Random expat thoughts

A grocery store I frequent has a big display at the end of one of the aisles, all “Neu!” and “Jetzt!” and big attention-grabbing signs and a tower of boxes of … Fruit Loops. As soon as I saw them I said “OH! Fruit Loops!” My heart might possibly have fluttered. Here’s the weird part, though: I don’t eat Fruit Loops. I never ate Fruit Loops (we were more of a Frosted Flakes family), except for possibly a few Sunday mornings in the college dorm when I was hung over, and I have no desire for the boys to ever discover the existence of Fruit Loops. I could easily go the rest of my life without eating a single Loop of Fruit. But seeing them in my Swiss grocery store made me so excited I almost actually grabbed a box just because I could. I’ve been here for ten years, but I still get excited when I see American food in the store, even if it’s nothing I have any interest in.

*  *  *

I’ve been in Switzerland for ten years, and I’ve been toying with writing for much of that time. I never took it as seriously as I have for the past eighteen months, but I always had bursts of energy and Big Plans. And postage stamps for those pesky SASEs. (And 8 1/2 x 11 paper, too.) More and more journals now accept on-line submissions (at least for poetry; I’ve put prose on the back burner these past two years so I don’t know what the status is there), and I’ve found that many of those that say they don’t will make an exception for overseas submissions if you send a polite e-mail asking about it. But there are still those journals that only accept postal submissions, so I’ve always got some US international airmail stamps around. I’ve got 75 cent stamps. I’ve got some 80 cent stamps. I’ve got 90 cent stamps, and 4 cent add-ons, and now I’ve got 98 cent stamps. I’ve even got some regular old 32 cent stamps, and if US postal rates keep going one like this I’ll soon be able to combine them with the 75 cent stamps and get both of those denominations out of my hair. I have seventy-five cent postage stamps. I have been in Switzerland for twenty-three cents worth of rate increases. 

*  *  *

When Small Boy started talking, he preferred Swiss; he still does, I think. It felt strange, this son of mine chattering at me in Swiss. I guess I’ve gotten used to it, because I kind of think that when The Boychen (who I think is more linguistically balanced than his older brother) says, “Ja, das chöi mir, Mama” * it’s the cutest thing ever.

*  *  *

When I read the first line of this Tony Judt article, “One is not supposed to love Switzerland.”, I took umbrage. My pride was hurt, and I felt defensive and protective. Damn, I’ve been here a long time, because the truth is this: I love Switzerland. Unabashedly. 

* Yeah, we could do that, Mama.

Breathe

I can always breathe in Arosa. After the car ride during which The Boychen refused to sleep even though we purposely left at his nap-time, after the last 40 minutes when Small Boy’s admirable patience finally deserted him and he began asking “How much longer?” every five minutes and then arguing with us over the reply, after the mad dash to the sport store for helmets and sleds five minutes before closing, after the unpacking, I can breathe. A person can breathe up there, can breathe in big lungfuls of snow and sky, can breathe in this:

Yes, a person can breathe up there.

This, again

Every year I forget what autumn in this part of Switzerland is like. This part of Switzerland, where we can see the mountains but are not in them. This part of Switzerland lying at 500 meters above sea-level, this moist and temperate section of Switzerland. Every year I forget this, forget about the low-lying fog, the weak sunlight failing to break through, the damp air. The rain and the grey. The way the chill sinks into everything but temperatures do not fall enough for snow. Bare trees, sodden limp brown grass. Now that we’re on the farm our driveway is a ribbon of mud: there is not enough sun to dry it, not enough chill to at least freeze it hard. Every year I forget this, forget that from now until spring, sunshine will not come to us. 

From now until spring we will be chasing the sun, gaining elevation, getting above the clouds. When we can. Work, Kindergarten – these things keep up in the flatlands. Hockey practice bang at noon steals our Saturdays. I look out the window of my studio – the studio with walls the color of Idaho skies, and now I remember why my heart chose this color – and cannot see our nearest neighbors half a kilometer away. Every year I forget this, this grey blanket. I can remember the exact color of light shimmering across Swiftcurrent Lake the summer I was nine, but from one year to the next I forget the color of this fog.

* * *

Honestly compels me to confess that the mornings are worse than the afternoons, that often, by mid-day, even the Bernese Mittleland shrugs its shoulders and shakes off the mantle of fog.

Noticing

Many of Bern’s charms are obvious: the fountain statues, the clock tower,

the long sweep of the Old Town.

But there’s always something else, too, something waiting quietly to be noticed. The cool, narrow Gasschens,

the shop displays,

the tram lines criss-crossing the city.

Everywhere I turn there is something to notice, on those days I remember to notice. It’s like this everywhere; one doesn’t have to live in a five hundred year old city to stop and stare (though I imagine it helps). One just has to stop.

Being here

I am fairly sure that even after all these years, I do not take living here for granted. On every clear day I still stop and stare at the Alps
as though I’d just arrived yesterday.

But sometimes I’m reminded that maybe, maybe I do. Just a bit. Maybe I have stopped seeing this city I am privileged to call home. I recently posted a picture to my on-line writing group and got virtual gasps in reply. It’s not every day you see statues like this.


Except, for me, it is every day. These Bernese statues on these Bernese streets. I must walk past them four days out of seven. And I know they’re stunning – I continue to take pictures of them, after all – but I forget, I guess, how otherly they are, how utterly special. Sometimes, it takes another person’s intake of breath to remind me to sigh. It takes another person’s eyes going wide to remind me to close my own in gratitude. That happened to me last week, so I’m going to take some time to look closely at the streets of my city. Because my home, it makes people stop and stare. I should be one of those people.

Moments

I’ve been coming to Arosa for over a decade now, and rarely have I seen so much snow. The curve between the road and the Obersee (upper lake) where there is often a snow sculpture was covered by a child’s mountain of plowed-away snow.

Small Boy climbed it again and again, each time barreling back down hill on his sit-sled. I’ve seen hints of it before, but this trip confirmed it: the boy is a speed demon, fearless on sled or Bob or, it would appear, skis.

* * *

A man stands on a hotel roof shovelling great mounds of snow down onto the sidewalk below; it lands with a muffled thud that recalls the sound of avalanche cannons going off in the distance. Snow sprays in every direction when the larger blocks crash into the sidewalk. In all my years of coming to Arosa, I have never seen this.

* * *

Our first days are grey, clouded over. The mountains come and go like ghost ships.

* * *

I drink deep draughts of mountain air. My cheeks tingle. It is good to be here.

A taste of Arosa

I keep forgetting that vacation with two small boys is more properly termed a “change of scenery” or a “break in the routine” than a “restful vacation.” I am exhausted from trying to keep up with those two. I mean, with this

this

and this

going on, who could rest?

More words and pictures soon.

Commuting

It snowed on New Year’s Eve and part of New Year’s day and then the temperatures promptly dropped below freezing and stayed there; they’ll be staying there all week. The sidewalks are sheets of ice and bumpy rutted packed snow; the elderly and the stroller crowd are not amused. The state of the sidewalks is such that today I decided it was easier to pick Small Boy up from Spielgruppe in the sled than with the stroller. I packed the Boychen up and belted him into the seat we’ve got attached to our Davos sled and pulled him along behind me to get Small Boy. On the way home, Small Boy sat on the sled behind his brother and I dragged them both home earning smiles from the other pedestrians, more than one of whom probaby wished somebody would drag them along on a sled. The privileges of childhood.

An ordinary day

I love these fairy-tale Swiss days, story book days with the mountains and the snow and the crackling blue sky so clear it hurts. Days when we go sledding and I realize that I’m sledding in the Swiss Alps. The Swiss Alps. And even after eight years, the wonder of it hits me all over again and I’m reminded of these lines from Jhumpa Lahiri:

“I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Simply beyond my imagination.

This first day