Aufwiedersehen, Switzerland!!!!....und merci viel mal!

Goodbye Switzerland!

Our time here in Switzerland is swiftly waning, and my melancholy is correspondingly waxing.  Regardless of all my rants and mocking of the shortcomings of the Swiss people and culture as I perceived them, Switzerland, and particularly Lucerne, has come to steadily grow on us in many ways.  When all is said and done, the Swiss, over the course of their many centuries of occupying and caring for this region in central Europe, have created and molded an idyllic country of incredible, unsurpassed natural and man-made beauty.  They have managed to remain neutral in most world affairs, to jealously guard their economy, culture, and legacy, and to avoid the wars that have repeatedly devastated the rest of Europe for the past 500 years.  They are a very serious, and in many ways, cold, people, but they care deeply for, and take pride in, their country and each other, and well they should.  They are industrious, productive, clever, and proper, perhaps to a fault.  The rest of the world could learn a lot from Switzerland, and I, for one, will miss it.  I have no regrets regarding moving to and living here, I have grown positively in many directions, and I am a better person for having experienced this incredible sojourn in the land of the Alps, cheese, chocolate, and cows.  Perhaps, one day, we will return here to live.  Thank you , Switzerland, for enriching my life, and I hope to see you again soon.

I will definitely be posting blogs onto this site in the future, but probably not as regularly as I have been for the last 10 months.  At this time, it looks as if we will be returning to Vegas, at least for a period of a couple of years, and not doing the cruise ship contract as we had hoped for.  This is because if our ultimate goal is to go back to Vegas and the security of my old job at Caesars (and many opportunities for my wife Timi), then I must return before a year has passed, for I would lose my seniority and accrued benefits if I delayed returning more than a year.  We really wanted to go on Crystal and do a little more traveling around the world,  but I guess it's not to be.  If this changes for some reason, then I will begin blogging regularly again!  If anyone wants to check on our lives, or just wonders what we've been up to lately, take a peek back here at Life's a Slice every now and then, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them.  I'll answer any queries you have, and I have made the process of leaving comments easier now.  Take care everyone, and hope to see you here soon!

In front of Grand Casino Luzern

Got homeless? Not Switzerland!

Just read an article online that showed that the United States has slipped to fourth place in global economic competitiveness, according to the World Economic Forum.  Switzerland is number one for the second year running.  Not bad.  The U.S. better get off it's ass and hit the ground running!  I still have faith that America can maintain a relevant, leadership position in the world, but we really need to stop screwing things up so much all the time!

I've never really written too much about homeless people in Switzerland, and I guess that's because there aren't any!  Actually, that statement may not be entirely true, but close enough to not make much difference.  There certainly isn't just one main reason for this lack of homeless people; on the contrary, there are many.  I would have to say that one of the main reasons is because Switzerland doesn't start wars, and it generally doesn't participate in wars.  One fifth or so of the homeless population in America are veterans.  War messes with the mind in many ways, and many of the men who joined the military in the first place didn't really have many other options to begin with -- which leads us to another reason there are so few homeless here.  Namely, better education.  The pre-university educational system over here is light years better than what exists in America now(thanks to the Republicans, who have always believed an ignorant population is a more easily-controlled population).  When people are brought up with a better education, they generally tend to be more mentally and emotionally balanced, better able to deal with, and successfully process, negative experiences, more aware and perceptive, more capable of taking advantage of life's opportunities, and less likely to succumb to life's little temptations, such as alcoholism and drug addiction.  Take a moment to contemplate how a more capable and effective educational system in America could positively impact our culture in the long run!  A third and fourth reason is, until recently, comparatively low immigration, virtually zero illegal immigration, and no legacy of slavery and discrimination that has created a subculture of poverty, neglect, and ignorance among many African Americans .  Almost 60% of the homeless population in America is black and Hispanic, though these two ethnic groups represent far less than that in the overall population.  A fifth reason is better government social services and programs.  Without the military consuming a lion's share of federal government tax revenue in order to finance an endless series of wars, coups, pre-emptive invasions, and foreign nation-building, Switzerland is able to finance and provide social programs and assistance that take care of, and often rehabilitate, mentally ill and drug-and-alcohol addicted people.  The amount that America spends on "defense" every year is almost as much as the rest of the world combined spends, and more that 50% of all federal government tax revenues.  That's well over a trillion dollars a year!  Think about what America could do with that kind of money, if it wasn't spending it all on war.  On top of that, the Swiss people, as well as most other Europeans, pay far less taxes on income than Americans do in order to finance these social aid programs.  A sixth, and final, reason is simply that Switzerland has a Cultural Legacy of industriousness, clean and upright living, respect for others, and a deep belief that you have to make sacrifices and look out for your community to make it strong.  That's why there are virtually no homeless in Switzerland.

This self-same Cultural Legacy that I have mentioned several times before, is the same one behind Switzerland's economic successes, the same one that motivates Swiss people to  look out for each other, to keep their communities and their environment clean, organized, and pollution-free, the same one that has kept them out of wars beyond their borders for centuries.  If there is only one thing that I have learned in my life, it is that every country has its own Cultural Legacy, as well as many sub-cultural legacies stemming from whichever particular mix of minority populations and history they have and have been through.  These legacies can, and do, change over time in fits and starts, but it usually takes generations to forge any significant alterations in the cultural fabric.  Nice mixing of metaphors there, yeah?  Anyway, one thing is certain, and this is that a particular country's Cultural Legacy is the lens with which the members of the culture view themselves and the rest of the world, and their relationship to it.  Switzerland has managed to create a legacy over the generations that serves it very well.  America has also created an amazing Cultural Legacy from its own special history and circumstances, one that has propelled it into an economic, political, and social leadership role for the world....and one that is now being destroyed by ignorance and "faith".

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