Post 32 – Stuff That’s Weird About Living In Switzerland

All the sandwich ham in the supermarkets is asparagus flavoured. Why why why?

The milk all tastes like cheese.

Barmen give out free beer,

The toilet roll provided at work is soft and comfortable.

Your cleaner promises she’s been round to clean your flat but it looks exactly the same when you come home as it did when you left.

Zebra crossings appear to sometimes give right of way to the pedestrian and sometimes to the car, with no indication of which is which, hence why I cross with extreme caution these days.

The buses are electric, and run on overhead electrical cables like dodgem cars. So what happens if someone double parks and the bus has to swerve around them, that’s what I want to know.

The Chinese sells fucking pig-brain.

When you order a steak, it comes with a side serving of Greek yoghurt. Eh?

If you go to the crapper in a pub or restaurant, you get disinfectant wipes to clean the seat with before you use it. Which is nice actually. They should do that in Britain.

There are entire aisles in supermarkets dedicated to ice-tea. You can even get Volvic and Evian ice tea,

They’re polite, patient and helpful toward foreigners who are struggling with the language. Think that would happen in your local supermarket?

Virtually every menu in every restaurant is built around meat. Not a place for vegetarians. In fact I’ve yet to even see a vegetarian option on a menu.

The first night I got to Geneva, the first bar we went to was the tiny little hotel bar with the football and free beer, and literally the first person I saw when I walked through the door was a guy I used to work with in Aberdeen.

The black bin bags are the same size as carrier bags.

There are fucking pharmacies on every single street corner. And a few in between the corners as well. There are pharmacies across the road from other pharmacies. There are pharmacies next door to other pharmacies. The Swiss must be either the sickest, or the healthies race on the planet. I can’t decide which.

I haven’t done a single smelly fart since I got here. Perhaps the clean mountain air overpowers it, compared to the smog of Aberdeen.

Song currently stuck in my head – “No Cigar” by Millencollin.
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