Hi guys. When I arrived here I was so naive about Swiss ways. I started missing my pub evenings almost immediately. There's something about the camaraderie and the laughing at silly things that just draws one to a good night in the local pub, and I just assumed that there must be somewhere similar in my village. Actually, five and a half years down the line, I now know that there are more pubs (restaurants) than businesses here in my village, you know... Krone, Sterne, Traube, Frohsinn, etc.etc. like every other village in Switzerland, but anyway, as I was saying, I went into one of the locals and pulled up a chair. I knew only a few words of German and didn't know the first thing about a "stammtisch". After an initial bit of silence and cold shoulder the conversation resumed, getting louder and louder with more and more laughing and joking. I think they had begun to forget that I was there. I could understand more than I could speak and I enjoyed trying to fathom what the jokes were all about. With time (about 6 months or so) they almost came to expect me at the Stammtisch, even though there were the standard jokes about having to be an "Eidgenoss". I would get waves in the street from my new circle of friends, introductions to their friends, greetings in the shops, invitations to dinner, etc. I actually learned Swiss German before German and even get told today by "foreigners" (Germans, Austrians, etc) that I have a Swiss accent when I try to speak Hochdeutsch.

The cold shoulder treatment continued from one or two diehards, even to this day, but so what - back home there were also people I didn't get on with. Today I've got a place at every Stammtisch in the village, and though I'm not really bosom buddies with anyone in particular from my village, I truly feel quite happy sometimes when I walk into a local pub and find a circle of familiar faces all laughing and chatting and making space for me to join in.

I'm not recommending that everyone rush off to a pub now to go and integrate, but I think that the only way the vast gulf between any foreigners and the Swiss can be bridged is by actively getting involved in something with them. Joining one of the local clubs (Vereins) is not only about doing whatever it is that they do, it's about getting a circle of people who enjoy similar stuff to you. I bought an ancient second hand rifle as an ornament and wanted to see if it still fired, so I asked around about where one could do this, and before I knew what was going on I was a member of the local shooting club. I don't really feel passionate about potting away at a target every Thursday, but I soon came to realise that the whole thing was about friends. I have been on a few weekends away to shoot in other Cantonal shooting competitions, and more than once I've had aching stomach muscles from all the non-stop laughs and fun.

Though they are sometimes painful with some of their ideas (never talk about money, never do anything spontaneous, only eat punctually at mealtimes, etc.) and though I have and will continue to complain about them sometimes, I just can't complain about their friendliness. One just has to find it, but it's there, I promise you.

My personal experience is that a lot of foreigners just refuse to accept that they are in Switzerland and want to keep to what they think is normal, not what the Swiss think is normal. If you do that you won't find the friendliness, but if you find the friendliness first then you can easily explain your own likes and dislikes and have them accepted. We get continuous spontaneous visits these days. Once we accepted their ways we got asked about our ways, and now it's actually a pain in the butt, but they seem to love this new idea of popping over out of the blue for a chat .

One more thing, the more you socialise, the better you can understand Swiss German. The better you understand Swiss German, the more you understand these people and the everpresent undercurrent of humour. Yes, believe me, it's there, and when you can find it and understand it you'll see these people in a different light. I've read a few people's discussions of language on this forum, and it's amazing that so many people take the High German so seriously! We're living in Switzerland, and no matter what they say, it's a foreign language here. One only has to listen to a school teacher and her class speaking High German to realise how much of a foreign language it is to them. You'll never get really close to a Swiss German speaker using Hochdeutsch, so make the effort to speak their language. They like it, and they'll like you.

Shaka.