East Eats West

Doggywösch

Picture: The dream of every car-owner: his car in the living-room!

As all of you know I do not own a car. Nevertheless I am interested in cars and even more in the relationships people have with their cars. When I heard that a family-owned Swiss car wash chain will open a new high-end car wash in Zurich, I decided I had to go to check it out! Because it is absolutely not a normal car wash by far! While your car’s exterior is gently washed by a high-tech machinery, skilful hands clean the inside of the car. In the meantime you can relax and have a drink at the fashionable bar upstairs that has a splendid lake view (the bar even serves alcohol). And the funkiest feature of the one-stop-cleaning-solution is a “doggywösch”, or dog parlour! So next time you want to have your new Range Rover and your Chihuahua washed, drive to the Autop car wash in Zurich and enjoy a sip of non-alcoholic orange juice in an ambience every Russian would love!

http://www.autop.ch/

Visiting Geneva

Picture: Geneva making a splash.

Geneva is internationally better known than Zurich as it hosts several big international organizations like the United Nations. Geneva is also where Calvinism, also known as the Christian Reformed Tradition, a variety of the Protestant Church, took roots in the 16th century. John Calvin was a French reformer who was exiled to Geneva and because he published books about Christianity and faith. His views spread from Geneva all over Europe and was taken on by Huldrich Zwingli in Zurich, for example. Besides a marvellous old town with the cathedral where Calvin used to preach, Geneva has a wonderful lake and is close to the French Alps, which offer good skiing. At the same time Geneva is posh as for example the King of Saudi Arabia regularly visits Geneva for banking and leisure. Where Zurich is understated and muted, Geneva can be boastful and extravagant.

Geneva’s Rue du Rhone is also a prime shopping destination, boasting the new flagship store of Patek Philippe. The store is fortified like a bank and all the watches are behind bullet-proof glass. One only can enter the store through a very solid double door that is operated by a guard. It felt a bit like in the good old days of banking.

For more pictures click here: http://easteatswest.typepad.com/photos/geneva_switzerland/index.html

Read more about Calvinism here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism

Fore more visiting information go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva#Monuments_and_landmarks

Morgenstraich

This year again I went to the traditional “Morgenstraich” in

Basel

, the start of the annual carnival. The Morgenstraich starts on Monday morning at 4am with a big procession through the old town of Basel. It is always magical to hear the pipes and drums.

 

Indian businesses...not in Zurich

I recently had dinner with a representative of the Greater Zurich area marketing unit that tries to sell Zurich and its surroundings to foreign companies as an attractive place to set up a company. Apparently most foreign companies come from Germany, followed by the USA. The marketing unit also tries to attract more Indian companies. They invite the top management to Zurich and organize meetings with international companies already based in Zurich. The Indians seem to be always very keen but eventually never make any decision. On the contrary, they tend to come up with a long list of tedious questions they want to have answered by the CEOs they meet. Looks like Indian managers are even fussier than Swiss managers!

PS: American companies apparently prefer Switzerland to the Netherlands as the Swiss are perceived to be harder working and drop in on work also on Saturday.

Stones in balance

Each weekend a young man, who looks a bit like Che Guevara, displays enviable patience while finely arranging stones to balance upon one another by the lake side of Zurich. It is soothing to watch him while swans and ducks majestically swim by.

Swiss bashing

Zurich has become a hub for international companies like Google who have set up their European headquarter and expats moving to Zurich can draw on a wealth of resources about moving here. One popular website that caters to the big expat community in Zurich is called englishforum.ch. The website features forums that discuss issues like how to get divorced in Switzerland, how to bring a bike into Switzerland, how to get a diaper changing table or even how to do your taxes. But there are also some spicier issues discussed question if Swiss could be racists. This answer triggered almost 2’000 replies, some of them not very charming for the Swiss as most foreigners are shocked to learn that the Swiss tend not to be very politically correct when it comes to ethnicity or nationality. Swiss make demeaning statements about foreigners to another foreigner and then say, "oh, we don't mean you when we talk about foreigners, you aren't like the others". It has not gone unnoticed by foreigners living in Zurich that particularly people from former Yugoslavia are frowned upon by Swiss. Interestingly over a third of Swiss men nowadays marry foreign women.

http://www.englishforum.ch/complaints-corner/172-swiss-racist.html

Here are a few other websites aimed at expats living in Switzerland:

www.glocals.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Expats-in-Zurich/

www.swissinfo.ch

Enhanced pictures

Picture: Before and after using Picasa.

Sometimes the internet offers a brief moment of joy and pure astonishment. I recently had such a moment when I used Picasa, a free photoshop program by Google, to work on my pictures for my blog. It was outrageously easy to use and my pictures looked much more professional. Try it yourself and see the difference! Some blog-programs even support Picasa so you can upload your pictures in a breeze.

You can download the program for free here: http://picasa.google.com/

Chandeliers and Buddhas

With globalization streamlining most retail shops it is nowadays hard to find a truly original shop in Zurich; hard but not impossible. A unique shop I recently came across is called Timbuktu Store and it features a variety of artefacts; from chandeliers, Buddha figurines, Jade dragons to little erotic Asian figurines. The owner of the shop, Andy Wiler, travelled the world for years before he decided to settle in Zurich. You can find his shop in the Seefeld area in Zurich or visit his homepage here: http://www.kristallleuchter.ch/frame.htm

Walk and be happy!

Picture: A broken down Aston Martin with an unhappy owner.

According to various studies about happiness the length of the daily commute is a key factor in personal happiness (I must be a very happy person then as I walk to work in ten minutes). While I walk I closely study the behaviour of my fellow commuters who are cramped into cars. After observing car drivers for quite a while I cannot help but think that people in expensive sports cars behave more aggressively than people in less status-driven cars. I believe that the type of car, and the status it gives the driver can affect the driving behaviour. As I do not have a car of my own but use the clever rental car system by Mobility, I personally witness the effect of a no-status car like the Mobility cars. All the mobility cars are red and it says Mobility on it in big letters. The cars tend to be small with small engines. I have observed many times that whenever I drive such a car I get away with sloppy driving and no one gets upset about it. Why? Because the red Mobility cars say one thing: occassional non-status driver. Or put otherwise: I am no threat to any alpha-males.

How to improve the world by donating money wisely

I read that the Red Cross had a bumper year in 2007 with record donations. I guess the state of the world economy helped to attract donors. Every time before Christmas charities fight for attention in either directly approaching pedestrians or tempting them with advertisement. Each year I am therefore confronted with the dilemma of where to donate. The Economist recently gave answers of what to look for in charities. According to Unicef and the World Health Organisation (WHO) the biggest killer of children is still hunger. According to the WHO, poverty is the “gravest single threat to the world’s public health”. Malnutrition is still wide-spread and simple measures like breast-feeding, food supplements or better hygiene can save millions of children.

On another trajectory the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that growth does not cause environmental damage per se. Analysis suggests that as poor countries get richer, they usually invest heavily in environmental improvements. But economic growth itself does not lead to environmental improvement, only growth combined with good governance does. And protection laws only work if the enforcement works. Therefore it is not surprising that Switzerland ranks top on the Environmental Performance Index by the WEF. But what surprises is that for example Costa Rica ranks above Britain or Iceland and Belgium is worse that the United States. So should you look for charities, look for charities that enforce good governance and that fight hunger.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10566634 

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10566738