American life. The Frau tries to explain it.

Grüezi, people. It’s been awhile. So for that, here's a big American "sorry."

The Frau has been deep into her American life lately, and is still trying to make sense of it all, since not a lot of things make sense in America right now. The exciting news is that the manuscript for American Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known, which is the sequel to Swiss Life, is complete and is on its way to becoming a book. It details a lot of things The Frau wishes she had known about American life after Switzerland. In particular, she tries to answer these questions in the book:

Why does everyone in America act so outwardly happy even though we account for two-thirds of the global market for antidepressants?

Why does an announcer tell The Frau to visit Aisle 7 for laxatives every time she goes to the drug store to buy a greeting card?

Why are there no children at the playground, even in a city of 8.2 million?

Why, when The Frau looks for work-life balance, does she find frustration instead?

Why does American healthcare put profits first and people last—and why do so many Americans still vote for people who want to benefit corporations over people?

Why is The Frau treated better as a corporation than she was as a sole proprietor?

And most importantly:

Why, in today’s America, do 99 percent of us feel foreign and isolated in one way or another?

And finally:

Can the United States ever be home again?

What questions do you want answered about American life?

So American. So Swiss.

Yodelers. Sorry for the gigantic Pause.

Uh, will you listen to The Frau? She is SO American now, starting every sentence with “Sorry.”

Sorry. The Frau has been busy.

Oh, busy too? How American of her.

The Frau threw a slightly lighter stone...

Ahh. The Frau hears herself being so American and she can’t stop it anymore. Oh well. Despite being oh-so-American now after almost, yes, three years back in the U.S., The Frau is still up to her Swiss ways too. Earlier earlier this month she was running around Switzerland doing research for a couple of projects, including a piece about a very special festival in Interlaken, which ran in the Financial Times a week ago.

The big news (if you don’t have time to read the FT piece) is that The Frau threw a big boulder at a Swiss festival called Unspunnen. This festival, held only every 12 years in Interlaken, was amazing because it was the first festival that really allowed anyone—yes, even tourists like The Frau—to not only witness Swissness, but to participate in Swissness.

Because here’s the thing—watch something at a festival and you might take a picture. Participate in something at a festival and you’ll tell a story about it instead.

Thus, the boulder throwing. Throwing a gigantic stone is one of three traditional Swiss sports (along with Hornussen and wrestling) so at least now The Frau has a claim to Swiss sporting fame. While she didn’t volunteer to throw the 184-pound boulder (she could have though, you know, Swiss personal responsibility and all) she did throw a 30-pound stone—wearing sandals, no less.

During her trip to Switzerland she also biked the Albula Pass (you must do this next year, Yodelers, if you haven’t—the SlowUp makes it easy by closing the road), hung out in St. Gallen, Appenzell, and Schaffhausen—you know for research purposes, and saw a few friends too.

It’s still hard for her to come home to America after Switzerland, at least the America that’s going on these days. But someone has to try to make it a better place, and The Frau continues to try, this year by taking a leadership role with her local citizen’s council.

And in the meantime, there’s book number three to finish, all about American life after Switzerland—in other words—American Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known. And boy are there a lot of things The Frau wishes she had known about her own country. Way more than 30, but now the fun part begins of choosing exactly which 30 to highlight. Stay tuned.

And if you haven’t check out book number two: 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local—it’s filled with un-touristy ideas for the upcoming fall and winter. And it's in black and white now too. 

Caught Between American and Swiss Christmas Traditions

Happy Holidays, Yodelers.

Long time no see.

That is The Frau’s fault, and since she’s in the U.S., allow her to apologize with a big, fat American “sorry.”

No more bringing the Christmas tree
home on a public bus for The Frau. Sad.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, but it seems like every time The Frau sits down to write a blog post, she's either distracted by election woes or what she writes turns into an essay she wants to send to a publication. (Therefore, she cannot post it here as publications will rarely re-publish posts from personal blogs. Sigh.)

So instead, The Frau will share a holiday post turned essay, which was published yesterday by the Washington Post. It’s called Creating new Christmas traditions, one overly commercialized experience at a time and it’s about what to do when you no longer have your American childhood holiday tradition and you no longer have your Swiss holiday tradition (bring your Christmas tree home from Jumbo on a Swiss public bus) and you are caught in that strange place of non-tradition. Can anyone relate?

In other news, The Frau is hard at work on her next Swiss-related book, which will be out next May. Part travel guide, part cultural guide, it's a book that aims to make even the most foreign of us who gave up our Swiss C-permits for a little Trumpland maintain a little Swissness (and sanity). Stay tuned.

In the meantime, you might enjoy this ultimate Swiss Gift Guide, which The Frau previously created for any of you who aren’t quite Swiss enough to have all of your shopping done yet.

Frohe Weihnachten, mitenand.

Switzerland (and almost any land) is Better for Working Parents

Do working parents have it better abroad than in the United States?

Most experiences of working parents abroad appear to say yes.

About a month ago, The Frau wrote this piece for the Wall Street Journal Expat section: Working in Switzerland—What’s an Expat Woman to Expect?

Now back in the U.S. and witnessing the realities of
working American parents, The Frau is ever grateful that her
daughter was born abroad.

In case you want the short answer—an American woman can expect better work-life balance and extremely more supportive policies when working in Switzerland, despite a sometimes backwards mindset that a woman’s place is still in the home.

Stories of working parental woes are all over the American press lately.

Last week, a powerful New York Times opinion piece from writer Pamela Druckerman, The Perpetual Panic of American Parenthood, agrees that American parents have it best working elsewhere. The subhead: “Make our country great, by making it a bit more like the rest of the world,” pretty much sums up The Frau's feelings exactly.

Says Ms. Druckerman on leaving the U.S. for Paris, “I gradually understood why European mothers aren’t in perpetual panic about their work-life balance, and don’t write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them, and doing it competently."

Another great quote from her piece was from writer Ms. Partanen, who, in her book, The Nordic Theory of Everything, says, “While Nordic citizens often don’t realize how good they have it, Americans seem not to realize how terribly they are being treated.”

That’s what really confounds The Frau. The great majority of Americans she talks to have no idea how bad they have it. No idea. They think the stress of trying to work and parent with no legalized parental leave, no legalized vacation time, and no legalized sick time is their fault.

Blaming the individual for what’s wrong instead of looking beyond to greater causes is sadly an American thing. We're very individual and we like to blame the individual too. We need to stop.

Even when moms have access to parental leave in the U.S., they face hassles to get it. On the cover of the Chicago Tribune’s Life+Style section last Sunday was an article about how insurance paperwork issues interfere when new mothers just want to nurture their babies.

Yes, the American system is broken. And The Frau plans to keep writing about it (global outlook included) until it is fixed.

Living in Switzerland: It Changes Your Respect for Your Personality

One of the first things The Frau noticed upon moving to Switzerland was how quiet the Swiss were. They were quiet on public transport. In the office. And even on the streets.

Once, The Frau and an American friend even got yelled at for being “too loud” while talking with one another at a tram stop in Zurich—even though they were only talking in normal American voices.

Quiet, peaceful Switzerland.
A great place for American introverts.

It took awhile for The Frau to realize this, but a quiet and reserved culture like Switzerland does something really amazing for quiet and reserved people: it allows them to be themselves—especially in the workplace.

Those who live or have lived in “loud” America might understand this to a larger degree. Because if you’re an introvert in America, you are told from a young age that something is wrong with you. Never mind that about 50% of the population is just like you. Quiet is taught to be loud in America. Because in the U.S., loud is rewarded in both work and life.

So at any time, there are a lot of introverts pretending to be extroverts in America. The Frau used to be one of them. But after moving back to the U.S. after living in Switzerland, The Frau learned that her personality should be respected too. So now, as she recently wrote about for Salon.com, she is an unapologetic introvert.

Has living in Switzerland (or another culture) made you realize something good about your personality?