Some things I've noticed

Now that I'm abroad, I feel it's important to keep Rachael updated on what life is like. I don't want her just wondering and wondering about how her boyfriend's life is like in Switzerland. Just like I know how her quotidian life is back home in San Francisco, I want her to know mine. Without further ado, I'll leave a few observations here about Switzerland.

• Almost everything is closed on Sundays. In fact, if you look at the business hours on the door of a restaurant, grocery store, barber shop, or whatever, you won't even see Sunday mentioned. Usually, there is a note next to Saturday (Samedi) saying "fermé" (closed), but Sunday hours aren't even listed. It seems to be assumed that only a very few places should do business on Sundays.
• Along with the first point, almost every business has the same hours: 8 to 5, with a long lunch break from either 12 to 2, or 12 to 3, Monday through Friday. Some businesses (e.g., cafés, large grocery chains) are open on Saturday, but a strikingly large number of businesses are only open Monday through Friday. This makes it difficult to find time to run errands. I suppose that's what an extended lunch could be used for...
• Switzerland is not as clean as you thought it was. In my opinion, the United States is cleaner, in general.
• Lausanne is cute and has nice architecture, but many of its suburbs' buildings are plain, boxy, cement structures. Really, really ugly.
• Most people smoke. This is the general impression we have of Europeans, but I thought the Swiss would be different, given the uber-high regard the rest of the world seems to have for the Swiss.
• Apartments are almost always marked with a no-smoking sign (or so I hear). Despite this, one of my roommates lit up in our kitchen the other day, and I learned somewhere that most Swiss disregard these no-smoking policies.
• Lausanne's metropolitan area is actually rather large, despite its population of a mere 130,000. The metro system is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, and it extends about 20 miles outside of downtown Lausanne.
• Switzerland is hot in the summer. Yesterday, temperatures reached about 85 Fahrenheit. There is also a lot of humidity in the air. In short, the summer weather is very Midwestern.
• You weigh your own produce at the store and print out a sticker with the price and a barcode, which the cashier scans when you check out. (This is typical throughout Europe.)
• Swiss students study a lot more than American students. At least, this is what I've gathered from one of my roommates. He said that during the school year, if he's not in class and he's not asleep, he's in the library, just like everyone else. In contrast, I studied and did homework for an average of 10 hours a week in college. I never knew someone who studied anywhere close to 40 hours a week, as Europeans apparently do. (This makes me nervous!)
• Most course exams are oral, not written. (I still have no idea how course grades are broken down: How much does homework count for?, Is there even a midterm?, etc.)
• American music seems to be played in a lot of places. My roommate loves American music (on rappers: "mais je ne comprends jamais les paroles... ils chantent trop vite"). I just heard "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel at the Coop Pronto (a grocery store that's actually open on Sundays!).
• French is spoken faster than it is in high school French class.
• Most things are more expensive than they are in the States. In particular, meat is extremely expensive: it costs approximately 2.5 to 3 times as much as it does in the States. I wonder why this is...
• A train from Geneva to Lausanne will run you about $25. The ride is 35 minutes. In contrast, an hour-long ride from Barrington to Chicago will cost you $5.50.
• EPFL math PhD students make 48000 CHF a year - that's $46,400 a year! Math PhD's in the United States make about half that.
• Follow-up: In general, the Swiss earn very high salaries, and this is probably why prices are higher here. I imagine that a typical Swiss worker is able to save a larger percentage of his take-home pay than a typical US worker, in spite of the higher taxes in Switzerland, though I don't know this for sure.
• The Swiss are 9 hours ahead of US Pacific time, or 6 hours ahead of US Eastern time.
• Last but not least, my favorite point. Europeans are very family-oriented. One of my roommates lives an hour and a half away in France and visits his family once a week. Another of my roommates, who is Tunisian, calls his family every afternoon. When they found out I was an American who ditched his family and home for Europe, and I had no really good explanation as to why, they seemed perplexed, even a little judgmental. (Can't blame them for that!)

I'm sure I'll write many more posts like this. Stay tuned, Rachael! :)