The other week at around 7am I took Monty out for his morning walk/pee/poop. Not yet fully caffeinated, but luckily wearing a bra, I exited from the door of my tiny apartment building when I noticed a van parked in front. It was from a heating company. A man, probably from said company, exits the building behind me. He starts explaining something to me, not in German or Romansch, the two official local languages, but in Italian.
I stared at him blankly. Italian is tough for me in a strange way, not just because I don’t speak, but because I speak Spanish, which tricks me into thinking I speak Italian. Then I open my mouth to respond, and no words come out because, of course, I don’t speak any Italian at all.
“No parlo Italiano,” I say. It seems like he’s just trying to explain to me that he did something to the heating in the building, which isn’t really something I need to know since I’m not the owner and I don’t pay the heating bill.
“Tedesco?” he asks in reply. Tedesco. The word sounds familiar, and I search my uncaffeinated brain for a definition. I stare at him in silence for a good 10 seconds, which doesn’t sound like a long time, but it is pretty awkward if you count it out. I remember. Tedesco is Italian for German.
“Aleman?” I ask for clarity, which is the word for German in French and Spanish. When he nods, I say “Ein bisschen,” which means a little. Then he starts to explain whatever he was explaining now in German. I still don’t quite get it and I don’t have a response. I just nod and say “Ja, danke” and leave.
Sometimes when I’m out walking Monty and someone hears my shitty German, they start speaking to me in Italian. When that doesn’t work, they’ll switch to English. At the grocery store one of the men chooses to speak to me in Italian. I’ve heard him speak to other people in fluent German.
I feel a little like I’ve been tricked. I came to Switzerland with the understanding that I’d need to learn German, a language that until I met Sam appealed to me less than probably any other language I’d ever heard. But I’d accepted that, and I started to like German, especially Swiss German with all its little “-li”s at the end of words and it’s ridiculous “ch” sounds. So it feels like a bit of a “gotcha” when you’re told that you need to learn German but all you hear around you is Italian.
We live less than an hour from the Italian border, and even closer to a small, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland which is not Ticino. There are more than a few Italians who commute in everyday to where Sam works given the lower cost of living in Italy and the higher wages in Switzerland.
Not that I wouldn’t love to learn Italian by the way. Italian is beautiful and similar to Spanish and there’s so much more gelato in Italy than in Switzerland. But I really only have the brain space for one language at a time.
Which is maybe another problem. It seems like here, not only do people speak multiple languages, but they can switch back and forth between them seamlessly. I speak English obviously, and pretty decent Spanish, and now some German (and theoretically some French that I studied for a billion years at UNIS). My Spanish is way better than my German, yet because I’m here and surrounded by German, I actually have a lot of trouble pulling up my Spanish. It’s like it’s dormant. The other weekend, we had dinner with a couple that we know from Spanish school in Argentina, another love story out of that place.
Angie is from Argentina and her husband Miguel is from Switzerland. They now live near Zurich where she teaches English and Spanish. When we went over for dinner, I assumed it would be a great chance for me to whip out my Spanish, which is of course better than my German. And yet, my Spanish seemed stuck. German, while definitely spoken with many, many errors, actually came more easily. Meanwhile Angie bounced back and forth between perfect Spanish, near-perfect English, and what Sam tells me is near-perfect German seemingly without a thought.
Maybe it’s something I’ll learn in time, to switch easily between languages, living in such a multi-lingual country in such a multi-lingual continent. It’s definitely, to me, an amazing skill I hope to cultivate.
In other news, we went to a Weihnachtsmarkt on Saturday. Those things really are magical. It had mulled wine, roasted chestnuts, grilled meats, melty cheese, and lots of crafts and Knick knacks. It also had some fire pits around, which was extremely helpful given that it was massively cold.
I am something of Grinch, not that I hate Christmas, but that I am one of those “war on Christmas” people Donald Trump talks about who insists and saying “Happy Holidays” and gets a little annoyed when someone automatically says “Merry Christmas” to me, but those markets are pretty special.
Chestnuts roasting!
Also, the Christmas traditions here are definitely different than the ones in America. First of all, here Santa doesn’t come overnight on the 24th, he comes on December 6th. He comes with a helper named “Schmutzli” and they don’t really give out presents, they give out mandarins and chocolate and nuts. And apparently their purpose is kind of to scare kids. When you’re little, Schmutzli comes to your house and makes you recite a Psalm and if you do a good job, you get treats and if you do madly, he hits you with a bunch of sticks. Santa and Schmutzli were at the Christmas market but luckily they just gave treats to all the kids.
Then on the 24th in the evening, kids open presents. I’m still kind of unclear as to if the kids understand that their parents bought them, or if they think the Christmas angel brings them. Also advent calendars are big business here.
The weather here is at the moment very snowy and cold and gray. I'm heading back to Chapel Hill for just under two weeks on Wednesday, but my understanding is it's snowing there too! I guess you just take the weather with you. Anyway, if all goes according to plan, back to the U.S. for a brief time!