Helvetian Shakedown

I bring you reportage from Burgdorf, Switzerland, where I am visiting on behalf of my employer. Switzerland is really rad. It's quite a bit more industrial than I had imagined it, and not nearly as mountainous (I pictured the whole country being like Zermatt, with a bunch of red-cheeked Rubenesque people toting around alpenhorns), but very pleasant nonetheless.

Swiss people are markedly more polite and deferential than their German counterparts, I'm finding. Most Germans that I've met have been very direct and humorless, some of them to the point that I briefly considered fisticuffs. Such was the case with the German flight attendant on the flight to Frankfurt. My jacket had somehow wormed its way into the aisle, and she kinda tripped on it. Nothing major, just a little stumble. She held it up in the air so as to ascertain its owner, and when I laid claim to it, she chucked it in my general direction and said something that sounded very angry and rude to me. Since she said it in German, I wasn't able to understand it, but some German dudes across the aisle were making a big deal about it, so I assumed it must have been pretty mean. I thought flight attendants were programmed to be polite no matter what...

Then a couple hours later I was boarding another plane, this one from Frankfurt to Zurich, and as we were filing on, I was politely waiting for two elderly people to get their shit together. I turned halfway around and a middle-aged German (I'm now able to easily differentiate German accents from Swiss ones) gentleman flicked his head and said "Move your ass!" I'm not really a violent man, but I definitely found myself fantasizing about slamming the guy's head in the lavatory door repeatedly.

===================================================
Feb. 20

I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out enough of the Swiss train system to get me from the Zurich airport to Burgdorf. Hoo boy, they love their trains here! And they're hella efficient too. Fast and always on time, and fairly comfortable as well. America could take some cues on that. America could take many cues from Europe in general, where they seem to... shall we say... have a little dignity about their civic lives and public surroundings. I'm sure most people who visit Yurp (most people who are attuned to such things, anyway) quickly observe the contrast in the quality of everyday life compared to that in America. Sure, we got quality of life up the ass, insofar as it entails how much shit we can buy.

But I routinely have my mind blowed when observing how much pride Europeans take in their public life. People over 60 riding their bikes to the grocery store? Unheard of in the States! People in Wheat Ridge will gladly drive four blocks to the grocery store and then pout (and maybe shoot someone) if there isn't a parking space within 200ft. of the entrance. Ah, but I will make at least a rhetorical attempt to digress. Fuck man, this is such a tired old jeremiad: the guilt- and shame-ridden Yankee proclaiming Europe=good, America=bad. However true it may be, it kinda loses its novelty pretty quickly. Suffice it to say that it really gets rubbed in your face when you're in Europe.

===================================================
Feb. 21

So, yes, this was not the best of days. In fact, for much of it, I was wishing for Sweet Death to come sweeping down from on high: I don't know if it was the Lufthansa food or the Döner Kebab I got at an outdoor stand, but I spent Monday night and all of Tuesday alternately puking, spraying many cusecs (that's hydrologist-ese for "cubic feet per second") of diarrhea, and writhing in agony. The rapid heartbeat indicated that it must be food poisoning. I was already totally exhausted from traveling all day, but still I couldn't sleep. Around 4am I think I finally just zonked from sheer exhaustion, but I was up again at 7, puking, shitting, writhing.

The most unfortunate part of this is that it was the day I was to report to the offices of my Swiss colleagues and spread good cheer and trade Java programming tips and all that. So I fuckin' staggered across the beautiful town of Burgdorf, stiff-legged, so as not to shit-spray myself, and tried to figure out where the office is. Fortuitously for everyone, I found it with minimal wandering, went in, made some pleasantries, and dutifully ascertained the location of the bathrooms in advance of any sudden incontinence. We talked shop for a while, and I noticed that my voice was very hoarse. I stupidly accepted the offer for coffee, which was the absolute last thing my constitution needed at that moment. European coffee is way bitterer and (usually) stronger than your typical Yuban or even Starblokes, and so it wasn't long before the acrid Swiss Swill catalyzed with the existing dyspepsia and my colon gave fair warning, which quickly escalated into "Fuck, I wish had a diaper right now."

That was about 15 minutes into my time at the office. It was suddenly made manifest to me that whatever was brewing down below wasn't just a passing thing, and so I had the good sense to politely excuse myself, though it was apparent that my stated reason, "food poisoning," wasn't really a familiar English idiom to my otherwise-fluent Helvetian hosts. They probably thought I had just made up some bullshit about being poisoned a'la Socrates so I could go skiing or something. Awkward looks of confusion ensued, but I had not the wherewithal to stand around and explain.

Back to the hotel I trotted. I was quick to acknowledge the good fortune of having wireless internet access so I could be on or near the toilet, on standby for more purges, and yet still read the web, which tends to distract me from pert' near any unpleasantry. So I slept and read and puked and shat and worked for the rest of Tuesday, which actually turned out to be fairly pleasant. Being bivouacked in an IKEA-festooned Swiss hotel room with wi-fi and a corporate card is far from the worst fate in the world.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. The food poisoning had run its course, and by Wednesday I was pretty much back to normal. Long about Thursday, I was able to accompany my Swiss colleagues to their favorite Chinese restaurant up the street, and midway was overcome with euphoria and remarked, "Fellas, this is a dream come true for me: sitting in Switzerland talking about Java." And I meant it; I'd have gone around the table and bear-hugged all five of them if it were even remotely acceptable. It's so rare for me to be able to sit around and bullshit about the finer points of the JIntegra-COM bridge, or the relative merits of the SWT vs. Swing GUI component architecture. I dig it.

===================================================
Friday Feb. 24

This afternoon I took the train to Zurich to spend a day off there before my flight home on Sunday. Zurich, as anyone who has visited can tell you, is a beautiful European city, teeming with activity. I'll spare you any more such gushing, because my stay at the Zurich Marriott has got me a bit worked up. I only picked the Marriot because I could see it from the train station, and it was snowing and I had all my luggage to schlep around.

Marriotts are classic kiss-ass hotels. I don't have any hard data to back this up, but it seems to me that there are pretty much two conflicting hotel paradigms going on right now:

1) the expensive hotel that favors modernist decor and emphasizes a unique, authentic experience;

2) old-school stalwarts like Marriott, where they genuflect and hustle around trying to make everything perfect.

(There's a third, which encompasses everything from the nationwide Red Roof Inn to the crack-n-whores joints like the La Vista on East Colfax in Denver, but that's a whole 'nother deal)

With regard to #2: Maybe it's just low self-esteem on my part, but I just fucking hate that whole ruse that goes on where the servers pretend that they're honored to serve you, and I in turn am given carte blanche to complain and be a finicky asshole if everything isn't perfect. I don't need the desk clerks treating me like I'm the Sultan of Brunei. I don't want some jackass handing me a towel in the shitter in the hotel restaurant. When I go down to the desk to get an extra pillow, I would like it if the clerk didn't feel like she has to apologize profusely, as if I'm about to hit her with a rolled-up newspaper. And I really would like the guy in the maroon monkey suit whose entire job is to stand by the elevator in the lobby and press the up button on my behalf when he sees me approach... I'd really like for Marriott to make better use of this man's time.

God damn it, this is 2006; I keep thinking that we've gotten past that whole conspicuous wealth thing, and I keep getting disappointed. There apparently remains a thriving cottage industry for hotels who cater like supplicant serfs to wealthy people, because there remains a class of rich people who expect and enjoy getting treated like this. And in fact while I was at the front desk of the Marriott, an obviously American stunod was two clerks over, imperiously griping about some stupid bullshit, like they forgot to fold the end of the toilet paper into a little triangle so he could easily grasp it... some such kerfuffle, and all I could feel was pity for the poor guy. "My god, old boy, is your life really so empty?"

Nevertheless, being in this fancy Marriot, overlooking the Limmat River and the hubbub of Zurich, I was compelled to marvel at the contrast between this situation and my hazy memory of the evening of 09.Sept 2000, staggering drunk on about 31 Pabsts, down to a room at the aforementioned La Vista, easily the seediest, most ghetto place I could ever imagine, with blatant prostitutory activity afoot in the parking lot, then getting into the room and a) finding a whole, uncooked chicken in a small refrigerator which was left unplugged, and b) puking the better part of those 31 PBRs all over the fucking place.

I feel somehow blessed to be able to draw upon these two antipodal experiences, yes.

More photos 'n' blather soon...

COMMENTS

HIDE