The Great American Reach Around - American Grab-Bag & Russia & Switzerland

Tschisino
Zurich, Switzerland

Welcome to Switzerland, the so called "Neutral-Country"! And that's exactly what most the Swiss think about the USA...they just don't care. And the part that cares, doensn't like America, because they read "something bad" in the newspaper or they just hate Bush. It's so biased. Especially in Zurich sometimes. Zurich has ALWAYS been a left-wing city. It is very multi-cultural and it never really gets boring.

Zurich is famous for it's party scene. We got a great nightlife, loty of clubs and every famous DJ you can imagine comes to Zurich. It's also packed with other people from the rest of Switzerland, as also from the surrounding countries. Just don't EVER go out on a Saturday night with your car. Big mistake.

People from other parts of Switzerland often speak of "Zurich" and "The Rest of Switzerland". You have to know, that Zurich is by FAR the biggest city in Switzerland, not Geneva.

While travelling I met a lot of Americans and Canadians and about 90% of them thought that Geneva is the biggest city and capital. Which is both untrue. Anyway, in such a small country like Switzerland a lot focuses on the biggest part, which is Zurich. Jealousy has always been a big issue in our country...people from Geneva don't like people from Lausanne, Bern doesn't like Fribourg and Basle hates Zurich.

We speak Swiss-German in the German part of Switzerland, which is like a dialect of German...but you almost cannot learn it. It's even very, very hard for German people. Eventually they can understand it if they stay here longer (and my god, they do!), but they won't be able to speak it. And it's different in every region. From Zurich you can drive in every direction for 30 minutes and they speak a different dialect. It's pretty hard to imagine if you didn't grow up with it I suppose...

Today we got the 1st of August, our National Day. It's probably comparable to your 4th of July. Nobody works, a lot of fireworks, BBQ everywhere and, of course, a lot of booze.

Life in Switzerland is pretty easy, if you're not lazy. Social levels don't matter, if you're intelligent enough, you can go to every school you want to. Life in Switzerland is also very expensive, but you got really high salaries and pretty low taxes compared to other European countries.

Alright, that's just a small insight to my country. If you ever visit Zurich and you wanna get rid of the "Neutral-Cliche" just visit a Football Match between Zurich and Basle, or Ice-Hockey between Zurich and Lugano. Nothing neutral there. Oh, and don't forget your sport shoes, you'll need them after the match. Trust me.