Today is the second last day of the German course I have been doing. Ordinarily I would continue on with the next level, but they do not have enough people to fill the class so it is being postponed until the start of January. Everyone in the class is an expat so like me they will be returning to their home country for Christmas, hence the delay.

Sometimes I am disappointed with myself that I did not make more of an effort over the past nine years to do the classes. I did try a few times but put it in the ‘too hard’ basket while it was competing with my other priorities. Work, MBA studies, social life. Now that I live here I really don’t have a choice and I actually quite like that.

In fact, I enjoy the challenge of learning a new language. The class also helps as they are all quite nice people. No two people are from the same country, and come as far away as USA, Ethiopia, Venezuela and Iraq. An interesting mix, and a great cultural experience.

I will need to ensure that I keep up my practice in my own time. Today I will buy the materials for the next course so I can get a head start. If I don’t keep working on it, I will lose everything I have learnt in the past seven weeks.

“The Swiss believe that they have developed a fair and beneficent society, and exert strong social pressures on their citizens to conform to Swiss patterns of behaviour”. This is a quote from Kiss, Bow Handshake – How to do business in Europe by Terri Morrison. When I read it before we left for Sydney I thought she was talking about the government putting pressure on citizens, but she means citizens putting pressure on other citizens.

I learnt this first hand when we parked our hire van half in a parking spot and half on the footpath so we could pick up the very heavy arm chair we had bought. Twice men came past and stared at us as if we had just mugged an 80 year old women on a walking stick. This is not the only example, there have been a few, including when I asked for something in English in a store, without first asking if I was allowed to ask in English.

But, I have also had a lot of positive experiences. Last week, on my birthday in fact, I went into the local electronics store to buy a cable for my stereo. I happened to mention that I was having a few problems setting up our new cable TV. Without hesitation, he offered to send his apprentice back home with me to look at it. The young bloke had it working in less than five minutes. The cable TV company wanted 150 francs to send a technician out to look at it. The speaker wire cost 8.40. I will certainly be returning to his store.

When we first arrived in Zürich I promised you all that I would not go on about the cost of living, just as I said I wouldn’t rave on about how hot it was when I was living in Darwin. I am trying to stick to my word but something I saw in the past week is just screaming for comment.

Switzerland has some of the finest grazing land in the world, and also some of the finest cattle, a lot of cattle in fact. This is why it continues to surprise me how expensive meat is here. A prime example (excuse the pun). I was in Migros the other day which is similar to Coles, but on a smaller scale. They had Swiss rib eye fillet beef for sFr110 per kilo, or about $125. You can get the stuff on special in Sydney for about $30 per kilo, a quarter of the price. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

They had a single whole rib eye in the counter window and I realised I was probably looking at a $450 piece of meat. Astounding, truly astounding. It reminded me of our holiday to Japan in 2007 when I saw a single honey dew melon for more than AUD100. And, they eat it with salt. Go figure.

Today is my birthday and I am celebrating by looking for a job. Oh what fun. Tonight however I am going to see Moby play here in Zürich, along with A, her brother and his girlfriend. I saw him some years ago in Sydney and he was really good so I am hoping he is again tonight.

I just realised that I have spent my past four birthdays in different cities, in fact in three different countries. In 2006 we were in Sydney, 2007 in Japan, 2008 in Darwin and of course Zürich this year. I wonder where I will be next year.

Every few years my birthday falls on Melbourne Cup Day. This year I didn’t even remember it was on until I read the SMH online. I missed out on the Champagne and BBQ chicken, but I am glad I didn’t get the chance to bet on a losing horse as I have done successfully the past three years.

As of next week it will have been four months since I last worked. Of course, about nine or ten weeks of this was spent travelling and moving to the other side of the world, but it still seems like a long time.

It is an unusual feeling being out of work for so long. It feels somehow like I am slowly losing part of my identity. When you have a job you know what you’re doing every day, you know what you’re about, you know who you are. Not having one is a strange feeling especially after having worked fulltime since I was 18 years old.

In German Course we have various practice sessions where we talk about ourselves. The question often comes up ‘what do you do’ and I have to say that I am in between jobs. The teacher kindly pointed out that there is a word for this in German, hausmann. Precisely the same as housewife in English (hausfrau) but of course for men. I took a little bit of offence to this. I started thinking, is that all I am? Is this where 16 years of work experience, not to mention an MBA, have taken me? Someone who makes dinner, cleans and generally gets things ready.

This took my train of thought to the wider topic of professional women who take time off to have children. It must be quite a challenge to give up a career to start another one as a mother, even if it is only for the duration of their maternity leave. I will never think about such women with the same frame of mind again. I have gained a lot more respect for them.

Last Friday A and I moved into our new Zürich apartment, and out of the temporary one. It’s a great feeling going from a one room bedsitter to a three bedroom rooftop apartment. So many positives about the change, but above all else the space and the view.

We are in the process now of replacing the furniture we sold or left behind in Sydney. On Saturday we bought a new lounge which will be delivered next week, far better than the eight plus weeks some companies quoted us. I mentioned previously that I bought my first comfortable chair, I must be betting old. And yes, it is damn comfortable (and lime green I might add).

A few more bits and pieces to get before we can really say this is home. One really bizarre things about apartments in Switzerland is that you need to provide your own light fittings. At the moment there are just cables hanging from the roof, and we are heavily reliant on lamps. In Germany you often even have to provide your own kitchen appliances such as oven and dishwasher.

I won’t put up any photos just yet as the place looks a bit empty. But I can assure you we will be very happy living here. Less than two kilometres from the heart of Zürich, and on the same block as a Sushi Restaurant. What else could we ask for?

I have a strong belief that Australia is a fairly tolerant nation. Other than a few bad seeds like the One Nation Party and the Anti Islamic School group out west, people tend to get along quite well. With such a widely multicultural land it is essential. What racism there is generally kept under the surface is never really given the opportunity to see the light of day.

In a few weeks time Switzerland will take a vote on whether or not to continue to allow building of Minarets, like those seen on Mosques. The Swiss People’s Party say they are trying to stop what they call ‘the ongoing Islamification of Switzerland’. When I heard this I was astonished. Firstly that they would try to stop people from doing what is a basic right and secondly the fact that they can do it so openly. They have even been allowed to put up posters with Minarets shaped like missiles covering the Swiss Flag.

This is not the first time such matters have come to a head. A few years ago certain Swiss people got together to try and end the policy of allowing persecuted refugees from Muslim countries across their borders. At least they don’t make them spend years in detention centres.

One of the things that is strikingly obvious about Switzerland is that Swiss people are very private. In social settings it takes a while to get to know people and become included in their inner-circle. This is very different from life in Australia where you can easily get invited out for a beer on the same day you meet someone. This would never happen in Zürich unless you were introduced by a mutual friend.

Another example is their lack of trust in everything with ‘e’ in-front of it. We have a friend here who works for the company who owns the licence to use B-Pay functionality. She was telling me recently that Switzerland has one of the lowest take up rates of EFT processing for a developed nation, at just 3%. More often than not, a company will send you a payment slip and you go down to the Post Office to pay it, just like Australia use to 10 years ago. In a lot of circumstances there isn’t even an option to pay any other way, such as our recent home contents insurance with Allianz.

A weird afterthought on this is that most bank branches had a ‘Multimat’ machine located with the ATMs. You use these to pay your bills that have a payment slip. So, you go along, put your card into the machine and then scan the payment slip, paying the bill from you account. Of course this means that it is all done electronically so what’s the different? The difference is you are standing at a bank branch, and you put your card in for ‘added security’, or at least this seems to be the mentality.

At the moment I have the luxury of being able to complete such choirs during the day, but once we are both working I can see this becoming a real hassle. Kurt Cobain once sang ‘just because your paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you’. Maybe he was right.

With A being away for work at the moment I decided to take a bit of a trip yesterday. There is a place near Stuttgart in Germany called Metzingen. It used to be where Hugo Boss had their biggest factory (now in Poland) which had an outlet attached. Over the years this has grown to become a whole village of factory outlets such as Nike, Diesel, Oakley and Esprit. They are not necessarily factory seconds but are heavily discounted.

I have been there a couple of times when I have visited Germany. I mainly go there to buy suits which are about 70% cheaper than Sydney. It is just over three hours from Zürich by train each way travelling by the Inter City Express (ICE) Train which travels at up to 200 km/h.

It’s quite a funny experience going to ‘Germany for the day’. I came back with a bit more than I had planned this time, mainly warmer clothes which I have never owned. There was no need for them in Darwin! There was 5 hours between my trains which I thought would go very slowly, but time just flew. Especially after spending 2 ½ hours in the huge Hugo Boss outlet. So, I have had my shopping fix for this year, and I definitely won’t freeze now.

I had a funny experience today. In an attempt to keep myself occupied in the absence of A, I decided to go for a jog. With so much time on my hands I have been doing this a bit lately, certainly a better climate for it when compared with Darwin.

When I got home I took of my fleece and realised there was dew all over the back of it. I did some research (the www type) and it seems to be a natural, but unusual, occurrence in colder climates. The temperature outside was about four degrees, and a bit lower in Käferberg Forest where I was jogging. This is about the temperature of dew point, so as my sweat or steam reached the outer surface of my fleece, it cooled immediately turning into dew. Very unusual, but probably not the last time I see it.