failed democracy

I don't believe in the evil of taxation without representation.  When – many years ago when I still lived in London – a bunch of aggravated American expats threw three and a half bags of builder's tea into the Thames, I had nothing but mild condescension for them. If you don't like the way things are, go back to where you came from.  This was easy for me to say.

Back then, I didn't consider myself a migrant.  I was a mercenary of science, joining labs where there was excitement and staying until the money ran out.  I didn't grow roots, and I didn't want to.  There was no sense of permanence.

Things have changed over the years and my situation and my attitude are much different now.  With a job without an expiration date and, especially, with children, I perceive my surroundings differently.  I have already written that I don't find the idea of taking up another nationality as absurd as I did in the past.  I feel a strong urge to belong, but it's not easy.

Dietikon, the town I live in, is rather underprivileged by Swiss standards.  Unemployment is around 4%, and the ratio of people on benefits is higher than anywhere else in the canton.  The town is far from the picture-perfect Alpine village one often associates with Switzerland.  It is also full of immigrants, some naturalized but many not.

When Switzerland played Albania in the Euro 2016, the game shown on a big screen on the town square.  Excitement and good spirits were all around, but more flags showed black birds than white crosses.  I cannot blame the Albanians for showing national pride and for not picking up the colors of the locals, the colors, after all, of their adopted country.  They are – all we foreigners are – welcome to a limited degree only.

At 45%, Dietikon has the second highest share of foreigners in the canton.  The strongest party on the town council and the executive is the populist and angry Swiss People's Party, a right-wing outfit of questionable values.  Instead of representing immigrants, it detests them and tries to keep them away.  How can they win elections here?

This is easy.  Only slightly more than half of all (tax-paying) residents are eligible to vote.  Foreigners, no matter how involved they are in local issues, how much they care about their hometown, how hard they work to make it a better place, are ignored.  Elected politicians, even if they came close to getting every vote from every eligible voter, represent only a minority of residents.

I accept that national elections are for nationals and that the right to vote is bestowed upon citizens only, but for local elections, this is a farce.  Keeping residents from voting in local elections – with their direct repercussions on local affairs – is a travesty of democracy.

If national law doesn't let you kick foreigners out of the country, you have to make it possible to integrate them politically.  Otherwise, you'll create a parallel society of people who don't belong, don't care, don't do.  In Switzerland only very few cantons allow municipalities to let foreigners vote locally.  Zurich is not one of them.  I will thus be disenfranchised until I apply for Swiss nationality, which is a few years off if I do it at all.  Until then, why should I care about anything that happens in Dietikon?  It's all imposed on me anyway.

At the most recent local elections here in Dietikon, just a bit more than a month ago, participation was a pitiful 25%.  How representative are the representatives, even disregarding the residents that are barred from voting?  There's an easy way to fix this.  The silent majority would be much more eager to cast their ballot if hordes of Albanians or Germans were suddenly allowed to vote – and thus threaten to annihilate centuries of Swiss culture with their savagery.  You'd probably also find, at least locally, that the important issues – development, education, traffic, crime – remain the same no matter who is allowed to cast their vote, except now decisions would have much broader support.

Opening local elections to all residents would be an unambiguous gain for democracy.

Swiss day

Switzerland is an easy country to dream about.  Beautiful mountains, economic prosperity, low crime, and a benign climate.  And don't forget the chocolate.  Who wouldn't want to live there?

The dream of Switzerland simmered inside me for years.  It didn't exactly burn hot because I always like where I lived, be it Salt Lake City, Grenoble or London, but Switzerland was always there as an option.  Something that would be great if it worked out.

Switzerland is a hard country to get used to.  It's so quiet it's almost boring, even the big cities are villages, the rules can feel stifling, and the cost of living is absurd.  Former farming villages understand urban design as ladling up concrete until there's nothing else left.  Why would anyone choose to live there?

I've been here for three years and a half.  The observations above still ring true, both the positive and the negative ones.  But I notice that the positive aspects are slowly gaining the upper hand.

To what I mentioned in the first paragraph I can now add a few more upsides.  Public transport is nationally coordinated down to the last bus up a lonely mountain road and always on time.  Water is potable unless the opposite is indicated, including lakes and rivers.  Prices look ridiculous only when converted into other currencies.

Today is Swiss National Day, which celebrates the founding of the Confederation.  In 1291, representatives from three adjoining areas got together by Lake Lucerne to swear they would be there for each other and kick any invaders' dirty butts.  The oath has not only held but also attracted a couple dozen surrounding territories to join, making the Swiss Confederation what it is today.

We went to Zurich today, not to participate in any festivities but to escape the heat.  Summer has been scorching for a few weeks now, with temperatures in the 90s and no rain to speak of.  Going to the city might not seem the smartest escape, but Zurich's got the lake.

Lake Zurich connects the city with the mountains, creates a steady breeze and offers limitless diversions.  There are parks, playgrounds, cafés, bars and ice cream stands, but they all pale relative the to the main attraction.  In summer, people come to the lake to jump in and swim.

We went to a lido a bit up the eastern shore.  The grass was green and soft, our spot in the shade, and the city all around us.  The water was warm and clear, though I didn't drink it, and the slide provided what felt like hours of entertainment for the girl.  Even the boy slid down a few times.  When everyone was exhausted, we took a boat back to the station for the train ride home.  Switzerland is a good country to live in.

typically Swiss

Three weeks ago, I thought I had a topic for a post.  It was an episode that brought some common stereotypes of Switzerland in such sharp focus that I was left blinded for a few moments.  It was perfect little story.  Lack of dedication to this blog killed it.  It now turns out it was all for the best.

To drive in Switzerland, one has to have a Swiss license.  Holders of a license from what are commonly known as civilized countries have one year to exchange their license for a Swiss one.  Within that year, no test beyond one of eyesight is required to be eligible for a Swiss license.  Swapping licenses is nothing more than a formality.

This sounds sensible but the idea didn't appeal to me.  Being European, I've driven like a local while living in France and in the UK.  No one ever asked questions.  Before that, in Utah, getting a state driver's license required a written test (open book) but let me keep my license.  What right do the Swiss have to retain my license?

It was over questions like this that a year passed.  With the second year nearing its end, it was likely too late to take action.  When it says one year in Switzerland, one year is what it means.  When the bus leaves at ten past three, it's ten past three and not a quarter.  Twenty-three months after my arrival in Switzerland, the train to a new license had left the station.

Except maybe it hadn't.  A colleague at work, told about my predicament, gave me hope.  "You can do it within two years, but you have to pay more", had said.  This made perfect sense in my understanding of Switzerland.  There are plenty of rules.  Enforcement is strict.  But if you part with some money, you'll discover hidden flexibility.  In the end, reality turned out quite different.

Three weeks ago, I went to Zurich to have my German driver's license exchanged for a Swiss one.  The office opened at 7:15.  Not being as hard-working as the Swiss, I entered the building five minutes later.  A further five minutes later, I was back out, and all was done.  The clerk had taken my application form and my license, thoughtfully given me a copy for my records, and sent me on my way.  "You'll get your new license by mail within a week."

If the license had arrived exactly seven days after my visit, it would have been the perfect story of Swiss efficiency.  A job done as expected, without any faff, quickly, competently and friendly.  And who has ever heard of a government office opening just after seven?

First doubts arose on the tram ride back.  There had been no question about my arrival in the country.  What happened to the one-year rule?  Nor had any money exchanged hands.  This gave it away.  Nothing is free in Switzerland.  There would be more to this story.

Eight days after I handed over my German license, I received a letter asking me to get a medical exam if I wanted to keep a particular lorry class I had obtained all those years ago and never used.  I opted out, but then it took another four days until my license arrived.  The promised week was broken, at least in part because the clerk at the office hadn't checked that all the boxes were ticked on the form.

With a new license in my wallet, this is where the story would have ended for me, but the Swiss had other ideas.  Today I got another letter.  Inside was a bill.  The exchange of licenses was one item and hard to argue with.  The issuing of a new license was also listed, though this might have been included with the exchange in more generous jurisdictions.  Finally, an ID check brought the total into the triple figures, not something I'm particularly happy with, but at least it's in line with common preconceptions of Switzerland.  This is an expensive country.

curious country

Since Flucha and Tapas are still in Argentina, enjoying 90-degree heat while I have to content with snow and frozen sidewalks, I had the weekend to myself.  Yesterday, I purchased some pieces of furniture to deck out a flat that's still empty two-and-a-half months after my moving in, among them a table of dubious value.  After two hours of assembling, the table stands strong and serves me well with its large surface, but Flucha has already logged complaints about material, color and shape.

This morning, later than I usually have a coffee at work, I sat down on the new table for tea and a newspaper that spread open without interfering with my breakfast.  I had bought the NZZ, the most respectable Swiss daily, and so I got, with bread from the bakery across the street and Ovomaltine chocolate spread, a heap of Swiss news that set the course for the day.  Switzerland is such a curious country, it's a shame I haven't written anything about it yet.

Take the market for agricultural products, for example.  It is highly regulated and protected to a degree that would make French farmers turn green with envy.  Competition is excluded and prices are commensurate.  On the upside, consumers are promised quality without compromise.  This is something the Swiss value more than a bargain.  A suggestions was floated a few months back about imports (in general) having to conform to Swiss environmental and labor standards to prevent cheap products from giving good Swiss farmers and manufacturers a hard time.  This was received quite positively.  If families on tight budgets struggled, it would presumably be their own fault.  They could go and do their weekly shopping in Germany.

Back to agriculture.  Nectarines, grapes and oranges arrive from Italy or Spain, but of the fruits and vegetables that can be grown here, most that are sold in stores are Swiss.  The same is true of meat, which is said to be excellent.  I don't know if there are feedlots, but I doubt it.  Cows graze everywhere, in small herds of content animals.  Last summer on one of my few bike rides I saw a pasture with pigs, with little huts for them to sleep.  My boss told me later how it works:  Cute little piglets arrive early in summer.  Great fun for the children.  Many Sundays spent watching them play and grow.  Then, at Christmas, they're all gone all of a sudden.  And the children have learned an important lesson about life.  I don't know where the poultry come from.  I haven't seen chickens roam freely yet in significant numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's how they spent their days.

Meat of any provenance is incredibly expensive.  Just a few weeks ago, the new Argentinian government cut export duties on beef.  This was reported in the Swiss media, with the happy corollary that one will soon be able to buy good Argentinian steaks for less.  The reports chose to ignore that the import duty Switzerland levies on beef is 23 Francs per kilogram, easily outweighing any export duties abroad.  The decision far away will have no effect on prices in Switzerland.  And anyway, even if the Swiss started buying their beef, they would still not know how to barbecue it like the Argentines.

None of this was in my newspaper this morning.  What I read was that the hot and dry summer had pummeled potato fields.  The harvest was correspondingly poor.  Now there aren't enough potatoes in the country for everyone.  The larger ones, critical for frying and baking, are especially rare because the lack of water had stunted their growth.  The idea surfaced that potato imports might be necessary to ensure an adequate supply.

In Switzerland, this isn't so easy.  You can't just go and drive a few trucks over from Germany when you see unmet demand.  There are quotas and duties and permits, set or handed out weekly by a ministry in what looks to me like a bureaucratic nightmare.  The Economist would call this restrictive system incompatible with prosperity, but the Swiss don't seem to read that magazine or heed conventional economic wisdom.  Rail transport here is government-owned, as is the postal service, which also runs one of the country's largest financial institution.  Retail is dominated by two players that don't act as if they were in competition.  Both are cooperatives, as is the largest insurance company.  Trade is restricted and the currency overvalued.  There are rules and regulations for everything.  The country is highly protectionist and suspicious of international integration.  It joined the UN in 2002 only and stays apart from the EU, even though it's surrounded by it on all sides.  One could assume that globalization happened elsewhere.  It's a curious country indeed.

Swiss German

Approached from the north, Switzerland looks a lot like Germany.  It's not as close as Austria, which came into its own only 150 years ago, but still, Switzerland shows more similarities with Germany at first glance than differences.  Radio, TV and street signs are in German, trains leave from platforms shown in the timetable, thus avoiding the scrum when they are finally announced, five minutes before departure, at Victoria Station or Gare de Lyon, and bakers sell tasty bread that the locals proceed to have for dinner with cheese and cold cuts.  To a German, it looks as if it could double for home.

The Swiss would probably disagree.  They are known for their independence and the pride they take in their idiosyncrasies.  Their love of local specialties and a good meal out couldn't be further from the German cheap-is-good mentality.  What they speak among themselves is probably more distant from German than Dutch and certainly more than Yiddish.  It is entirely incomprehensible to me.

The border region is intertwined to such a degree that it's hard to discern what's one country and what's the other.  On my trip to my future home this morning, I had to change trains in Basel.  Basel is in Switzerland, but one of its train station is on German territory.  I hopped onto another train that noisily rumpled along and up the thinning Rhine, on the German side.  I was in Germany all the way until the last regional train, a commuter towards Zurich, but the border patrol checked passports before Basel already.

Plenty of Germans work in Switzerland but reside on the German side, never mind the suffocating taxes and mandatory insurances in Germany.  Cheap rent and money saved on groceries make up for that.  The Swiss, in contrast, come to Germany to have their cars repaired or their teeth.  The recent revaluation of the Franc has only intensified that.  To foreigners, prices in Switzerland are extortionate.  Paying the largest coin in common circulation for a double espresso is all right in the EU and a bargain in the US, but if that coin is worth nearly five euros, it hurts.

Once I've lived in Switzerland for any amount of time – I presume a few days will suffice – the differences between Germany and Switzerland will come into focus.  But for now I cling to what I read in Swiss Watching,  a collaborator's parting gift in which an Englishman describes his impressions after living in the country for a few years.  Almost every time he contrasts Switzerland with England, I feel at home – because I've contrasted Germany with England in the same way.

Grüezi

Over the last half year, to continue the previous post, my boss has changed, but my job and my situation in London have stayed pretty much the same.  When I walked into my new boss's office the other day, a bit out of the ordinary because there are no weekly meetings, and told him I'd quit, he wasn't surprised and he didn't suggest bargaining.  This is not the only reason that the decision will stand this time.  I'm as determined as I was last time, but this time, it's a decision Flucha and I made together.  In addition, the excuse of "just a few little things to finish up" is no more.  A paper of my work has been published and another has got positive reviews at last.  Projects never end, but my involvement has.  I'm out of here, and no one will notice a difference.

The facility where I work is stable, operating with minimal intervention.  Equipment that was defective for years is working again, procedures have been implemented to make the latest developments in crystallization methods available, as much as is possible with a limited budget.  Everything is working as it should.  It's a good time to leave.

It's a particular good time to leave because I've just signed a new contract, something different, geographically and topically.  I'll be leaving academia and the UK.  Nominally I'll still be a scientist but I'll be working for a company, and it's not biotech.  I'll be helping make equipment better and to get said equipment in the hands of researchers.  Sounds like flogging magazine subscriptions, but it isn't.  Or at least I think it isn't.  It will involve a fair bit of traveling, all over the world, if I understand things correctly, mostly to scientific conferences but possibly also to customers.  It will also involve building a lab to test the equipment, to find ways of using it to better effect or more efficiently.  The latter is where the scientific aspect lies.

The company is located in Switzerland, and living there has long been a dream of mine.  It's not just the mountains but also work that pays, public transport that works, order in anything that happens.  It will be a drastic change from London.  No more lifts that stop working whenever it rains, monthly scheduled emergency steam shutdowns and mild weather as a valid excuse for massive travel disruptions.  If it had been just me, I would have signed the contract in a second.  But Flucha was thrown off by the prospect of small-town life and rigid rules and regulations.

The fanaticism with rules and the happy adherence to them might come as a shock even to me, a normally law-abiding and organized German.  The Swiss take it to extremes.  On my journey to the interview I noticed that the biggest display board at Zurich airport did not advertise watches or financial services but the house rules, take your shoes off and don't spit on the carpet and things like that.  On the side of the train from the airport was a yellow sign warning that this was a self-check area.  At three percent unemployment, the absence of conductors is understandable, and it might be an economic necessity to ask passengers to check the validity of their own tickets.  The sign read further, "Please buy and validate your ticket before boarding the train.  A CHF 100 fee applies to those traveling without a ticket."  As there was no honesty box and no account details to facilitate a bank transfer in case you catch yourself without a ticket, I can only assume that no Swiss would ever be found in such a situation.

But it goes further.  In Switzerland, working on the day of the lord is banned to an extent that would cause Jewish fundamentalists to look twice.  Granted, you can drive a motorcar to your place of worship, but you can't do laundry or hang it up to dry, and you can't do gardening.  Don't even think about firing up the lawnmower.  For Flucha with her Latin sense of freedom and improvisation, this is bound to be a struggle.  Nevertheless, weighing the facts – those laid out before and those that haven't been revealed – we decided to go ahead with it.  We'll be saying Grüezi to Switzerland soon, first me then her.