As I wrote a reply to another post, I thought about creating this simple one. Maybe it goes no where, who knows.

What is the deal with people in country and NOISE. No loud music. You must quiet walking around you flat. Don't vacuum unless is it in a tiny window of time during the week. God forbid you talk to someone on the phone on your balcony past 10 pm (sorry, some of us have family and friends in other time zones) Children being hushed on trains. Parents in a cold sweat if their child wakes up crying because Lord help us if a kid makes a sound. Why is it that people in the most densely populated country in the world are so concerned about silence? I am all for a good nights sleep and understand there are certainly limits, but I was at a friends house with my daughter and she was running and playing on a Saturday at 6pm. Neighbor below comes a knocking telling us to keep it down. 6pm on a Saturday. Can someone explain what is so great about complete silence and why people here are so concerned with it.

Move? I live in Zurich and it's noisy and no-one complains - they were re-grinding tram tracks outside my place the other night at 1.45 am. Choose to live in the sticks and you have to live by country bumpkin rules, same as anywhere else in the world. Simple as.

Tell the neighbor to turn his/her hearing aid off. Problem solved. . (Had to be an oldster)

These are problems from people living in Bern. I got very lucky that my neighbors are French and German, so they are fine with noise. I even vacuum on Sundays (scandalous). My colleague, who lives in old town Bern, had weekly complaints about how she talked on the phone too much. Another friend in Interlaken was told she walked too heavily and needed to walk quieter. My wife works with 3 year olds and they occupy the downstairs of a small building. They have to bring the kids outside to the playground after their hour nap at noon, because it is quiet time until 2 pm and the kids wake up from nap at 1 and want to play. The post I replied to was about opening stores later and a complaint about that was that later opening times means more noise later in the evening. Keeping quiet is a way of life it seems and I just wonder why when everyone is so tightly packed in most places.

Swiss like to stare at others, and not to be stared at by others.

I became aware of this Swiss aversion to making noise a long time back - they don't like to stand out and be noticed, over everyone else. Conformists.

I talk quite loudly at the best of times, and my wife is always accusing me of shouting like a fool - so one time I really shouted, so she could appreciate the difference ..... she didn't speak to me for the rest of the day afterwards.

One time we were alone up a mountain and I asked her to shout at her loudest ..... and she physically couldn't - it was like someone with laryngitis (since having children this has got a bit better). She grew up with hardly anyone around her (apart from 'The Mother') ever having to raise their voices above a whisper - shouting is seen as ignorant and weak and the lack of ability to express one self .... Gawd this emotionless, simplistic view really pisses me off.

It has become a mentally induced, physical characteristic of many Swiss people - Tear Down the Wall is what I say.

Yes...in all three instances they were elderly.

To be fair, though, you must live really in the sticks because MOST of us are used to having the supermarkets open until at least 8pm (or 9pm in my case) 6 days a week. No need to leave the office at 4.30pm.

I think it's been said on this forum many times but people move to Switzerland and find that it's actually a lot cheaper (rent-wise) to live outside of the cities but no-one ever considers that people already there might have moved there because like to live away from city noise so get a bit shitty with people determined to drill holes in their wall at 9 am on a Sunday morning or gab on the phone late at night underneath their window.

If you are used to a noisy life, don't move to the (cheap) suburbs.

It is not just the volume of voices though. It is everything. Are there really that many people that need a nap from 12 to 2 that we have to tiptoe around? My good mate never has friends over past 10 because the lady that lives below him complains about every pin drop past that "special hour of 10pm."

Switzerland is not the most densely populated country in the world its not even in the top 50 most densely populated even the netherlands is more densely populate.

But it all stems from this mentallity.

The number of cupboard doors and drawers that are never closed properly, by my wife ..... I'm sure this is something from her childhood, as in: "Don't make any noise, when you close things" - so they don't get properly closed.

This is inbred over many years and generations - I also blame the deity of a Catholic upbringing.

No idea, this forum is about Switzerland not Monaco.

...and yet the church in my street chimes at every quarter hour, all night, every day.

this is what I paid "Religious tax" for...?

Welcome to the forum.

I'd rather keep quiet on this subject.

It's exactly that ... that it's densely populated.

It is all relative....

In Madrid, our neighbors set their table outside, at 22:00, to begin the evening meal. Sometimes, they even put their TELEVISION outside, with them. AND, their teenage children played basketball below out bedroom window, at 3:00 a.m.....

Yeah....suddenly, I became rather Swiss....wishing for a quiet time...

HOWEVER, now I wish to bring a little Latin blood to Switzerland....

It's just a fact of life here that with nothing really to complain about, the Swiss have to invent problems. So you have noise, stress, roads, foreigners, barbecues, lawn mowers and any other devilish factor which could ruin a day in peace and tranquility. That's not to say that they've not gotten their own problems with alcohol, heavy smoking, cancer or mobbing at work, but as long as there's no noise, then the Alpine world can at least perceived to be in the same zip code as a piece of heaven.

Well, I just got back from a few days in Brixton yesterday evening & now I can hear a pin drop outside our flat.

I'm sorry, It's f'ing weird & I'll never get used to it.

It's just too many people living in a too small a country, that's all there is to it.

Tell the neighbour that Swiss law guarantees the right of children to play:

http://www.mieterverband.ch/fileadmi...ängel_Lärm.pdf

The kids were playing outside the "nachtruhe" or nighttime silence period so are within their rights.

Cheers,
Nick