Zurich, again

[rm]

I'm back in Zurich in the same hotel room I started the week in. I'm tired enough to feel ill and shaky, so much so that I may actually take the tram to the office for the meeting at 7ish. I've been around Zurich again today and they are setting up the Christmas markets. This is quite a big event and in the train station people stand around chain smoking and watching it.

A week from when I got here, and I can see how a person could love this place, even if my body is in a rage from cured meat and cheese and chocolate as the only things I can consume here. I'm at the point where I am dreaming about salad.

The weirdest thing I saw today as a bird-shaped bread-thing with some sort of dark filling (chocolate? figs?) that then had another stick of bread/pastry stuck into its heart, through which the filling "bled." I saw dozens of these in a booth by the Migros, but failed to take a picture do to shoo'ing!

I also discovered the "No Minarets!" campaign today, which is 100,000 people having signed a petition trying to get the Swiss constitution changed to ban the building of minarets (but not mosques, they claim) as they believe them to be "symbols of oppression." The posters feature a woman in niqab with a bunch of minarets on the Swiss flag in the background, positioned so as to look like missiles.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Coworkers have tried to convince me that the US is just as bad, but no, we don't have posters like that on the equivalent of the New York City subway system, no matter how racist we are (and we are!).

Anyway. I'm exhausted and feeling out of sorts. I'm uploading some photos now that I'll do a post with later, but tonights main activity is going to be packing the luggage to get all the gluten-free croissants and alcoholic chocolate to fit.

Sundries and other stuff will return again on Monday if not Sunday.

Comments

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

One of these days I'm going to fully accept that one can't really move away* from racism/general backwards-ness, and stop feeling disappointed.

* erm, as in changing residence

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

I'm at the point where I am dreaming about salad.

I had to chuckle when I read this. I spent time in Germany in October and on the plane trip to Paris afterwards, our sandwiches came with cherry tomatoes that we fought over as they were the first veg we'd seen in days.

But then we were in Paris with fruit and veg stalls at the end of our street.

Hope you're able to return to normal soon. Normal diet that is.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

The Swiss were the only ones who actually fired on work-visa'ed protesters in the late 80's. You remember, the ones that swept across most of Europe, demanding equal rights, access to citizenship, etc.?

Everyone else shooed them off. The Swiss fired on them. And their attitude towards the whole thing is 'we've told you what you to expect. If you don't like it, leave. Protest? How dare you - we have to put up with it! What the matter with you?'

It was once explained to me thus: "When people come from troubled places to come live in your country, if you're not very careful to keep things in line, they bring their troubles with them...and then their troubles are YOUR troubles." Quite equal opportunity, that. Tied to race? Every time.

Remember. Women didn't have the vote in that country until disco was in full swing.

One thing you might look for? A jass deck of cards, and a book on how to play. That's one thing I really miss.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Oh, and salad?

*laughs* I remember haunting farmer's markets looking for anything green this time of year. My usual haul was brussels sprouts. And I was the only one who'd eat them. With herb cheese grated on them.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

My Swiss uncle once told me that they got everything we did, politically, on a 5-10 year delay.

They're having their Bush years right now. They're having their version of teh dumb.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

The posters feature a woman in nibaq

I think you mean niqab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niq%C4%81b).

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Coworkers have tried to convince me that the US is just as bad, but no, we don't have posters like that on the equivalent of the New York City subway system, no matter how racist we are (and we are!).

Have you ever seen W.W. II-era Bugs Bunny shorts? Some of them have the most hideous stereotypical Japanese characters, all squints and buck teeth and "Oh so solly!" Lord knows, the U.S. is still screwed up on race, but at least we don't still do that -- kids don't watch Saturday morning cartoons that make jokes about camel jockeys.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Ooo, just googled to find out what a jass deck even was. Very old-skool.

...And just looked up a potted history of Switzerland: apparently there was one canton (a very Catholic one, but still) where allegedly women didn't gain suffrage until 1990.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

That's so odd - when I went to Germany, March of 2004, there were fruit & vegetable farmstands everywhere (at least in Munich and Nuremberg and a few of the other places I went.) Hmm.

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

This was more years ago than that. I was tired of pretzels, cheese and schnitzel. Though we loved all the food, just not enough fresh veg for us. Clearly that has changed. I'm glad.

[sushis.livejournal.com]

re: Minarets

That's so revolting. I could be wrong, but, I think minarets are a primary motif in Middle Eastern architecture, and not even strictly limited to religious buildings...I think they have similar structures in Russia as well, and pretty much everywhere on the planet where there's been significant Arab and/or Muslim cultural influence. So, it seems to me that banning them is really a very extreme attempt to annihilate and deny any positive cultural contributions of the Islamic world.

[sushis.livejournal.com]

The Wikipedia article on the Swiss minaret situation is very informative

[rm.livejournal.com]

Wait, WHEN DID WOMEN GET THE VOTE HERE?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Do you know that any time I spell that word one way (regardless of which way) someone tells me it's the other way? EVERY SINGLE TIME. Not that I don't believe you, I'm just slightly starting to lose my mind.

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Federal elections, 1971. Part of Appenzell canton, in cantonal elections, not till a Supreme Court decision in, as Brewster says, 1990. I remember how everyone in France was all o_O about that - France, where women didn't get the vote till the war was nearly over.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I... I had no idea. Just no idea. But it explains the sort of ubiquitous yet oddly mellow sexism here. Women are treated decently and viewed as intelligent, but all jokes eventually lead to something about ladies and shoes. Also, seriously, the business environments I've been in this week? Very male. Surprisingly so.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

According to wikipedia, Women did not gain the right to vote in federal elections (in Switzerland) until 1971

Wow. I thought France was late at not having women's suffrage until just after WWII.

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Oh, and this I hadn't realized before: Arab Algerian women (as opposed to Arab Algerian men and all pieds-noirs) not 1958, in the middle of the Algerian War. ("The war" mentioned above being WWII.)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wow, definitely a popular effort, and yet another mark (at least IMHO) against the idea of direct democracy. Having lived on the US West Coast for the last 19 years (CA & then OR), I've grown very suspicious of citizen-proposed ballot measures - only approximately 1 in 8 are not either impressively stupid, horrific, or both.

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Zut. "Not until 1958." Sorry, this must be confusing because of the way the thread is going - I mean Algeria when it was still part of France.

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

I have to say, in my experience the Schweizerdeutsch part of Switzerland is much more buttoned up and conservative and xenophobic than the French-speaking part, the Suisse Romande (even the names are revealing, I always think).

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm shocked about the minaret thing. And here I thought Americans were the stupidest people on earth, but I guess idiotic bigotry is a global phenomenon.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia: "The Swiss referendum on women's suffrage was held on 1 February 1959. The majority of Switzerland's men voted no, however in some cantons the vote was given to women. Switzerland was the last Western republic (although women could not vote in the constitutional monarchy of Liechtenstein until 1984). Women did not gain the right to vote in federal elections until 1971."

I'm not sure how I could actually have this memory from 1971, but I swear that I remember my grandmother and mother nodding in grim approval when we saw this on the (grainy, black and white) newscast.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the more I read about them, the more glad I am that we don't have anything of the sort in Australia. (And, just to add to the voting shame of everyone else, Australia didn't give full citizenship or voting rights to Aboriginal people until 1967, despite them fighting in WWI and WWII.)

[strangevibe.livejournal.com]

I'm up at 4 AM having just spent two weeks in Zurich (I'd have an apartment and be working the winter except for some apparent change in visa/tax situation that made it impossible). Still a bit jet lagged. I lived there two months in an apartment about the size of the hotel room ...

I think you just need to get a little deeper into the scene if you're not finding vegetables and salad - the Hiltl/Tidbits in Sihlstrasse/Bellevue areas are great, there's a place whose name escapes me on Langstrasse near Limmatplatz; these are vegetarian buffets, Hiltl was perhaps the first in Europe. I had wonderful salads all over the place, in the summer a lot of the swimming pool bars are serving up nice stuff at relatively affordable prices.

Rote Fabrik is another place with relatively inexpensive and healthy food on the west side of the lake.

[featherofeeling.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for that information. Of course, immigration laws are also stricter in Switzerland, aren't they, not being bound by all the EU regulations? They just joined the Schengen space last December...

And I've heard that same explanation from a Dutch friend about Arab and African immigration to the Netherlands. Somehow it has a different tone than anti-immigration rhetoric in the US, which seems to be a little more wrapped in less transparent language?

[featherofeeling.livejournal.com]

Ugh and wow to the minaret issue. But - and this isn't the same in that it's not a mainstream campaign, but it reminded me of what you said about the US - check out the "President or Jihad" billboard a guy put up in Colorado.

Other gems on the sign include a cartoon Obama in a turban, "Birth Certificate. Prove It!", and "Wake Up America! Remember Ft. Hood." The sign's not on the NYC subway yet, but the sentiments are, all the same, surprisingly widely shared.