Stage Two Conquered

At last, I can write about my victory over "Stage Two"

Stage two? You don't know about stage two? Ok, let me take a few steps back and explain.

Stage Two
A co-worker, who re-located from South Africa shared me her relocation document, which seemed more thorough than the one I had gotten. Among many of the nuggets of very useful information, it described the four stages of ex-pats in relocating to a foreign country. Stage one can be summed up as "Oh this is great! Look at this cow-bell! It's so cute and Swiss!" The novelty of the banal excites you. The activity of relocating keeps you busy. The charm of novelty keeps you entertained.

Stage two happens after that novelty wears off. It can simply be described as the homesick phase. The psychology is a little more complex than just "homesickness." What once would inspire fascination for what the locals would find to be banal no longer appear fascinating or unique. The dialog of "Look at the bus fare machine! It has German and French on it! That's so cool! I love Switzerland" -- that dialog has gone.

You start to miss home. You realize the closest Taco Bell is in Iceland. You didn't particularly like Taco Bell in the US, and only had it maybe twice a year. You made fun of it every opportunity you had. But now you miss it. And there is no hope of satiating your desire until you go back to the US.

My Personal "stage two"...
Well it might be incredibly clear to you! It was right around that time that I didn't write any blogs. Right after the Geneva trip, and it abated about a week or so before the Japan trip, not finally being passed until I was in Japan. The nadir of my "stage-two-ness" was on October 6th, some bad news about the financing of my house back in Virginia came up. I missed Taco Bell terribly; finding that there were no Taco Bells anywhere in Europe. (How is this for depressing? Type Taco Bell Bern into Google and this blog comes up in the first page of hits).

To top off my disenfranchisement with Switzerland: I was very frustrated with the SGBern flying club. Not the lack of equipment, or inability to fly, but the fact that I felt absolutely isolated and alone with the club. This is not the fault of anybody in the club. I like them all. I think it's a great club. But it's not the club I left in Virginia. I had deep personal relationships with so many people in Skyline Soaring. I left them all behind. I was nearly regarded as the celebrity that I deserve in SGBern. Back home, I could fly up and down the valley with comfort and ease. I could join in on any conversation, and my opinion was valued. I left all that behind by coming to Switzerland. This was when the gravity of all these insights set in.

October 6th was the SGBern "Bautag" The fall clean-up that is done to prepare all the gliders for the winter season. Flying season pretty much ends in October, and the weather in Bern doesn't really allow for any flying. I felt rather isolated on that day, when I rediscover the realization that I don't understand a freaking word that these people are saying.

We were at the lunch table after doing the day's worth of work. I sat with the younger crowd. To my right, sat Ronnie, who lives in Schmitten. To my left, Christoph, who lives in Bern, and works as an architect. I occasionally talked to Ronnie, or to Christoph. In Hoch Deutsch with Ronnie, or English with Christoph. In one of those pauses with my chatting to Ronnie or Christoph, the tide quickly turned. The conversation suddenly and immediately turned political. In a moment, the conversation immediately occupied the entire table into a heated political debate -- in BärnDütsch.

Dammit! My comprehension of what was going on immediately went from 95% to 3%. They didn't mean to do it. They did not mean to exclude me. They did not want me to feel unwelcome. But it happened, they did and I was. That stupid language barrier has cast me out AGAIN. As I sat there at the table, a heated argument about SVP and Blocher, to me, it felt like I was in the corner, alone. The heated debate lasted 30 minutes, but it felt like hours. As I sat alone in my thoughts, I reviewed my decision to come here. I can't believe I left all my great friends in Virginia for this.

I can't believe I put myself in a place where people don't find me amusing, funny, smart, or knowledgeable. What the hell was I thinking? Why did I move from a nice big single family house in Virginia, to an over-crowded apartment around neighbors who don't like me and can't communicate with me? Why did I leave my beautiful glider, wonderful friends, easy food for this? Dammit! I am suffering the punishment of solitary confinement while in a crowd.

This was it. This was my moment of "Ex-Pat stage two nadir."

I am literally fighting back the tears as I write this. This period here in Switzerland really, really sucked. I didn't express my depression to anybody. (It's a typical guy thing). As I sat isolated at the table in a sea of unfamiliar phonemes, I planned my correction strategy. Just how exactly can I fix this?

1. Learn the Swiss German dialect of Bern (BärnDütsch).
2. Find some other distractions to occupy myself during the winter months. (R/C helicopter) (I'll get into the "Ghetto Copter" later).
   
3. Do more touristy-things.
   
4. Try not to work too much, as that will certainly depress me even more.
   

Nah. None of these things worked. The forces of work conspired to make me work many long days at the office. During this period, I couldn't spend much time with the family. time -- pretty much all of October -- I just sulked around. I don't even particularly remember that month very well. "I effin' hate this place." "WTH was I thinking?"

The opportunity to have a business trip to Japan came along. I took it. I love Tokyo. This will help, I'm sure. The rest of the family was deep in stage two, as well. (Joey excluded). I need this trip to Japan for ME.

American Humor in Tokyo
As I mentioned in the previous issue, the time in Japan was painfully busy. We worked 11 or 12 hour days every day. It was thankless, hard, tiring work. We often retired to our hotel rooms to immediately sleep.

To break the monotony of the working with computers, we had a few songs and subjects of humor which kept re-surfacing.

An oft-repeated subject was the constant re-playing of the theme song from movie "Team America: World Police" The song is poking fun at American patriotism. Sorry if the dialog from the song is not safe for work: "America! Fuck Yeah!" At the end of the song, they shout out things that you, as an American, should be proud of. The main singer shouts out the word of the patriotic subject, the responding singer responds with "Fuck Yeah!" Here are the subjects you should be proud of as an American, (as the song goes) (Original Lyrics)

• McDonalds
• Wal-Mart
• The Gap
• Baseball
• NFL
• Rock and roll
• The Internet,
• Slavery (What the hell?)

They take a breath, and go on to the next list, the range of subjects getting ever more questionable: But it's part of the humor.

• Starbucks
• Disney world
• Porno
• Valium
• Reeboks
• Fake Tits
• Sushi
• Taco Bell
• Rodeos
• Bed bath and beyond (in this case, the responder is rather confused and gives the response in a whisper)

Part three, ever more confusing as to why an American would be proud of these things. But they are American, especially the last two:

• Liberty
• White Slips
• The Alamo
• Band-aids
• Las Vegas
• Christmas
• Immigrants
• Popeye
• Democrats
• Republicans (confused response, they have a hard time mustering the response lyric)
• Sportsmanship
• Books

You may now be wondering why I transformed my PG-rated Blog into a tarpit of "Not Safe For Work" (NSFW) dialog. It is a rather strange, circuitous path toward delivering me from the jaws of "stage-two-ness." I think the song really did a great job of shouting the things I miss about the US in the first stanza, and then poked fun at some American things that we shouldn't be proud of (slavery, fake tits, etc), to the things I really don't miss from the US (Republicans, Bed Bath and Beyond).

Laughing seems to be a great way to get out of a funk. Laughing at yourself seems an equally valid path. I am pretty sure that nobody else will find this same path of deliverance from stage two to stage three. But this one was mine. Thank you, Trey Parker.

I think this song was more a catalyst than the actual concept which moved me on. The good laugh just gave me the kick I needed. In no time, after about ten days in Japan, I started to get homesick for Switzerland and not homesick for America.

Instead of missing Taco Bell, I started to miss the cute college girls on the train ride every morning (there seem to be a lot of those), the excellent lunch at the cafeteria next to the office, the excellent trains, the liberty of the "GA", seeing sheep, cows, reindeer on the train ride to work, and maybe the cute way the Swiss girls say "genau," oftentimes the only word I can understand when I eavesdrop.

Jake's Stage Two
"I hate it here in Switzerland." That is Jake's sluggish muttering expression, sighed with depressed resignation. This is mumbled precisely at the same time every morning and every evening. He chants as if it were a prayer, or a daily affirmation, or a mantra. "You asked me if I wanted to come here, I said 'no', and you still brought me here anyway."

Maybe there's something we can do?

I had a meeting with his home-room teacher at school, who had some suggestions on how to get him more acclimated. Get him involved. Get him some friends. Schedule other kids to come over. We live on the wrong side of Bern; it seems to us that all of the ex-pats live in the eastern side of town, closer to Muri, and closer to school in Gümligen. We got Jake involved in the basketball activity after school, and he is certainly starting to enjoy it, and best of all: He's becoming a better player!

There are a few girls at school he's got an interest in, and there are reportedly a few girls interested in him, too! When my visiting mother was waiting for Jake to get out of class one day, she patiently waited in the hallway with young Joey. Two girls came by and said, "Oh look at that kid, he's so CUTE!"

"Yeah", the other remarked. "That's Joey. He's Jake's little brother. He IS cute. Just like his older brother!" No word on who actually said this.

None of this matters. Jake seems to continually express his misery with the aforementioned mantra. He could have had a really wonderful time doing something incredibly cool and neat. To wrap up the day, he reverts to the "I hate Switzerland" mantra. We've been here 5 months now. He should be over this. I was done with stage two right a week or so before the Japan trip.

We recently bought all the kids a pair of skates, (and dusted off my old hokey skates from the closet) and took them to Ka-We-De in Bern. Jake really enjoyed skating, and may have even smiled once or twice. Cecilia has taken to skating like a natural. Joshie manages to stay upright long enough, but doesn't actually skate as much as walk on ice with skates on. Joey cries each time he gets on the ice. It is a good thing we didn't actually buy skates for him. The first night back on the ice, and I realized the next morning that it had been more than 10 years since on skates. I ached in places that I forgot I had muscles. Or maybe I didn't have muscles there, which is why it ached there. (Mostly in the hip abductor muscles)

Favorite Songs

My new favorite song, which is being played in this office over and over again:

Andrew Thompson (the singer) doesn't trust robots. You shouldn't either. Listen to this at least twice, and it will be stuck in your head. I laugh every time I watch this. Maybe this will brighten your day, too.


This next guy, DJ Bobo, is Swiss, and made this song in 2002; which turned out to be too popular in South America. Unfortunately (or thankfully, depending on your point of view), this never made it to the United States. I saw an interview with this DJ yesterday in one of the gratis Swiss newspapers I find on the train, ".ch" (That's pronounced as punkt tsee hah). I enjoy following this guys career in the 'cultural train wreck' sort of way. The kids are starting to sing it at home.
DJ Bobo's Chihuahua



His latest track, "Vampires Alive"... all I can muster to say is, "Ugh."

(Check out the wikipedia article about him. The Cantonese version of Chihuahua is quite amusing, too!)

Japan Trip

I recently came back from Japan. What was supposed to start off as a 12 day trip turned into a 17 day trip, as some expected equipment did not arrive in time.

Here's my photo album:


...And a map of where I worked and stayed:


View Larger Map


Highlights of the Trip:

Unfortunately, I worked nearly the whole time. 16 of the 17 days were spent in that data center, and there was very little time to goof off. Which is a shame that I spent so much time flying over to that country from Switzerland, only to spend the whole time in the data center.

But here are some cool things that I managed to squeak out, despite the 70 hour work weeks:

Roppongi
Roppongi is the place where all the US Navy sailors and marines go, when on shore leave. This means that the businesses of the area cater to the foreign interests especially. There are many english speaking establishments there. There are also some street corners that are very shady. The four of us went to go find a place to get a drink, and we ran the gauntlet.

There is one street in Roppongi that could best be described as "running the gauntlet." Many of the establishments, in order to get you into their bar, will have men on the street corner, asking you to come to the club. They are very pushy, and usually don't take no for an answer. They are usually inviting you to "Gentlemen's clubs" or strip clubs, but occasionally, they invite you to just regular bars.

After walking 5 meters and telling 7 or 8 of these guys to buzz off, I pulled the "Quebeqois Act," only I don't know French, so I had to substitue with German, instead. What I call the "Quebeqois Act" is when you act like you don't speak English, but you actually do. I walked the street, in German, "No, I don't speak English. Only German. Go away" I thought I had figured out how to get rid of them. Suddenly, this Nigerian with PERFECT German called me on my bluff, inviting me to his club. You can't win here.

Toy Park
I did manage to visit the Toy Park in Ginza. It took me a few tries to find it again, and I did do a lot of extra walking in Ginza. I don't mind getting lost. Toy Park is a store that has lots of cool Japanese toys -- four floors of neat Japanese toys you can't find in the US or Switzerland. I bought ¥20,000 worth of toys, including some 3-D puzzles for Jake, two train sets for Joey, a transformer of some sort for Joshie, and a Kimono for Cecilia.

エアロフライテックシリーズ の Ｑスカイ
(AeroTech Series Q-Sky)

Toys for me? Oh heck ya. I've recently gotten into small remote controlled aircraft. (I will write about the "Ghetto-Copter" in another issue) While at the Toy Park, I bought a nice little remote controlled airplane that can be flown indoors. The plane is made of Styrofoam and weighs not much more than a few pieces of paper. Aerotech's Q-sky. Here's a commercial on YouTube.

Of course, the instructions are written for Japanese, by Japanese. And they are hilarious. Here is the instruction page. These are the actual instructions that came in the box -- really, I'm not making this up. Click on it so you can see the images up close. Since you don't know Japanese, I will translate the captions for you below.



Let's go through the instructions: starting with block one:

1. Don't wear the airplane as a necklace


2. Don't put the controller between your legs, you never know when it's going to blow up and damage your dangling bits.
   
3. Don't use it as a karate chopping block. Nobody will be impressed.
   
4. Dogs are not allowed to fly remote control airplanes.
   
5. If you score a touchdown, don't spike the plane.
   
6. Magicians are not allowed to use their special powers to influence the flight.
   
7. Do not pick your nose while flying the plane with one hand. We are not impressed by your ability to multitask.
   
8. Don't shout out your window telling your neighbors about your plane. They probably won't be as impressed as you think they will be.
   

Return Trip
On the way back, I was blessed with mostly clear weather over Siberia. Yes, Russia is big. The trip from Tokyo to Zurich is a 12 hour plane ride. The flight begins with a direct north route, about 45 minutes going over the Japan Sea, and reaching the Russian coastline. The next 9 hours are flying over Russian territory. The most amazing thing is that I saw absolutely no signs of civilization until Vazhki (sp?).

For a long time, the world record for a glider flight was a ridge flight, starting from Pennsylvania, down to Tennessee, and back up. Relatively recently, this long distance glider flight record was broken in Argentina, in 2003. I have wondered if the Ural mountains would serve as a good opportunity to break that record in Argentina. With the length of the Urals, and the long daylight of the summer months, it might actually be possible:

This flight over Russia gave me the opportunity to see the Urals from altitude to let my imagination wander. It appears that the urals are very rocky to the north, and more smoothed out to the south. There appears to be a significant gap between this rocky northern part, and the smoothed out shorter southern part. Also, I noticed that there is no prepared terrain anywhere nearby. If you land out, you are landing out in the trees, maybe 1000 km from the nearest rescue team. Hmm. Maybe somebody else can attempt that record.

Here's a rough estimate of my flight back over Russia. I should have taken some pictures, because I will not likely ever be able to see this view again. Here's a map of what I'm talking about. The orange line is the proposed record-breaking flight, and the blue was the flight path my jet liner took. The blue marker shows where the Ural mountains break, and the pink-ish marker shows the first signs of civilization that I saw along the trip.


View Larger Map

American Market, Geneva

"You always want most what you can't have."

It's not that I especially like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. I don't even like birthday cakes made from cake mix. I only steal a few of the Pepperridge Farm Goldfish when the kids are already eating them. I only occasionally like Taco Bell. It is a rare event for me to go to KFC.

But now that this country doesn't offer these things, I sure do crave them. The children have been begging for Cheerios nearly every morning. Cecilia's favorite meal if "Macaroni Soup", which is simply Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with too much milk. Young Joseph asks for goldfish, and is not satisfied with the goldfish shaped pretzels that we get from the local Migros.

When complaining about these things that we missed, a co-worker asked why we don't just go to "the American Market" to satisfy these cravings.

"American Market?" I ask excitedly. I am familiar with the British markets; there is one not very far from my old house in South Riding, just west on Route 50. They are these stores where homesick British can get their "crackers" or other weird things that they can't find in the US. So it would seem that there is enough of a market in Switzerland to support two stores dedicated to these niche foods.

Stacy packed an overnight luggage bag with enough clothes for an overnight stay. We found a hotel in Geneva right next to the train station, with some incredible views of the very beautiful city. A short 2 hour ride on the train, and we were in Geneva. Also brought along for the trip were two empty rolling luggage bags. This is where we would collect the spoils.

First things first. It's Saturday, and we need to get to this store before it closes. Touring and doing touristey things will all be done later. This has to be done NOW. We made the short walk to the American Market about 2 blocks from our hotel. It is not your average grocery store, but a small shop, two levels, jam-packed with American goodness. There were many things that we were craving, that we were happy to find. Many things that we did not expect to find, and many things that we never would have thought of, that Americans might also want.

You might find it strange to know that Switzerland seems to lack these basic necessities of life. How they manage to get along without Stove-Top Stuffing, I don't know. How they get along without cake mixes must mean that they bake their cakes from scratch, or go to the store to buy birthday cakes, or do not celebrate birthdays at all in a fashion that we're used to. How they enjoy their hot dogs without sweet relish boggles my mind. And to think that the only breakfast cereals that they can serve kids are from Kellogg's (and off-brands too), also escapes me. Where's the General Mills Cereals in this country? Oreo double-stuff? How can watching TV be fully enjoyed without these things?

This store was too small for your typical shopping cart to be wheeled around. Instead, there were hand-baskets. We filled five of them. When it came time to time to pay, it averaged 100 Francs per basket. Ouch. Importing these things ourselves has proven to be almost as expensive, once it got through customs. So I can understand the price.

So you might be wondering about some of the things that don't exist in Switzerland, outside of the American Market, aren't you? Instead of making a boring list, I'll just give you a picture of the shelves, so you can get a quick idea of our wonderful American Junky food that the Swiss manage to live without:



About 500 CHF later, and two full-sized luggage bags packed to the brim with goodies, strange looks from the locals, one happy store owner -- we rolled out of the store, having fulfilled our trip's main goal. The secondary goal, of course, was to get some sightseeing done in Geneva.

We essentially re-traced my steps from my unplanned day in Geneva from two weeks prior. Here's a gallery of the pictures we took in Geneva and Lac Leman (Lake Geneva)
[ Gallery of photos ]


Food and Language Barriers
We had a very expensive dinner that evening. In case you are not aware, these children are incredibly hard to feed. Somehow, we really messed up in the kids' upbringing, and they have an extremely irritating tendency to eat only 5 or 6 things. Joshie used to be quite good at eating new foods until he saw Cecilia's pickiness, and imitated that. Joey used to be quite good at eating strange foods, too; but soon copied his older siblings. Jake is starting to come around and eat new foods, thankfully. I had so many food allergies as a kid, that being picky meant not eating. Being picky for no reason escapes my imagination.

So to get back to the expensive dinner, we finally found a restaurant on the Lake that we thought the kids MIGHT be able to eat something. Of course, none of us speak French, so there's a language barrier. Reading French is much easier than speaking it. Often the French words look enough like the English words that we would never use, but still understandable. The waiter looked on patiently, as we tried to communicate.
"Do you speak English?"
"No."
"¿Hablas español?"
"No."
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
"No."
"日本語を話すか。" Yes, I actually said that. That's Japanese, by the way.
"No." A response of simultaneous confusion and surprise.

This is one of the most international cities in the world. A full quarter of the population did not come from France or Switzerland. I can't believe this. OK, French it is.
What comes next is my usual fare in French. When I don't know the French word, which is always, I resort to my personal approach to communicating with non-Anglophones. Most Americans use the method of, "If they don't understand you, speak English slower and louder." My technique is much more advanced. I point and grunt. Thankfully we had a menu for me to point at, and I came up with the grunting noises which were probably intelligible, so long as they were French-sounding grunts.

After finishing the three pizza dinner (which was quite good), we decided it was time to head back to the Hotel. We asked the waiter at the door for directions to the bus. It was a suitable walk home on foot, but the kids were tired, and a bus might do us better. I asked the waiter, one word, in English. He didn't know English, but I suspected the one word question would work.

"Bus?" (Pronounced with an American Accent) IPA: /ˈbɐs/
"Eh?" A shrug of confusion.
OK, let's try German. "Bus?" (Pronounced with a German accent, the "u" sounds like oo in 'fool' IPA: [bys]
"Eh?" Another shrug of confusion.
Hmm. Think of Inspector Clouseau, with a suitably outrageous French accent. How would he say "Bus?"
"Bus?" (This time with the outrageous Inspector Clouseau French accent, /bys/ , Kind of like there's one long vowel in "Boeus", hard to spell in English, because that vowel does not exist in English.)
"Oh! Le Bus!" He got it. You've got to be kidding me.

I will never figure out this language.

He gave us directions, in French. Slowly and loudly with many hand gestures. He suggested that it is much easier to walk, 5 minutes on foot.

Exploring Geneva
The next day, we bypassed the 40 CHF per person breakfast in the hotel (with six people, that would be awfully expensive for croissant and toast), and stocked up on the cheap croissants at the train station. We sat at the boat dock, looking at the water birds, the boats, and the scenery. Life's not that bad.

The kids enjoyed chasing the pigeons, Joey would run full speed at the pigeons and shriek with joy, the annoyed pigeons would just fly away. We walked to the Geneva Sundial, but it was too cloudy to see any shadows fall on it. We grabbed an electric train trolley up and down the lake's banks, with a guided tour of the sights of Geneva. We found a water fountain; Jake looked at it suspiciously.

"You're actually drinking that?" he asked me, as I filled a water bottle with the water from the fountain.
"Yes, it's drinkable water"
Suspiciously, Jake asked, "How do you know that's OK to drink?"
"It says right here on the sign" I pointed to a sign that said 'Eau Potable'
"That's French, how do you know that says it's OK to drink? "
Frustrated, "Eau means water. Potable means drinkable."
"But how do you know 'pot-able' means you can drink it? You don't know French"
"Dude! Potable means 'You can Drink it' in ENGLISH"
"Oh". Still suspicious. A Canadian looked on with amusement, and confirmed my translations to Jake.

Coolest Park Ever
We came across the Cheetah Beach in Geneva, which would never exist in the sue-happy United States. Dear lawyers who read this page: "You Make America Suck." Decades of ambulance chasing, get a papercut, I-have-to-sue mentality has made cool places for kids to play an impossibility. Don't know why I'm ranting? Because you haven't seen this park:

This is a park called "Cheetah-Babyplage", a very wonderful park including many swings, and a beach on Lake Geneva. The swings are all that has many recycled bicycle tires. The kids spent at least two hours swinging around. It was truly wonderful.