Even more annoying than NPR pledge time....

Taking us by surprise this week, after nearly two years of living here, was the discovery that we will need to pay taxes on our media equipment. The fees are about 15 CHF per radio (or computer, which counts because of online radio) and 25 CHF per television. Per month. For some reason we didn't have to pay last year, so we are hoping (most likely in vain) we don't have to pay retroactively.

How did we escape knowledge of these taxes? Or, more exactly, why did we think this fate was limited to the nation of Germany? It is purely the unexpectedness of these taxes that makes them irritating. So much for our cultural competence. I wonder what other things are we missing out on.

It is easy to take knowledge of your own culture for granted; this is a realization I will take home with me. Ignorance is not really very blissful for foreigners. It's disorienting. And occasionally infuriating. 

I spent the day with a cranky child genius, I overbaked the brownies, I'm starving, the pan smells like the cumin from five days ago, and I bought prosciutto instead of bacon (again). This is the worst day ever.

And I burned the toast to inedibility while I was posting that.

I interrupt the theme of my blog today because I have been fuming to myself for about an hour now and still find myself with anger overflowing. I am like a lava monster who needs somewhere to vent. Such as into cyberspace.

As you may have observed, there are certain kinds of people who get parking tickets more than others. I admit to being one of them. I am okay with it. I pay my tickets and move on. What I cannot abide, however, is PAYING FOR THE SAME PARKING TICKET TWICE. And that is what the City of Evanston is effectively forcing us to do by sending us a recent collection notice THREE YEARS AFTER THE FACT. Actually, the collection notice wasn't even from the City of Evanston, it was from some account management service up in Milwaukee. What do they mean to communicate, outsourcing like that? It really doesn't say "Illinois is a really great place to live and work," I will tell you that. Bastards.

As I mentioned, they are collecting for a THREE YEAR OLD ticket. It is actually an infraction I recall clearly. I had found a nice convenient spot close to our friends' house, but it turned out, upon later inspection, to be in front of some guy's driveway. No running out for Obama signs that night for him! Anyway, getting a ticket is humiliating enough, but when it is so well deserved and, on top of that, discovered in the company of dear friends and a husband, you are mortified, but you pay the ticket happily, glad just to have something to do other than contemplate your own folly. So I know I paid this ticket. (Secretly I usually enjoy the transaction; it's cleansing, like going to confession, except not in front a line of old ladies. Or like an indulgence.)

So, on top of it all, this afternoon I read that the appeal period lapsed while my mail made its rounds to through US addresses to Switzerland. Blast! Ah, but maybe, I thought, I can call, talk to a real person, see what this is all about, explain my predicament. You know, play the ex-pat card. But when I tried this, I found that the Milwaukee people do not talk to spouses of car owners (never mind that it was my parking ticket). Parking ticket history, you know, is just like medical history. So this is great. My nice husband will come home to make the call, put on his polite voice, and by the end of the conversation will be paying the fee with a credit card, trying to add on a tip for the great help. Of course they give pleasant service, they live in a city with a parking spot-car ratio of 3:1.

Sigh. It does not matter anyway. I know they will want the proof that we paid it, proof that is not easily accessible to us at the moment, having abandoned our former bank, and being the kind of people to only half-heartedly save bank statements. So, you Evanston people, I hope you appreciate the extra $50 I will be donating to your fair city. Go hug an elm for me or something.

Swiss Inferno

I'm not sure what I may have done to deserve it, but there is a good possibility that I may currently be stuck in the inner circle of Hell. Not just an inner circle of Hell, the inner circle of Hell. 

In case you are unfamiliar with the Inferno part of The Divine Comedy, it's where Dante describes in terms of concentric rings the hellish conditions designed to punish the sinful after death. The first circle, for people who sneak chocolates and let their phone calls go to voice mail, is really not so bad, just a quiet place with no candy. Later circles are much worse, full of off-key singing, mandatory mullets, Hungry, Hungry Hippos, and cable news. And possibly boiling lava.

The innermost circle appears to have been specially designed to separate me from the one thing in this world I have loved more than anything else (also, might I moodily add, one of the easiest thing to procure when living in Switzerland): cheese. I am still in the testing phases, but my body seems to have turned against me, against my love. Is this tragicomedy or simply poetic justice?

O bitter Truth! O tragic Fate! Wouldst Thou ignore my cries? I promise, should this affliction pass over me, to hold cheese less dear, to wear the t-shirt less, to eat my vegetables... I swear, I swear it upon my Cheese Bible.

PR**TO

My memory, as I may have told you, may have told you repeatedly, in fact, is a bit fickle. It often works really well (allowing me to correctly answer trivia questions about Joe Namath and RNA transcription). But shine the spotlight on it and it's just as often likely to belch out the wrong answer. I have born false witness to the questions "How old are you?" "How long have you been married?" "What neighborhood do you live in?" and "Who told you that?" repeatedly because of this no-good, double-crossing memory of mine. Additionally, words of approximately the same length and/or consonant:vowel ratio (Fullerton and Lawrence, for example), names of people who have the same build or facial hair, and names starting with the same letter (a la those alliterative Bev, Bill, Brian, Barbara, & Brady families) become very confused in my head. This is why I frequently look and/or am lost.

All this to say, it was no surprise that pronto and presto have given me trouble from the moment I stepped foot in this Italian-speaking land. It was hard indeed to start answering the phone "pronto!" Not only is this a weird greeting (pronto means "ready"), I am also usually struck by the very strong urge to say "presto!" ("soon") instead. 

So wait. Are you also having trouble wrapping your mind around these usages? Check your passport, I bet you're American. Check out this illustrative snacking scenario:

American version: Bring that salt over here pronto! Put it on your tomato and – presto! – a tasty snack!

Italian version (in English): Is that tasty tomato snack pronto yet? I have to leave presto.

You see? It is not me, it is the weird English language which has begged, borrowed, and stolen itself.  Presto was first borrowed into the English language by magicians whose tricks happened "right away" and has become the rough equivalent of "ta-dah!"  Pronto comes to the English from the Italian/Spanish definition of pronto which also means "right away."  So it is not just my memory but the entire English language conspiring against me. [End personal validation supported by amateur linguistics]

On the circumstances of said ticket....

When you are buying antiques, it's always very useful to learn the provenance of the piece you would like to purchase. So, while you are guessing on yesterday's tragic item, I am happy to oblige you its details.

The speeding ticket was admittedly well-deserved (in case we were not already thinking this, the letter accompanying the ticket delicately informed us of the existence of photographic proof to the contrary) but I feel the need to share the tragedy that had already befallen us this day. The police, I know, are not interested in explanations or apologies – how much do I still regret the "I'm sorry" that escaped from my mouth after a paternalistic tongue-lashing from a spiteful Evanston police officer convinced that my confused crosswalk violation revealed a latent desire to murder schoolchildren  – but friends (and antiquers) are much better at mercy and understanding than are self-important, authoritarian sadists. So I share the story with you.

About 1.5 hours out of Lugano toward Munich we faced a painful decision – continue on without passports or go home to get them and add an extra three hours to our trip. (Why on earth we would attempt a six hour driving trip in Europe without passports is another question I prefer not to think on.) After five minutes of slow and stilted driving, we came to terms with our stupidity and turned around. 

Is there anything worse than driving the same route three times in one afternoon? Is there anything more nauseating than eating chips and Carpe Diem carbonated medicinal tea drink all day?  Is there anything less conducive to driving the speed limit?

On the other hand, is there anything more satisfying than a pretzel, cheese, and a beer right before the beer garden closes? We made it to Munich in relatively good time; now we know why.

RIP, tree

I had been putting off declaring it (you know, like the perfectionist surgeon the nurses are prodding to declare the TOD but who won't, because it means so much to him, more than we can ever know) until now: Our little pine tree is dead, killed by devotion and bad decisions. Alas, thy leaves were not unchanging.

It is a special tragedy that this fair and lovely tree, verdant symbol of eternity and life, should die at my well-intentioned hand. The nurturing and cheap side of me was determined that this tree would make it to another Christmas so I gave it special, loving care. It shouldn't have happened this way.

Early on, worried that I was making the rookie's mistake of under-watering to avoid the even worse rookie's mistake of over-watering, I asked an expert in making up fake Latin names for tree species how much I should be watering it. "Feel the dirt a few inches down and if it feels dry, give it some water," he said. Huh. Easy enough.

After a few months of this, however, I noticed that I was sweeping up more and more needles. So I watered more. Who needs an expert to tell you that? But nothing I did (add more dirt, add more water, change location) could slow its transformation first into a hopeful Charlie Brown-style sapling and then later into a sad little burned out stick.

It turns out the actual COD was the half-gallon of water its roots had been sitting in for the several months during which I had upped the waterings. I figured this out only because I started to smell something wasn't right. My sheer lack of critical reasoning is somewhat disturbing, as is the fact that, so it seems, smell is my best and only useful sense.

I am getting very tired of trying to grow – but wait, this was about the tree, not about me. The tree that brought us so much joy and holiday happiness. The tree that gave the world some oxygen, just because it could. The tree that will very shortly be recycled back into the earth whence it came, to continue giving life elsewhere. Oh, Christmas tree.

Accidenti! A stroll around The Internet reveals Swiss Ms. is not actually very clever at all

Blogging is admittedly a weird phenomenon. Although I am generally a big fan of technology in theory, I find that there are certain technological things for which I have limited patience. Among these are: small home appliances, digital photos, online accounts, tv remotes, cords, camera accessories, computer updates, and music players.  Oh, and printers. What I mean by "limited patience" is that, once (or if) the extreme amount of activation energy required to start using one of these things is obtained, the working relationship established is fragile at best; it takes very little for me to stop using it and/or throw it across the room. (I think this is the definition of volatile.)  But, to the point, until I stumbled upon this special trove of additional free time in my life, blogs used to be on this list. 

I still can't say that I am sure what I am doing is of any more value than passing notes in class, but I can say that I now get the fascination with blogs. Once you start peering into other people's lives, you start seeing yourself there, if only in the most remote way.  And it's a step toward recording the cultural history that most people generally agree has been lost along the way in our official histories (the inane content notwithstanding). For as much heat as Wikipedia takes, it has done something similar, something important. But more on my fascination with the idea of Wikipedia another time.  Back to the matter at hand.  

So recently I noticed a considerable number of blogs I had come by have "adventure" somewhere in or near their title.  Which led me to search for "Swiss adventure," and to realize that this little Swiss Ms. is just one among many.  

There's the famous Swiss Miss who is a real designer I probably should have known about before I started this blog and there's the Not-So-Swiss-Miss and the Un-Swiss Miss and SwissMissNOT! (are you detecting a trend?).  I won't even go into the number of college students who have blogs about their adventures abroad (even in Lugano) or of expatriated families having every kind of adventure. (Maybe someone should write something about cultural identity and social performance in the travel writing of Americans. Hmm....)

So I'm having some blogger identity problems. One of the downsides, I suppose, to open source cultural history. Perhaps I shall crawl back into the black hole of technological ignorance whence I came. I think it's the most dignified solution.

Stranieri stupidi

An incomplete compilation of dumb things we have done (in addition to ordering a sardine pizza on our first day, which doesn’t count, because we were very tired):

1. Despite careful examination of the washer in the laundry room of Centro Cristiano, we couldn’t figure out how to open the door. We tried all the usual techniques - pulling at the corners, pushing in on it to make it spring back, putting in some money... but nothing. Every moment we stood there haplessly poking at it, we felt lamer. Eventually, when we couldn't bear it any longer, we trudged away, defeated, with our dirty laundry (completely baffling the woman who had come down at that moment to do her laundry).

2. The orange button appeared to me in a vision overnight, so I returned the next morning, certain of how to proceed. My laundering success was short-lived, however: somehow I managed to interrupt the cycle 10 minutes early. Too embarrassed to admit this to the two women standing nearby (or to myself), I piled the clothes into a big soggy heap and bear-hugged them all the way up three flights of stairs. (I changed my clothes before I went out to discreetly wipe up the trail of drips.)

3. When the checker told us we forgot to get the sticker for the produce we wanted to purchase, we just looked dumbly back at her, literally until she went and got the sticker for us. (We then went home and learned how to say “you’re very nice” for future such occasions of brain malfunction.)

4. On our first visit to IKEA, we spent more than a few minutes venting about what a dumb, expensive country Switzerland was because the shopping cart cost 2 CHF to use. On the second visit we started counting up how much money we'd be spending on SHOPPING CARTS in two years.  Then we saw someone return her cart and get her 2 CHF back.

5. Walking back from the grocery store one day, someone in a car stopped to ask us for directions. We were both simultaneously excited that someone was addressing us directly, and dissapointed, knowing we had no way to help. Swiss Mr. paused for a moment, then responded in Italian (I quote): “Excuse me, I don’t speak Italian, thank you.”