The Personal Web Pages of Chris X. Edwards Swiss Report 4

Gross Lawine Gefahr

Urs and I had been skiing for a few hours trying to figure out how to get from this place to that place with a lot of the area closed due to too much snow and avalanche danger. Urs seems to get hungry rather easily and with consummate skill, he found us some excellent food at one of the many restaurants in the ski area. We went outside to eat in the warm, sunny and smoke-free air and enjoy the setting. I hadn't gotten very far into my meal when suddenly- BANG! What the hell?! It seemed like someone had just dropped a cow onto my meal.

After patiently waiting the couple of milliseconds it takes to understand what has happened when something really weird and shocking suddenly happens, I realized that I had be attacked by eine Dachlawine, a roof avalanche. Bear in mind that the entire reason that the avalanche danger is so great this year is because it has snowed more than most people here can remember. Also, ski areas tend to be those areas that naturally collect the most snow. So in this area, Sörenberg, most of the roofs had a half meter or more of snow on them - and those were the pointy roofs! I couldn't believe that the source of my personal avalanche was a pointy roof, but I had no way to tell - it was about five stories high! The building was a hotel and the wall we sat next to seemed to be the stairwell.

Okay, great! As the fifty or so other people stared incredulously at the one guy who just got nailed with a big blob of snow, and with raw coolness, I immediately picked up my bottle of Pepsi and jammed it into the fresh pile of snow on the table and resumed eating.

That coolness was still going strong when the second one landed on me. Can you believe that I was actually more surprised than the first time? I had thought, okay, that's that, no more snow up there to do that. Wrong apparently there was or someone with excellent aim had singled me out. Hey, Urs...let's move the table.

Lawine Update!!! Since writing that account it happened again!!! I went out of the Stöckli to do something outside and I had just gotten down stairs and over by one of the barns when I heard a strange noise. I wondered what it was for about a tenth of a second until a huge blob of snow landed squarely on my head. As I stood there in shocked amazement, dripping with snow, Hanspeter made the astute observation, "Okay everyone, stay away from Chris - He is very bad luck with avalanches."

The Scorpion Salesman

I'm also pleased to report that in addition to being quite alive, I am also speaking German. Like the Swiss, themselves, I too have a special dialect; mine is called "Schlechtdeutsch". Every so often it is quite gratifying to see some victim of my language massacre get that look on their face; the look that says, "What the hell are you trying to say?" Aha! Take that! What? You can't understand me? I too, am ostensibly speaking German and that look of serious bewilderment is the same one I get when I listen...to Swiss.

And just as I've managed to learn some Swiss, I've managed to teach a few people to understand Schlechtdeutsch. It is now sometimes possible for me to have entire conversations with people using no English - okay, using only the ambient English that's normally in Swiss and German. I've had a couple of extensive non-English conversations where an interpreter will interpret someone's Swiss and my Schlechtdeutsch into real German. This allows me a larger selection of interpreters since a slightly larger percentage of people here speak German than English.

I can't overemphasize how uniquely incomprehensible Swiss is. Because it is seen in the German speaking world as a crazy mutant variant of German, not much academic attention is given to it - no language dictionaries, no pronunciation or grammar guides, no formalized rules. I have had the thought that Swiss is some kind of military secret. In wartime, communications in Swiss might as well be encrypted Navajo. The Swiss only allow their language to be written in very private contexts where they are sure that only Swiss people will see it. Anything that might have a broader audience, like a newspaper, is in a foreign language, usually real German.

The other night a couple of kids from a nearby farm came here to our farm trying to sell stuff for their school and, more generally, some kind of charity. The charity was called "Swiss Aid" - that's verbatim, folks! Some very local advertising material or shop signs sometimes have Swiss printed on them, but the ratio of Swiss to English in advertisements is about one in fifty. I have an especially difficult time understanding Swiss children (and older people), and when these kids gave their pitch to Susan and Hp, it was absolutely incomprehensible. Then I was getting the idea that they wanted me to cough up some francs. Susan told them that they would have to speak "Hochdeutsch", real German, with me and the boy got a look on his face like she'd just asked him to divide 4,304,342.814 by 23.8945 by hand. Then he said something to the effect of, "Doh! We're learning that in school right now. Uh...Okay, here goes..." And with the fluidity that I recite Shakespeare in Latin, he proceeded to reinforce with comprehensible words the obvious situation; I suppose that getting kids to sell stuff is a universal property of human beings. It teaches them humility...No wait, I'm thinking of humiliation. Anyway, for such a culturally revealing performance, I felt that 5 francs minus the utility of a toy scorpion, was a great deal.

Urs says that I must be a good snowboarder. I speak English. It is this same logic that prompted me to learn German/Swiss in the first place. The masters of bike touring certainly all speak English, but German/Swiss is what they use to talk about the locals with a adequate privacy. So it follows that when I first met Susan & Hanspeter while bike touring, the first words that I wanted to learn were bike touring words. Hanspeter denies this, but I remember quite clearly what his interpretation for the word "tarp" was: "ein Tarp". He also added that real Germans might say "eine Plane". I remembered that when I went to the hardware store and asked the guy there for either "ein Tarp" or "eine Plane". Nope, both foreign words here. After much pantomime and telepathy, I got a tarp with packaging that had the word "Plane" in the biggest letters. And my dictionary says only "Plane" for "tarp". I never did figure out what the special Swiss word was...a military secret, for sure.

Singen Miteinander

I really get a kick out of some of the crazy situations I find myself in over here. The German speaking masters of adventure travel in creative ways to all corners of the earth looking for amazing sights and experiences. Little do they realize that with the right perspective, the most amazing things can be right here. How high must a mountain be, how hot must a desert be, how incredible must an experience be to top this: Chris X Edwards as a choir-boy? Ah ha, I thought so. Here's what happened...

Marlis knows where I'm at. She was once there. In Switzerland (the land of too many official languages, none of which are Swiss) it is somewhat common to trade in a German/Swiss speaking teenager for a French speaking teenager. In this way, young people can get a good start with learning about their rather foreign countrymen. And so it was with some of the residents of Stäublig, including Marlis. And she remembered the fact that the most effective method for learning an alien language and culture is to be drowning in it. With this in mind, she proposed that I accompany her to practice with a singing club.

Well, my eyebrows were immediately raised if not my enthusiasm. She went on to explain that the songs they sung were mostly in English and that I would be a potentially helpful guest. Okay, put like that, how could I refuse? These people have all done so much for me in learning their language that I am grateful for the opportunity to reciprocate.

The day of singing rolled around and off we went. The group was meeting on this night in the schoolhouse, one of the primary buildings in Ruswil. After climbing about five flights of steps, we were in the top of the building. I was fascinated and delighted by the timber-work that held up the roof and a distinctive little dome - it was an absolute work of art. The view from such a high building was also well worth the climb.

There were about fourteen singers, nine women, four men, and the guy who was the leader. Sure enough, it came to pass that we were all standing in this well crafted schoolroom singing - singing American black gospel music. You know, songs with the word "chariot" in them. Yes I did sing. I sang while a flood of thoughts zoomed through my mind like a dream - wow, this is a nice room; what brand of piano is that?; wow, I have the longest hair of anyone here; these people are way too white for this music... Such a fascinating and bizarre experience was over surprisingly quickly. I did earn my $.02 worth when I heard them sing, "He taught me how...to...live rejoicing...". There is an anti-homonym in there, something real German does not have. The word "live" is not "live" as in "live concert", yet that's how they were singing it. I am making a list of other examples [such as: bass, bow, consummate, lead, project, read, record, row, sow, wind] and homonyms as a public service for foreign speakers. If you know of a good one, let me know.

After we were done singing, most of us went to a pub for coffee and a lot of talking in Swiss. That turned out to be a fantastic opportunity for me to really give my crappy German a workout. I spent most of the time talking to one of the guys about a project I am working on right now that requires the steady hand of a professional welder - he just happens to be such a professional. Good deal...

But wait, that's not all! Noooo, there's more. They were so pleased to have another warm body singing with them that they asked me to come and join them again for a forthcoming performance. Uh, okay. I guess. And once again, the day of singing rolled around and we rolled down the mountain to Ruswil - this time the church. THE Church. The grand and magnificent shameless bribe to God, Himself. Yes sir, this church is big-time big. I guess that it will easily hold 500 people. It is an impressive architectural presence in the valley and the interior is nothing short of incredible. So here we were on a Sunday evening practicing "Negro spirituals" in preparation for some kind of mass.

After what I felt was not quite enough practice, a bunch of people showed up (I counted no less than fifty) and we did some singing to get them in the mood for whatever ritual they were going to be doing. Then the presiding chief of the cult (Catholicism, I believe) got up and said a lot of preachy church stuff in surprisingly comprehensible German. I guess that church, in general, is sort of a one dimensional place - God, God, and more God. A couple of times things happened where everyone seemed to know what to do but me. I didn't let my years of Baptist school go to waste, however, as I followed along with the Lord's prayer in English just to show off.

In between us singing and the preacher preaching or whatever he was doing, there was some kind of modern performance art that featured readings from der Bibel (which, in German, is more comprehensible to me than the "English" version). It also featured some overhead projector art (use your imagination) and a person acting out various intangible concepts. The best part was that it was set to music and they played a James Brown song and a song that I believe is by the ultra-heaviest of metals group, GWAR. So while all that was going on I had some time to think and take in the scene. "Wow, there's 52 people who thought to spend a Sunday night here. Wow, I have the longest hair of anyone here. Wow, I'm listening to James Brown and watching overhead projector art in a Baroque/Classical church. Wow, this sounds like GWAR. Wow, what the hell is she doing with that roll of tape? Wow, you'd think God would make it warmer in here....etc..." Come on! How can any kind of drug compete with this? How much more stoned can you be?

Then, as sort of a final exam, the preacher dude looks over at us singers and randomly blurts out one of those hard to understand Swiss numbers. Aha...I need to figure out what he said...ah...uh...sixty...uh...fifty-six! I'm cool so far. I turn to page "six and fifty" in the book I was just handed (oh good, my neighbor's on the same page). Oh boy, I believe the technical name for this is "hymn" and, naturally, it's in German. So, we the choir, need to sing this. All right, I've heard enough of you very white guys singing gospel music; it's payback time - here we go.

Invasion Update

I guess Americans in general would be a little more interested in their war for a homogeneous American world if they only knew it was being waged. The fact that time is a relative concept is what prevents most people from even noticing this war, yet it rages on like a glacier grinding a mountain into a golf course.

America is cool! That's what everybody tells me - indirectly, of course. Overtly they are proud to be Swiss and of the way things work in Switzerland and maybe a little put off by the USofA. However, so much of the reality says "Gosh wouldn't it be great if we were Americans". From the universal and mystifying coolness of Harley-Davidson to the viral aggressiveness of Coca-Cola, America has been spilled all over the world.

For me one of the most incredible examples is the clothes. Swiss people are good looking and they have good fashion sense, yet they prefer English text on their clothing twenty to one over Swiss or German text. To me that is an incredible endorsement. We're not talking about Madagascar where they might get some American misprints as a matter of necessity. No, here, everyone could wear whatever language they wanted. They collectively choose English. What if all of the clothes that you owned suddenly had any text on them converted to Danish. Wouldn't that be weird? It's kind of weird that my shirt says "Happy Holidays, California" - the fact that this shirt would be very typical for a Swiss person is much weirder.

And it's not just the English that I find fascinating - it's stupid English. Stuff like "CollegE TeaM, World Champions, Et vous, Baseball Cheer!leader" - all on the same shirt. I used to have a Honda motocross shirt that had Honda logos on it, and on the arm was a single Japanese character. I always used to worry about that. Does it really say "Honda Racing" or does it say "Dork!"? I guess the problem is that since Swiss is not a written language, if they restricted themselves to it, they couldn't have text on clothes (like all the cool people in Hollywood movies). My favorite shirt so far simply said, "OUTDOOR - Keep Fitness".

Dumb English is everywhere! Normal people who endeavor to learn a foreign language to better communicate with more people should always be given the greatest respect and assistance when they make mistakes or have odd accents. Companies who use a language just to be chic and cool and show off, however, deserve to be mercilessly ridiculed if they are not indeed the very essence of that language. I'm sure that I won't soon forget how to mimic the idiot who says "Chrysler Voyager and Chrysler Grand Voyager, the world's best selling minivan." Say it in German, use a real American, or shut up. Here's an easier example to appreciate: a little drugstore in a neighboring town had some kind of promotion where they got some advertising materials from one of the products they carry. All over the shop window was the phrase "Beauty-Free!". Yes, that does rhyme with "duty-free" but no, it is in no way clever.

This epidemic problem is undoubtably why I got the telemarketing dream call. It really doesn't get much better than this. I was home alone when the phone rang. Uh oh. I've got to deal with Swiss over the phone. They were looking for Hanspeter and I was able to convey that he wasn't home and understand the next bit: "Well, sir we are offering English and computer classes and wondered if you'd be interested." Ahhhh. Ah Ha... English AND computer. Okay, good. Since this was such a dream come true, I wasn't really prepared for it. The best I could respond with was a bit of complexity and a rejection in the positive form - in English, of course. "That's a very interesting proposal. On the other hand, I am rather confident that we have such requirements satisfactorily met." Pause. Then in German, I got a hasty farewell.

In a country of six million, one million have Internet connections. That number is doubled from last year. Knowing about computers and knowing English are very hot items here. I find it all very interesting. I also find the phone call itself very interesting. The scum of the earth that come together to form American advertising agencies have long known the power of annoying people into buying things. Here, the rudeness of "dinner telemarketing" is a novelty. I've heard both Susan and Hanspeter be extremely nice and patient to invasive salescallers. This is because in the three months I've been here, it's only happened about four times including my call. They find it very odd that I avoid filing out forms and they were skeptical about my explanation of raffles. They don't yet comprehend the horrifying fact that 1,000 names and addresses of a target market are worth many times the value of the bike they're giving away.

What other creative ways are people here telling me I'm cool just because I speak English? It's not just knock off clothing and snowboarding. I'm rather disappointed with the state of literature, music, film and other media here. Rural America doesn't have many bookstores, but there's a real lack of them in this area. Even when I think back to the days before American bookstores were bigger than ice rinks and ice rinks were cooler, there were still a lot more books per person than here. And when you do find a store, what are you going to buy? John Irving. No, really, John Irving. Susan really likes John Irving. The only bookstore within many miles had a whole shop window dedicated to John Irving. The guy on the train yesterday who I saw reading a book was reading, yes, John Irving. What's the deal with this guy? He's not Swiss, right? That is my point. Neither are Stephen King nor John Grisham nor Ken Follet nor Agatha Christie. Are these authors so profoundly wonderful that they transcend the language they write in. The answer is no. Any author who thinks his work is just as satisfying in another language that he doesn't speak naturally, isn't a good author in my opinion. Good authors use the language itself to create irony and other devices, set mood and pace, and build interest in the style itself. If someone likes a foreign version of one of my all time favorite books, "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, I'll know they didn't get much of what was really there. In that book, the language itself was one of the main ideas and this just can not be translated well by definition. Maybe John Irving has a special style that translates well, I don't know, I've never read anything by him. Maybe I should.

What I was hoping to find was that by adding another 100 million or so relatively smart, literate people to my list of people to communicate with, I'd enjoy a proportional increase in available creative output. As it turns out, the number of additional people whom I can speak with is much smaller since so many can speak English anyway. Rather than finding a parallel universe of German, I've found a universe of English impaired. I think it's a pretty serious affliction for a culture to have when it must rely on the foundation of a foreign culture to write a song or make a film or a TV program. It is also a serious affliction when 99% of the films you see and the songs you hear are from a foreign culture.

More and more the food people eat here is coming from a foreign culture as well. There are McDonald's in big cities now. A popular drink is Lipton Ice Tea. Huh? This is a continent that doesn't put ice in drinks. There's a growing selection of pre-packaged frozen foods (we seldom eat that kind of stuff here at Stäublig, but I've eaten elsewhere where they do). I also found an American-sized grocery store with a lot of Americanish stuff like peanut butter and even flour tortillas. It seemed like the Astrodome to me after having gotten used to grocery stores being much smaller than the average Blockbuster Video.

So what happens when you know English and the clothes you wear are American, the food you eat and carbonated beverages you drink are American, your transportation is American, the authors you read are American, the music you listen to is American, the films you watch are American, the games you play are American, the channels you watch on satellite TV are American, your computers and web facilities are American, the stores you shop in are American and the products you buy are the same Chinese ones made for Americans? Well, my friend, welcome to the fastest growing country in the world. You're an American, pass it along.

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Chris X. Edwards ~ February 1999