Why the Swiss don't smile and the Americans do

The Frau’s American experiment is teaching her a lot about the Swiss.

Namely, why the Swiss are like they are.

To understand this, she has been studying Americans for the last three weeks.

Americans are very effervescent in public. Perfect strangers bubble over with smiles and life stories. And then they disappear into their big cars and their big houses, lost forever to the person they just met. They don’t walk anywhere. Two steps into the car. Two steps into the grocery store and two steps back into the car to go through…the Starbucks drive-through. Or the ATM drive-through. Or the library book drop off drive-through. Therefore, Americans dress as if they aren’t going to see anyone for more than a few seconds and they are generally pleased to talk to anyone they see.

By contrast, most Swiss live in small apartments in buildings with many other people. They walk down pedestrian streets. They ride public transport. They go into coffee shops and stay two hours. They go into banks. They live a public life. So they dress like they’re going to be in public for a while. In other words, compared to Americans, they look really nice because they are on public display. But with all of this public life in Switzerland, The Frau is really beginning to understand why the Swiss keep to themselves. If they smiled at everyone they saw in a day, their faces would hurt. If they bubbled over with enthusiasm every time they saw a neighbor, it would be over the top.

All of this also explains why people in New York City might not be as friendly as people in a small US town. They can’t be. They would go crazy because there are too many people around to be nice too.

The Frau’s conclusion? The more life one leads in public, the less friendly one will act towards the public. Any yodelers agree or care to disagree?

Drive Crazy in Switzerland

For a country with such high fines for driving under the influence or speeding (one million franc speeding fine, anyone?), The Frau finds crazydrive.ch quite the hilarious name for a Swiss driving school. Especially since the school proudly drives around Baden with the "CrazyDrive" name on their car. Another reason to hire an English copywriter in Switzerland and another reason not to have a car.

3 Ways You Know You're in Switzerland

You know you're in Switzerland when...


You're landing at the country's largest airport and this is what you see...

Road delays are due more to cows than construction...

And you are always reminded that you better be punctual. Even on a bike ride.

How do you know you're in Switzerland?

The search for the long lost cup holder

If you're an American and you rent cars in places other than North America, chances are you'll have this experience:

You buy a soda at a grocery store or gas station. You get in the car, open it, start to drink it, and then look for where to set it down so you can get on your way. You try setting it in this place and that and finally come to the conclusion that the car is missing one important thing: a cup holder.

It's taken me five years of living in Europe but I now know to not expect a cup holder in my car. A cup holder is an American thing.

I had never considered this before. But when you think about it, what self-respecting European drinks on the run? No, better to spend 5 Euros on one soda or coffee and enjoy it for a few hours at a cafe.

But the cup holder phenomenon goes beyond cars. Take baby strollers. In the U.S., you can get a baby stroller complete with, you guessed it, a cup holder. European strollers, on the other hand, have places for shopping bags instead.

Have you ever searched for a cup holder and come up empty?

When in France...

don't run over their favorite food.

The Cost of Driving in France

Anyone doing a road trip in Europe knows that gas prices are sky-high. For the equivalent of a gallon of gas, one will pay between $6.40 and $7.92 this summer in France. To fill up our little Ford Focus cost an average of 80 EUR ($115) for an entire tank of gas. Can you imagine the outrage if Americans had to pay this much to drive in the U.S.? (And as a side note, this is the one area where Switzerland actually looks cheap. Gas in Switzerland is about $5.88 a gallon. What a deal!)

The other thing the French get you on are the toll roads. To drive from Geneva, Switzerland to Marseille, France on the highway for example, will cost you about 50 EUR ($70) in tolls. I have to hand it to the French though. They're really putting your toll money to work. The one accident we saw only cost us two minutes of time and the French had vans complete with flashing accident signs and also an official "accident woman" waving a red flag in front of the flashing vans in case all of those florescent lights weren't enough.

So you won't waste time due to accidents on French toll roads, but you will waste time at toll booths, spending 20 minutes in line for the honor of paying your 20 Euros for an hour of driving time. These booths are terribly slow, like most things French, and don't always function correctly. One booth we sat in line for rejected all coins put in it, and this caused much strife among the French, some of who were driving horizontally across the highway "parking lot" to find a better functioning booth. It was a mess.

The third way driving is costly in France is because of crazy ratings that make certain little cities (Gordes, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, Roussillon) believe they are worthy of a big parking charge. The French like to rate their cities with nicknames like "One of the most beautiful" or with flowers instead of stars. A French city with a 4-flower rating will definitely charge you at least 4 EUR for the pleasure of parking on the far end of it.

A French man we met at a B&B in Sault was really upset about all of these parking charges and they are kind of ridiculous. It's this crazy French attitude that "We're beautiful and you will pay." So after paying parking fee after parking fee, my husband and I decided to visit the cities NOT rated as the most beautiful and we were rewarded for our efforts with free parking and fewer tourists. I highly recommend places like Sault, Simiane la Rotonde, and Aurel where beauty and FREE parking abound. That, in my book, is a five-star place to explore.

(It must not be "one of the most beautiful cities" because it has free parking...this is pretty Simiane la Rotonde, a bit off the tourist route and thank goodness.)

Driving in Colmar

When driving near Colmar, France, you'll come across many interesting things:


-A roadside Buffalo Grill complete with a Native American as a mascot.


-Endless "toutes directions" signs, encouraging you that no matter what, you can't be going the wrong way.


-Lady Liberty*, greeting you in the middle of a roundabout. If you can't get enough of the novelty, no problem, just keep circling.

*The Lady Liberty creator, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was born in Colmar, thus the reason for the hulking highway statue.

From Chicago to Madison

Yesterday we took the 2.5 hour drive to Madison, Wisconsin to visit family up there. I have never really paid attention to the scenery on this drive before (and I've been going for 30 years). But living abroad does strange things to your sense of observation and gives you a better appreciation from where you came from.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the drive. Probably the first time I can ever say that. There were fields of purple clover lining the roads, lots of open fields filled with corn, and cute little red farm houses scattered between billboards advertising cheese and fireworks. That pleased me the most--a billboard that advertises cheese AND fireworks. I mean, what more in life is there?

My other favorite billboard simply said, "WISCONSIN FUN, THIS EXIT". I have no idea what the fun involved as the billboard did not specify, but for me it probably would have consisted of getting a slushy from 7 Eleven and buying something under a dollar from a vending machine.

In any case, it was a great day, got to see family and watch a sunset over the flat Midwest. I'd forgotten how low the sun can go as in Switzerland you never really see it set with all the hills around where we live. It was a nice thing to relive.