Swissnotes--- for the under-motivated

So I went and moved to Switzerland. I am still getting over that one; every other time I’ve moved abroad (and there have been three of them) I’ve been moving to Germany. Now I speak German quite well and am so used to both the language and the culture that I don’t notice if I ask what time someone wants to stand up in the morning, bring my shopping bags with me and wait at red lights at empty intersections in the middle of the night without thinking twice. (But before I let you, dear reader, go on thinking I have nothing left to learn in German—which I may, out of hubris, occasionally claim—let me offer the following sentence uttered to explain that my friend had previously helped me move before as evidence that I am not and should not be mistaken for a native speaker: ,,Er hat mich schon mal umgezogen.” The verb ,umziehen’ refers to moving—and also to changing one’s clothes. Unfortunately, my usage of the verb points exclusively to the second meaning, implying that my friend has changed my clothes for me before.)

Here I am in a new country with a new bureaucracy, new rules and a new language with which I am not entirely familiar. I had long forgotten the days when I didn’t understand everything and where my verbal and written output was on intellectual par with your average four-year-old, except with less eloquence. It’s hard to get much beyond “I want, I need, I am, I won’t!” particularly as everyone here seems to speak English perfectly (and everything else too). Polyglots, I hate you all.

They say the bureaucracy here is typically Swiss—in that everything has to be done properly and orderly and with three copies to all relevant offices—and typically francophone, in that no one has any idea whatsoever how things are supposed to be done. Acquiring a residence permit for Switzerland is an exercise in patience, persistence and tenacity. I can only imagine what it’s like for those people who speak no French whatsoever….