What's that smell....? Oh yeah....it's Kuh Scheisse!!!!

Yes, Spring is in the air in Switzerland, and that means the pungent aroma of cow manure is everywhere, permeating every breath we take. Ahhhhh, so lovely. Actually....it's not that bad---I much prefer the smell of cow poop to the human variety. Maybe I've just learned to associate it with verdant, growing things.

For those of you who didn't know, much of Switzerland consists of beautiful, rolling hills, fields and snow-capped mountains of fantastic, surreal, green grass. This grass is heavily and constantly fertilized with the end product of the cow's digestive process, and with startling effect. Everything is green, green, green, even through the winter months. Combine this with the Swiss penchant for turning all of nature into a well-groomed park, and their seeming well-conceived focus on placing every fictional fairytale-designed house, barn, shed, church, village, tractor, stack of hay, tree, and pile of wood into the most visually pleasing arrangement possible, and you have the most beautiful country on earth. It is like Disneyland on an epic scale. The sheer beauty of everything numbs the senses, beggars credibility. You constantly wonder how the Swiss can keep everything looking so nice, so perfect, how every home is perfectly maintained, surrounded by nature that is perfectly groomed. What is going on here? These people are sick! Where are the mobile homes, the low-class trash with multiple broken-down cars sitting around their dilapidated trailer and out-buildings? Where are the clear cut forests, polluted parks and streams? Where is the abundance of trash lining all of the roadways and highways? The answer is...... it's not here. They have done away with all of that. How, you ask? I really don't know.

I will be sprinkling some pictures of the area and views around our new apartment throughout this blog. We have a pretty great location here, just a five minute walk from the lake shore, beaches, and lakefront parks, as well as some nice museums, IMAX theatre, and planetarium. We also front a bucolic little creek, and nature trails that connect to other nature trails, whereby we could probably explore all of Switzerland starting from our front door. The Swiss love nature trails, and they build them everywhere. It is very lovely. Other aspects of our new apartment aren't as nice. As I mentioned before, the average age of the other tenants is about 106, and they have all the habits and peculiarities of their age. They all go to bed around 6 o'clock in the evening, and expect everyone else to as well, meaning that they do not want any noises of living to be going on after this time. I repeat.......any noises. No walking about our apartment, no television watching, talking, laughing, water running, nothing that might disturb their slumber. They are preparing themselves for the 'Long Sleep', and do not want any reminders that they are still alive. Now, this building wasn't built with sound proof walls, so any noise of activity we make is transmitted through the walls to all of our neighbors, who promptly knock on their ceiling, or walls, or floors, to let us know that we our being unacceptably noisy. Now, those of you who know me know that I am not a noisy person, that I spend much of my home time reading or on the Internet, but these activities are far too noisy for the hyper-sensitive hearing of the fossils in our building. If we were planning on staying in Lucerne for a long time, we would already be putting in our notice to move. Neither of us want to live in a morgue, regardless of it's location.

With Swiss apartments, the parking space is a separate consideration, seeing as how many Swiss people do not have cars, and simply walk, ride their bike, or take public transportation everywhere they need to. So, we had to rent our parking space separately from our apartment for a monthly fee of $60. This was not a problem, but the location of our parking space was. It was just too far from our apartment, and in a very dark, remote part of the apartment complex, and we wanted to change it to a better location. This required us to right a formal letter requesting the change of our parking space, then another letter accepting our new parking space, then another letter cancelling our old parking space. What a frickin' waste of time. Reveling in arbitrary rules and formalities is the national Swiss past time.

An interesting difference between Switzerland (as well as the rest of mainland Europe), and the United States is that here there is less emphasis put on the differences between the sexes. There is much less 'Hypersexualization' of gender differences as seen in styles of dress, makeup, hairstyles, and general behavior and mannerisms compared to the U.S. I see straight men here wearing clothes that by American standards are so feminine that even gay men in the States wouldn't be caught dead in them, but here it's totally fine. Add to this the fact that many European men are very slender and slighter of build than American men, frequently sport shoulder-length hair, and often shave, or wax, their whole bodies, and all my standard observational indications go out the window! Women, on the other hand, often wear shorter, spiked hair, might not shave their armpits or legs, and frequently wear very little makeup. As an example, I might be working out at the gym, and glance at a person from behind, and be completely at a loss as to whether they are male or female. I'll think, "Hmmm, they're wearing white Capri pants with ankle socks and raspberry-colored athletic shoes, with a pink skin-tight synthetic sleeveless shirt. They have shoulder-length hair, hairless legs and arms, and they're very slender, so what are they?" "Oh, they're turning around, so now I can figure it out!.......Nope, still not sure."

An interesting little factoid: There are only three countries in the developed world that haven't banned smoking in public places to some degree. These three countries are Belarus, Turkey, and............yes, Switzerland. Way to go Switzerland! You are amongst some prestigious company. Keep on keepin' on. We were walking by a cafe the other day, and were lucky enough to witness a waitress taking an order from some customers.....with a cigarette hanging from the side of her mouth. 'We'd like some grits with that on the side, Flo. Thank ya very much.' Have we entered a time warp? Is Switzerland forever stuck in the Fifties?

Facial piercings are also very common here. Personally, I don't really see the appeal. A diamond stud stuck through a woman's nose or chin, or a spike through their eyebrows, doesn't really do it for me, but many here believe it enhances their attractiveness and uniqueness in some way. Is it really unique when all of your peers are doing it too? At some point, it ceases to be a counter cultural statement and becomes simple conformity.

Most people in Switzerland live in apartment buildings. The cost of real estate here is so prohibitive, and the rules and laws pertaining to such ownership so burdensome, that few people have the desire or ability to own a single-family dwelling. Even owning a basic apartment in a nice location can cost $500,000 and up. Also, the Swiss people, and the rest of Europeans to a somewhat lesser degree, loooooooooove to travel, and owning a house would seriously cramp their ability to take long, epic vacations every year(more on this later). So, most Swiss simply rent apartments in various sizes and styles of buildings, very different in size and style than most of those found in the States. Many apartment buildings might look just like a big, elegant home, but are actually 3or 4 homes. Others are huge complexes consisting of many multiple story buildings housing dozens of apartments and managed by one company or owner. Now, Swiss apartment buildings are usually laid out so that they cater to either old people, or younger people with families. As I've mentioned before, there are lots of old people in Switzerland, and being very proper, staid Swiss, these old people do not want the chaos or noise of children anywhere near them, except in the case of their own grandchildren on day visits. Therefore, many apartment buildings here forbid children, and others cater to families with children. This has lead to an interesting phenomenon. You can travel through entire neighborhoods and see nothing but ancient, doddering old people shuffling and wheeling around with canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, sitting on park benches and mumbling to themselves. I can't explain how creepy this is. And on the other hand, you can find apartment buildings and neighborhoods chock full of stay-at-home moms with their passels of kids running amok, toys and shoes scattered everywhere, children's drawings pinned to the walls in the corridors. This also creeps me out. I should also mention here that there are very few young mothers in Switzerland. Most of the mothers I see with young children are well into their thirties or forties. This is the norm here. Teen pregnancy and motherhood are virtually unknown, and women most often wait until much later to have children for several reasons. One, it is very expensive, and two, I think they just want to experience what life has to offer as an unfettered adult before settling into family life, and three, everyone just waits longer to get married here. Different culture, different priorities.

That's it for now. We're heading to Scotland tomorrow for ten days, I can't wait. It might be raining most of the time we're there, but just driving around the countryside and exploring the cities is going to be awesome. We'll be flying into Luton, England, then driving up to Carlisle for a night, then Edinburgh for two nights, then to Dundee and Glamis castle, then to Inverness and the famous Loch Ness for two nights, then to Eilean Donan castle, then back down to Glasgow for three nights, visiting some friends, then down to Nottingham, and finally back to Luton and back to Switzerland. I'll have plenty to write when I get back! Stay tuned. Below are some pics of our apartment, and I will post more later.