Go to Switzerland Without Leaving America. Really.

The Frau learned something recently:

This is America, Yodelers.

   









Insert moment of silence.

Don't worry, The Frau is still trying to believe this is America too. 

Fondue. Roesti. Ticino Pizzeria. Chalets. Restaurant doors that say Eingang. Hiking paths. Someone walking a Bernese mountain dog. A shop owner from Thun. Raclette cheese store. Emmi cheeses. Edelweiss Hemds. Swiss German speakers attempting to have a Ruhezeit in a hotel pool/whirlpool area where there is no Ruhezeit. The list goes on and on.

So. If you're in America and you're homesick for Switzerland, Wisconsin has a solution for that. It's called New Glarus. And when it calls itself "America's Little Switzerland," it's not kidding. There's a reason the Swiss Club of Chicago comes here at least three times a year. The place even has a race called the Alphorn Man Triathlon. The Frau will be doing this if only to get the t-shirt.

Real live Swiss people came to New Glarus over 150 years ago. Some, like Esther, who runs a European import store, came 30 years ago. Swissness lives on.

The other hot spot for Swissness is Monroe, Wisconsin, about 18 miles from New Glarus. This place has cheese. Real cheese. Emmi's only North American plant is here. And it has a shop onsite called Alp and Dell. This shop even sells Swiss wine. That's how Swiss it is.

Why are you still reading this? Go, go, go to New Glarus and Monroe now and enjoy all the Swissness America has to offer only 4,444 miles from Switzerland (to be exact).

The secret place The Frau goes to feel foreign again

It's strange, but sometimes you miss being a foreigner.

The Frau's hometown, Naperville, IL, has a solution for that.

Food stall outside the Asian grocery store in Naperville, IL

It's called the H Mart. 

It was here, in this Asian grocery store last week, that The Frau gripped her shopping list (filled with items she needed to cook some Asian and Indian dishes from her Swiss Hiltl Cookbook), pleasantly overwhelmed with the feeling that she may never find half the things on it.

Most of the people in the store were not speaking English. There were words on the food packages that The Frau couldn't read. Even the vegetables were foreign. 

It was wonderful. 

In fact, it was so foreign and wonderful that The Frau has decided that her New Year's resolution is to come here at least once a month to enjoy that foreign feeling--at least when she's not getting enough of it feeling like a foreigner in her own country.

To think, Yodelers: H Mart has always been there, in The Frau's childhood Chicago suburban village, just waiting for her to come in and appreciate it.

And that day has finally come.

Sometimes it takes being an expat and then coming home again to understand the joy of being out of your element. Many find only fear in this situation. And The Frau is concerned that too many Americans these days find differences scary. To those Americans, The Frau recommends a passport and an airline ticket. Or if that's not possible, then the second best thing: a trip to the local H Mart. 

Repats: Do you have a secret place you go to feel foreign sometimes?

Hello USA, Goodbye Efficiency

Usually it takes The Frau at least 10 minutes to begin swearing at U.S. inefficiency upon arrival in her home country. On her most recent trip, it only took 30 seconds.

She’s either becoming more and more Swiss or the U.S. is becoming more and more inefficient, she isn’t sure which.

Waiting for a half hour after a ten hour flight

Within 30 seconds of her SWISS flight landing (on time, of course) at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on May 24, the captain came on to announce that the airport had no gate for the plane as well as no gate for several other planes that had arrived before, so everyone would be sitting on the runway until the airport could begin giving planes gates.

The Frau rolled her eyes. But Baby M, being even more Swiss than The Frau since she was born in Switzerland, was even less pleased at such inefficiency. So she screamed at the top of her lungs for the entire half hour the plane sat on the runway.

The Frau tried to explain to Baby M that she was now in another country—her own—and therefore she’d need more patience for anything requiring synchronization or efficiency, but Baby M didn’t care. She thought five hours was enough time to be on a plane—let alone 10, with another half hour thrown in for fun courtesy of ORD—so she refused to calm down.

The Frau couldn’t really blame her. Her wails seemed to echo the feelings of every other passenger as if to say, “Giving a plane a gate. How has this become rocket science for American airports?”

Have you experienced inefficiency at an airport lately?

Ah, The Fresh London Air

Over the long weekend Baby M visited her sixth country and The Frau got to visit one of her best friends from college. This friend moved to London two years ago after being an expat in Düsseldorf and she is still recovering.

“Oh my God, do you see how run down the roads are?” My friend asks as we drive from Heathrow Airport to her place in Richmond.

Richmond Bridge (Southwest London)

“And look at how disorganized the traffic is!”

The Frau couldn’t help but laugh, because she was thinking the same thing herself.

One of the side effects of living in Switzerland and Germany is that they do their best to ruin the rest of the world for you.

Because once you live amongst people who are preoccupied with dirty sink spouts and out of place geraniums, the rest of the world is just not going to be able to compete.

Still, The Frau and Baby M had a great time in London—in particular, they enjoyed the fresh air. The Frau found it amazing that she could go to a city with thousands of times the number of residents of Zurich, but with only about a tenth of the amount of cigarette smoke. She could even sit outside at a restaurant for two whole hours without smelling one cigarette.

Refreshing, huh? Especially to realize Switzerland has some work to do if it really wants to be perfect after all.

Switzerland on a Budget

The words "Switzerland" and "budget travel" are not often found in the same sentence. Wilkommen, tightwads, to The Frau's blog. Cheapskates, you've come to the right place, even if Zurich may, after your first CHF 30 ($32) plate of Kung Pao Chicken, seem to be the completely wrong place.  (For The Frau's Top 10, "No way, that cost what in Switzerland?" blog party, see The Frau's post about the cost of living in Zurich.)

Anyway, The Frau would like to apologize ahead of time for those of you who may try to buy used socks at a Swiss flea market and find that they're out of your price range. Zurich wasn't listed as the world's most expensive city this year for nothing.

Save money! Go to the dentist in Germany.

But fear not. The Frau is here. And she once was able to bargain a seller down to CHF 1 ($1.08) for a pair of used baby socks at a Swiss flea market (the things she goes through for Baby M!). It wasn't easy, but then again, it's not easy to save money in Switzerland.

So in honor of The Frau’s article on how to save money in Zurich in easyJet Magazine this month, she’d like to give those visiting and/or living in Switzerland a few additional tips.

Take Advantage of RailAway Offers

Every month and also for every season, the Swiss train system partners with places like ski resorts, zoos, and hotels to offer discounts to train riders going there. The catch? You have to buy the tickets at your local Swiss train station before you depart. So if you’re buying a RailAway offer to the zoo, you need go to your closest train ticket office before you start your journey and buy the rail, transfer, and zoo ticket together.

Try your luck at SuperSaver Tickets

These are limited and train-specific, but if you’re lucky, you might find a great train fare (up to 80% off) by searching SuperSaver Tickets online. For example, The Frau was once able to find a ticket from Zurich to Lugano for only CHF 11 using SuperSaver Tickets. Now that was a real deal. 

Rent an apartment instead of staying at a hotel

If you’ll be staying in Switzerland for at least a week in one location, try renting a Swiss holiday apartment instead of staying at a hotel. For example, last January, The Frau was able to rent an apartment in Oberwald for six adults and one baby for CHF 1000 for the entire week. Plus, you will save money by being able to cook your own meals. Make fondue for six for CHF 50 instead of CHF 200 by shopping at the grocery store.

Eat at grocery store restaurants   

Don’t want to cook your own food? Then do the second best thing. Eat at grocery store restaurants. Coop, Migros, and Manor all have buffet restaurants that are open during store hours (so don’t think of using them for a late night dinner or Sunday meal). For lunch at Coop, for example, you can try penne with mushroom cream sauce and a small side salad for CHF 10,95.

Drink from the tap

The Frau has never understood the high prices of beverages in Switzerland. So instead of BYOB, BYOS—bring your own Sigg bottle and fill it up with water from Swiss sinks and fountains to carry with you when you’re out and about.

Do you have any additional money-saving tips? The Frau does. Click here to read more about how to save money in Switzerland.

Five Ways Switzerland Prepared The Frau for China

Nǐ haǒ. The Frau has returned from the Far East where she spent two weeks running around the People’s Republic of China. (For those who are wondering, no, Baby M did not add a sixth country to her life list, rather she had her own vacation zu Hause with her American Grandma while American Grandma went through her own version of Swiss culture shock in the process—very nice hiking trails, but too much cigarette smoke and pushy people was Grandma’s final verdict on Switzerland).

In many ways, Beijing is Zurich’s opposite (especially in pedestrian safety, air quality, and the price of public transportation—only 20 cents for a bus ride in Beijing). But in other ways, Switzerland couldn’t have prepared the Frau any better for China. Below are five ways you’ll feel at home in China if you’re living as a foreigner in Switzerland.

One: The language barrier won’t bother you.

What’s a little Mandarin when you’ve been trying to comprehend Swiss German? If you’re used to tuning out foreign languages and already feeling like a fish out of water, not understanding anything in China will be no big deal.

Two: You’ll be used to people having no concept of a line.

The Frau lost track of the number of Chinese people who cut in front of her when buying metro tickets or at security checkpoints. But this was no different than having Swiss people barging in front of her at the cheese counter or at a Swiss McDonald’s—even when she was pregnant, no less. Therefore, when being passed up in China, the Frau just sighed in recognition of something Americans call politeness and the rest of the world calls passiveness.

Three: When people push and shove on public transport, you’ll push right back.

Foreigners are often treated as walking ATMs in China

Beijing may have 20 million people and Zurich 390,000, but you wouldn’t know this based on the almost identical way their commuters both act. Luckily, Switzerland has trained the Frau to elbow and push like the best of the Chinese. But the Frau did notice that the Chinese readily give up their seats for old people and women with children, something she doesn’t witness the Swiss doing very often.

Four: You’ll have your cash ready.

Like in Switzerland, credit cards are not commonly accepted in China, so be prepared to carry cash—lots of it, since you’ll probably end up paying the “foreigner price.”

Five: You’ll be used to being treated as a foreigner.

Unlike in Switzerland, your appearance in China will probably scream foreigner before you even open your mouth. But in some ways this makes it easier because you don’t have to decide whether to give yourself away or not. The Frau proudly wore her camera around her neck since there was no disguising who she was.

How does living abroad affect how you travel to new countries?