I am an English/Australian married to a swiss women for 20 years with 2 kids 15 years here. If I knew what I know now which one never does,i would not of married a swiss. Here is a culture shock,people from another planet.Why didn't someone tell me before.Would I have listened. Probably not as I don't think I could have believed someone,maybe he's a weirdo I'd have thought or something like that. Most swiss are semi racist or secretly discriminative anyway. Especially if your imperfect at their language. If your a customer or on holiday oh thats different. You have to be swiss to vote. There is a lot more behind this than you'd think jack oh yes, and it gets worse and worse as you go in the smaller villages. I have a slight handicap so I can't trust a swiss doctor for love or money. I would never trust any swiss for love or money actually or for a free bottle of beer or wine. Lets face it you can't trust everyone everywhere anyway thats not the point.I could go on for some pages I'm sure but this is my start.

Frankly, I find this a little hypocrite since you are a native English speaker.
I my own personal experience I find many (of course not all) native English speakers much more demanding on non-native English speakers' English.
On the scale 1-10 I guess my German is about 2-3 and my English maybe 7. Still I find the Swiss very optimistic towards me when I try to speak German, simply because I am at least trying. I feel that I get much more of ha-your-english-is-so-stupid than ever with my German... It can be very frustrating actually.

Their minds are like elephants. They'll never forget a mistake you made. And they'll never admit to a mistake they made.

Not a very funny story though.

I'm not married to a Swiss but lovely Ausländer gal and end of the story

To be honest my wife is lovely and relatively normal..... but some of our Swiss acquintances well - lets just say if cleanliness is next to Godliness - then they're ready for cannonisation! Because when that toilet bowl sparkles like the first sunrise, you're crossing the fine line between anally retentive and basic hygene. I have never seen a race of people so obsessed with tidiness.

They are self righteous, deviate a bit from their 'straight path' and you are in trouble. They would think you are from zombieland and would joke about it with their friends..

Pardon my saying so, but isn't your post "racist or secretly discriminative" too? And not to put too fine a point on it, where you emanate from there plenty of the above too, speaking from personal experience.

And pardon me Silver7, but it would appear you're imperfect in English, too!

And of course all other nations are so much better

"My so slightly different nationality is sooo much better than yours"

Having lived considerable years outside of Switzerland, I would not necessarily say that it's much greener on the other side. So my "sweet half" was called "whitey" in India. Quite rude in my opinion, where mentioning on skin colour is so much not asked for.

Do I stop be Swiss when I emigrate to Canada Can I talk for mi wife she is Irish

Not married to a swiss , but with a half swiss family , ive often wondered if Aspergers and O.C.D. exist in switzerland , and more importantly ; if they do , how would anyone know ?

I gone remember that

Didn't actually get to the altar: perhaps a good thing in retrospect. However, was engaged to a Swiss chap way back in the 60s. As his mother was away one weekend, he took me to his home town, and very chastely [as was proper in those far-off days] I slept in his bed, and he slept in his mother's. Subsequently on his next w/e at home his mother quizzed him regarding the change of sheets and then remarked "You've had her here, haven't you?" which he confirmed. "No son of mine is going to marry an Uuslaender" she is reported to have said. When the boyfriend told me this, I answered "well now, you have to make your choice, either her or me". He did. It was his mother[!] which probably means I was saved from a fate worse than death. Many years later I heard that he had married an Argentinian girl..... but only after his mother had been put in an Altersheim!!!!!!!!!!!!

I find the brevity and scarcity of contributions to this thread very revealing.

Nobody came up with a funny story yet, I think you lot should marry me!!

Actually, I find it quite funny to read some of the input of others as my Swiss hubby is *nothing* like others have described.

His mother is fairly casual about cleanliness - about on level with my own mother actually. And, like my mother, she is much more concerned with how *I* clean than how *she* cleans. These comments regarding my cleaning habits also go for my landlady who opened my toilet to inspect it the other day when she stopped by while the plumber was working on my kitchen.

Meanwhile, hubby is a bit... hmm... too many people have already met me to reveal much. I'd rather they have a good opinion of him.

I'll just say that some how, some way, even with his mother being divorced and working to support him and his brother while they were growing up, he's got some very archaic ideas about marriage and division of duties - something I see as more stereotypically Italian (or Spanish and Latin American) than Swiss.

I am with Peg, I am more particular about housekeeping than my Swiss mother-in-law.

I probably have millions of stories but I am really not so sure how funny they would be to other people. But I will give it a try...

I am an American married to a Swiss. For the first few years of living here, anytime we visited another country and someone asked where we were from I would automatically answer "Switzerland". Made sense to me since I live here and this is where we flew from. My hubby would always correct me and say "Bullsh#t, you are American". Duh, okay, but they did ask where we were from and I live in Switzerland! We were living here a few years when we decided to wind up our annual trip to the US of A to visit family with a week in Puerto Rico. After arriving at our very nice hotel, we were immediately whisked away by the owner and subjected to a tour and lengthy description of the house including how long it had been in her family, how valuable everything was and were basically made to feel that we were lucky to have been given a chance to lay our heads there for a few nights. Very condescendingly she asked us where we flew in from. I was tired, didn't think about it and just said "Miami" since that was our last connection in the US. My hubby, always eager to correct me, explained to her that "But we are Swiss! We live in Switzerland!". I turned my head to him, gave him the look and then turned back to her and said "yea, right, we're Swiss". She must have thought we were nuts or lying or both.

Hubby's favorite story is about when he told his mother about me and that I was moving to Switzerland. She said "an American?! Can't you find a nice Swiss girlfriend? Wouldn't that be much easier?!". Believe it or not, my Swiss MIL and I are great friends now and she usually sides with me over my hubby. Who'd a thunk it?

LOL!
Actually, my hubby LIED to his mother about how we met. I'd been afraid of what she'd think about me being American and me being a lot older than he... and he'd lied about the whole thing.

Like you though, my m-i-l and I get along pretty well... and yes, often taking sides together against my hubby, usually teasingly but sometimes about more important things as well.

LOL! Well at least our MIL's understand that we are women...we have to stick together!

I would love to know what your hubby lied about!

My MIL loves it when she is sitting around with her Swiss Lady Friends, listening to them complain about their daughter-in-laws and how they don't keep a clean house, etc.. Mine always says that I do a great job and she has no complaints. But then adds in a very loud whisper "And she's American!"

Simon, if you let your hair down then I would marry you for sure, you sexy beast you!

P.S. have had too much to drink on Car-free-day in Germany