery in downtown Geneva. The noted father of Protestantism was celebrated in the afterlife by a three foot by five foot bush and a book-sized plaque.
That’s Swiss. If they wish to close every single store and shop on Sunday, no exception, that is their prerogative. If they wish to outlaw the use of washing machines after 10pm, so be it. Or, if they wish to impose a snack break at movies. Or, if they wish to not have price labels in grocery stores.
After a week of this, I was ready to return to Senegal, home of libertarianism in action. Goats roam the airport. The taxi drivers will not hesitate to grab you or your bags and shepherd you into their car, which, of course, meets no safety or emission standards whatsoever. We paid four dollars for a twenty-minute taxi ride back from the airport, over a dirt-filled, rubble strewn highway. I checked into the volunteer house around midnight, stepped over sleeping people, trash, and empty beer bottles, and set up a foam mattress in the backyard. I was woken the next day at dawn by the loudspeaker of the local mosque.
Senegal does have chaos, insanity, and mess, but the culture shock is not more taxing than anywhere else. After two years here, I come out looking no more worse for wear than my Polish cousin, working in the financial city of Zurich.
The premise for the trip was that a UN conference on ICT, development, and youth was taking place in Geneva. My work partner and I had entered into a contest for IT projects, and we had written an article about the school management program we had created. Winners of the contest were announced a few months ago, with hearty congratulations and the promise of some unnamed prize. The unnamed prize, of course, hadn’t been thought up when the winners were chosen, so when a UN IT conference came up and volunteers were needed to spread the good word about PC, the prize suddenly crystallized into a trip to Switzerland, UN-funded stipend included.
The four-day UN stipend came out to approximately our salary for 4 months. Of course, that sum was blown through slumming it in Geneva, but that’s not the point. This is why I hate the UN. Something like half a million dollars was spent to draw up wording to a UN resolution including the participation of youth in the decision-making process of the UN’s IT development projects. The assembly was exactly like Model UN, only it was the real thing.
What to say of Switzerland? There are only a few places in the world that billionaires prefer to reside, and one of them is Geneva. But besides how expensive it is? How about the fact that you need reservations even to go. Switzerland is perhaps the only country in the world where you are forced by circumstances to spend a night in a homeless shelter, even though you have 400 dollars cash in your pocket. It is also perhaps the only country in the world where the nightly rate and clientele of said homeless shelter rivals that of an average Super8 motel in the States. If you really have you money, you will be kindly asked to leave the national borders and never come back.
Any list of Switzerland’s oddities could not possibly succeed in being definitive. I expected it to be more or less like any other European country I had visited; perhaps less rough around the edges, but similar in disposition. What, then, to say about a country that’s graffiti, scarce though it may be, carries slogans such as “Germans go home” or whose mainstream political posters depict six white sheep standing on a map of Switzerland and a black sheet being excluded with the slogan “Keep Switzerland pure”. When Germans form the top ranks of the underclass, you know something is wrong.
The Germans most certainly would go home if they didn’t earn so much being day laborers. That may also be said of the 25% of the country’s workforce who is not Swiss. Non-citizens face discrimination in a myriad of small ways- being forced to pay for drinks upfront in a bar; waiting eight months to rent an apartment; not being allowed to drive. The white collar imported workforce is treated equally poorly as the blue collar part. Executives earning 90,000 dollars a year, for example, get about the same going over as a poor North African in Paris. Which is not to say that the Swiss are openly discriminatory- that would go against their national values and political correctness! They are far too polite to overtly discriminate.
What are Swiss values, besides politeness and political correctness? It just became legal to beg on the street, so long as the proceeds are taxed accordingly. The problem with begging it’s a public nuisance, but that its offensive to the Protestant ethic. In a country where the super-rich are forcing the rich into middle-classdom, even those at the top feel guilt over hiring cleaning ladies.
The night before the last, we had met up with a refugee of Burundian royalty, who took us around town, We walked into the symphony, a high rise apartment complex, the law library of the university, even, for whatever reason, Smith College’s European campus, because people just assumed we had a good reason for being there. That, and a pleasant, conversational tone, will open just about any door you need. We visited the grave of John Calvin, noted father of Protestantism, in a well-kept cemetery in downtown Geneva. The noted father of Protestantism was celebrated in the afterlife by a three foot by five foot bush and a book-sized plaque.
That’s Swiss. If they wish to close every single store and shop on Sunday, no exception, that is their prerogative. If they wish to outlaw the use of washing machines after 10pm, so be it. Or, if they wish to impose a snack break at movies. Or, if they wish to not have price labels in grocery stores.
After a week of this, I was ready to return to Senegal, home of libertarianism in action. Goats roam the airport. The taxi drivers will not hesitate to grab you or your bags and shepherd you into their car, which, of course, meets no safety or emission standards whatsoever. We paid four dollars for a twenty-minute taxi ride back from the airport, over a dirt-filled, rubble strewn highway. I checked into the volunteer house around midnight, stepped over sleeping people, trash, and empty beer bottles, and set up a foam mattress in the backyard. I was woken the next day at dawn by the loudspeaker of the local mosque.
Senegal does have chaos, insanity, and mess, but the culture shock is not more taxing than anywhere else. After two years here, I come out looking no more worse for wear than my Polish cousin, working in the financial city of Zurich.
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