Where Do I Live Again?

Out one window,

and out the other.

Is It Something In The Water?

Last night as I was making some rice to have with dinner it occurred to me, as it frequently does, that these Swiss are crazy. They recommended cooking time for rice here seems to be 45-60 minutes for brown (which is what we were eating last night) and about half that for white rice*. Really? It's been a while since I cooked rice in what I like to annoy Reto by referring to as The Sensible Continent (=Australia, obviously. And then we have an argument about whether it actually is a continent or not, which Reto obviously always loses because he is wrong and foolish), but I'm sure brown rice cooks there in something like 25 minutes, and white rice in about half that time. And my (many many many) rice-cooking experiments in this country lead me to think that Australian estimates are far closer to the truth than Swiss ones.

Which reminds me of a conversation that I eavesdropped on some time ago, where my mother-in-law and brother-in-law were discussing corn on the cob, and whether we were, at the time, eating the fresh variety or the pre-cooked variety. There was some confusion for a while, and eventually my mother-in-law said "no, it's the fresh stuff; I boiled it for half an hour". I assumed she was joking and sort of laughed a bit, and then when I told them that I was under the impression that corn on the cob needs to be boiled for about 5 minutes it became clear that everyone thinks I have no idea about anything, can't cook and am probably feeding my family on nothing but hay and raw potatoes.

So what's going on? Why do we apparently need to cook everything forever in this wacky country? And why is the corn on the cob still so gristly and tough even after it's been tormented for all that time?






* I mean normal uncooked rice, not that horrible parboiled stuff which looks, tastes and smells weird and also doesn't really seem to even take much less time to cook anyway. I did read somewhere once that parboiled rice retains more of its nutritional value, but that doesn't convince me that it's worth eating.

Not To Be Neurotic Or Anything, But ...

My parents, who are visiting, brought me a bunch of old Good Weekend magazines (which comes with the paper on Saturdays, and which I love). In this one I'm reading now, the journalist flew to Geneva to interview someone. She says

"the two-hour train trip to Lausanne costs more than $100".

Hmm. Maybe she caught a regional train and stopped at every station there is between Geneva and Lausanne, and maybe she means a return first class trip, and maybe the exchange rate was very very very bad, but it seems to me that someone should be doing a better job of checking the facts.

Surely there are enough stereotypes about Switzerland that are true that we can gleefully repeat to others, without making up stuff that is just blatantly wrong? Incidentally, I always thought that the fear of draughts (as in movement of air, not the board game. Oh how the Swiss love board games) was a bit of a rumour. Apparently not.

Why The Swiss Are Odd (=Not Like Me)

Much as it's always possible to carry on about the stereotypes and how Switzerland is so different and everything is so clean/organised/punctual etc here, I'm not really a big fan of these generalisations and I don't really find them to be true anyway (although it was kind of funny the day the two Swiss women in my french class both instantly shot their hands in the air when the teacher asked "so who thinks punctuality is important?" and everyone else was sort of ambivalent. Oh, apart from the Japanese woman, who said that it's better not to arrive at all than to be late because being late is just so rude).

Anyway - "Switzerland, don't believe the stereotypes", is my experience. But two things that always strike me as being odd here (and it's entirely possible that I'm just extrapolating this from"things Reto and his family normally do" to "things ALL Swiss people do ALL THE TIME") are:
1. You often don't get enough cutlery in restaurants. It doesn't always happen, and I'm sure in fancier places it never happens, but I often find that you sit at a table with each place set with a single knife and fork, you order an entree and a main meal, your entree arrives and you eat it, and then you see your (Swiss) husband putting his used cutlery back down on the table so that it won't be taken away with the (now empty) entree plate, saving it for re-use with the main course. Really? They can't give us more cutlery? I suppose that if you do have your cutlery taken away that the waiter will bring you some more for your main meal, and who knows, maybe that's actually what happens normally, but I'm so in the habit now of saving my first lot of cutlery that it hardly even seems odd any more. I was kind of surprised to have to explain it to my family when they were here visiting in Dec/Jan.

2. I suspect Swiss people have a different serviette-using policy to me. Firstly, no one here ever puts their serviette (napkin?) on their lap when eating, which I was always under the impression was the polite thing to do. The main point of difference though, becomes clear at the end of the meal when my serviette is back on the table and all scrunched into a ball after I've finished using it (not that that implies I'm using it excessively or eating with my fingers or dripping food all over the place or generally making a mess. I don't think I am). Then you look at the serviette of Reto and you can hardly tell he's touched his, although he has. He has wiped his mouth/fingers/whatever with his serviette and then folded it into a nice neat rectangle, usually with the dirty bits not showing although that could be a coincidence, and put it back on the table where it was before the meal started, and it doesn't look like it's been used at all. Seriously, you hardly even see a crease in it. Which can be problematic if you come from the "slacker" school of table clearing and generally only take away the dirty things (leaving clean stuff there for the next time).

Being Australian

On Friday we celebrated Switzerland Day in a pleasantly Australian fashion, by going to a pub and eating crappy (excellent) pub food and drinking heaps of beer. Then we sat around for ages waiting for the fireworks to start, which also felt pleasantly familiar. Less normal was the hysteria of people letting their own fireworks off (what with that sort of thing being legal here) and seeing all the insanely gigantic bonfires around the place*.

In other Australia-heavy news, yesterday I bought a bottle brush! Sadly since we are apartment-bound types and we don't even have a balcony, it will have to survive in a tiny wee pot on our tiny wee window sill, but it still makes me feel outrageously patriotic or something.

(note the capsicums looking more accurately tiny in this photo than they did in the other one. Note also the tiny garden gnome Reto gave me for my birthday. Odd.)

* The first time I was in Switz on Switzo Day, a few years ago, I went to some sort of celebration in Reto's home town and they had the WORLD'S BIGGEST BONFIRE just near the carpark of the local town hall or something. We were all standing there and squillions of cars were parked there and about 3 metres away was this enormous blazing inferno. Odd.

Happy Switzerland Day!

*

And happy long weekend to me. Which is doubly nice in this land of non-long weekends, and where if the holiday falls on a weekend you don't get a weekday off in lieu!

* Note that I chose that cat for its William-Tell style enthusiasm for apples. Obviously.

A Slow And Cheesy Death

In other news from today, my cheese tolerance has gone up enormously. On the train on the way home from the zoo we were wondering what we would have for dinner and Reto said "let's have a fondue!". What with it being rainy and freezing and horrible today, and all our feet being all cold and pruney from having been rained on all afternoon, we both thought this was a super idea (and it's summer next week for crying out loud), so we bought all the cheese and wine and stuff, went home and scoffed the lot.

Back in my more inexperienced days of fondue, Reto and I used to struggle to get through a 2 person fondue (which is 400g of cheese). Today we were practically licking the caquelon*, and talking about what we could have for dessert**.

No doubt my arteries won't forgive me anywhere near as easily as my stomach has.




* Fondue pot thingie
** chocolate, as it turned out. Talk about Swissification.

Shut Up! Or Don't ....

How seriously do we take the silent compartment* in trains?

Yesterday I sat in one for the first time in a long time. Two nuns went in just ahead of me, and they were chatting as they went in. They continued chatting (in a quiet and nun-appropriate sort of way, but still) and after a few moments the girl in the seat next to them told them to shut the hell up (or politer words to that effect). They complied in a nun-appropriate way.

Today I sat in another compartimento del silenzio (or whatever it is), and some dude spoke LOUDLY on his mobile phone. He was sitting opposite a stranger, and the stranger tried to encourage him to speak more quietly or to go somewhere else and have his conversation or to wait until later, but the man was adamant that he HAD TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION NOW AND IT WOULD ONLY TAKE A MOMENT. While he was on the phone I was wondering if I should tell him to shut the hell up, but then someone else's phone rang, and then someone else's, and so all of a sudden me and the cranky old man adjacent to me were the only ones not on the phone. Everyone hung up after a while, and it was silent again, but then the original phone man ended up having another 2 phone calls in the space of the 45 minute train trip, the last one of which he put on speaker phone (!!) because apparently the reception was so bad he couldn't hear anything any other way.

In general I don't particularly care, but this man was so blatant in his non-silence. Is this because he is a general flouter of rules (and therefore likely to react badly to being told what to do), or because he didn't know it was a silent compartment (and therefore likely to slink off with his tail between his legs when yelled at)? Should I have asked him to shut up? Should someone else? Since I was apparently unwilling to get into any sort of argument with a stranger in a language not my own, I didn't say anything. And nor did anyone else. And I don't know if I approve or not**.





* Some bits of some trains are designated silent, and there small, quiet signs everywhere telling you this in 4 languages and pictograms. In general, people seem to take the silence thing quite seriously, so you never normally have to think about whether you should try to enforce it or not.
** The very fact that I have even considered telling strangers to shut up makes me worry that I am embracing the least endearing aspects of Switziness far too much. Sigh.

Dress Ups

This town is positively a-twitter with monks and nuns. There are monasteries and nunneries all over the place, and for some reason it's always strange to see these people dressed in their old-fangled outfits (long sweeping robes and funny hats and so on) getting around doing normal things, like catching the train or going to the supermarket. Much like it's also strange to see normal people (such as my husband) dressed as army people, hanging around and smoking and loitering at the train stations with their enormous, ridiculous guns. It's like there's some elaborate dress-ups game going on, and I haven't been invited*.




* Not that I necessarily want to be invited to a life of austere chastity, or to one of being trained up to kill people

Am I Becoming More Swiss?

Yes: The other night I cooked Swiss-type food for the first time ever (as long as you don't count all that fondue, or the zopf I once made in Sydney, which personally I don't)
No: I made a very inauthentic version of a very Swiss dish (Zürcher geschnwhatso, which, for those of you who don't know, don't want to read the german entry and/or don't like bothering with links, is a dish with a name it's hard to keep track of (not that it changes or anything, just that it has too many jarring consonants in it to be bothered with) and involves the holy Swiss trinity of meat (veal), dairy products (a creamy sauce) and potatoes (it's typically served with rösti, aka grated and fried potatoes))
Yes: But the recipe I followed was from a Hiltl cookbook, which probably makes it quite authentically Swiss. And even twice as Swiss if you consider that the cookbook was a present from a Swiss friend
No: And I think the fact that it was completely inauthentic made it all the yummier, because really, I can't stand the more standard version
Yes: I made pretty bog-standard rösti to go with it, which gets a big Swiss tick, I think
No: The recipe I followed was veggo, which isn't really within the Swiss eating ethos at all. And not just veggo, but veggo with a decent source of protein, ie. tofu as a substitute for meat (as opposed to the completely lame veggo meals you usually see on offer, not just in this country but all over the place in my experience, that are composed entirely of vegetables or cheese or something, as though legumes and nuts and pulses and whatnot aren't a valuable and vital part of a healthy vegetarian diet. I have quite strong feelings on this topic, and there's nothing I resent more than seeing that the only vegetarian option on offer is some lame "vegetable stack", whatever that is. Note, incidentally, that I am not actually a vegetarian but I am CRANKY NONETHELESS)

So what's the conclusion? I dunno. I really quite enjoyed our tofu geschnthingies, and even Reto enjoyed it (against everyone's expectations. Apparently he doesn't like tofu or mushrooms or onions, which are basically the only ingredients I used apart from cream and flour and stuff). I may even cook it again one day. I would never cook the veal version myself, though, nor order it in a restaurant. Hmm.

Good Day To Be A Cow

Today while I was slaving over a hot french textbook (by which I am trying to refer to the saying "slaving over a hot stove", not to imply that my french textbook is either stolen or lewd) Reto went off for a jaunt in the countryside. By which I mean he sat on trains for about 3 zillion years to get to his dad's place to retrieve assorted junk that we have left there.

The people who live over the road from Reto's dad are farmers, and apparently today was the day that they let the cows out of the barn after the long cold winter. Reto was there when the barn doors were opened, and as opposed to their usual disinterested dawdle up the road, today when they got outside they were running, practically frolicking! What a happy day for cows!

Super Things That Happened Over Easter*

1. It snowed a lot. While this may well be picturesque and adorable and just the sort of weather I like to say that I like, it might not actually be super. It was freezing, my coat is not very snow-proof, and my hands have a tendency to shut off the blood flow when it gets below about 5 degrees C. But it did look pretty, especially on all those trips to Zurich which involve catching the train up and over the hill, so you see it get snowier and snowier and then less and less snowy. Which is always entertaining for some reason.

2. After wandering around in the icy air at the local Easter markets this morning, my hands did their usual trick of turning numb then icy white and bloodless. Happily they stopped short of turning gangrenous and rotten, but it was fairly unpleasant nonetheless. Actually, who am I kidding? I love it when my fingers do this. I enjoy the horror/sympathy it evokes. Although sadly Reto is fairly immune to it these days and he is the main person whose sympathy I enjoy.

3. I learnt a bunch of stuff. On Friday we went to a friend's place for lunch (although I'm not really sure if it still counts as a lunch event if you don't leave until 10.30pm) and apart from all the excellent eating and drinking and chatting and loitering and showing of wedding photos, we also played the latest Australian edition of Trivial Pursuit. Although the three Australians in the room were at an obvious advantage (who else would know what rugby league team is represented by a sea eagle?), as it turns out a good trick in this particular game is, if you don't know the answer, just say either "Australia" or "Peter Carey" and you will probably be right anyway.

4. I saw a really large bank note, both in terms of size and monetary value. Today Reto and I bought ourselves some super-duper-go-everywhere-and-pay-a-fortune-for-the-privilege-but-never-buy-a-train-ticket-again train tickets (aka GAs, which I believe stands for General Abonnement and lets you go practically everywhere in Switzo), which we paid for up front. We decided to do this in cash, and so we went to the bank and so for the first time I saw a 1000 franc note, which was purple and enooormously long and had a picture of Jacob Burkhardt, the well known Swiss historian, on it. It's funny how many people are Swiss. Well, there aren't really that many of them, but I am often to surprised to learn that famous people are from Switzerland. Like Marat, the dude who was killed in the bath during the French revolution. Huh. I don't think he's on a bank note though.

5. I hung out with even more Australians. Apart from the ones mentioned in Number 3, I also went out for dinner one night with a really good Swiss friend and his Australian friend who is visiting. It's practicallylike I never left, if you just ignore all the foreign languages and snow and so on.

6. I caught a wacky temporary ferry. I have done a bit of this lately. Every time you see a river with a walking track and more than about 5 people on the track there seems to be some sort of volunteer-run, free-but-give-us-a-donation type ferry manned by people who want to paddle you the 10 metres or so to the other side (where there's always a cafe and an array of yummy icecreamy desserts awaiting your arrival). Today's was there especially for the easter markets and it was far more technologically advanced than the one we went on last weekend (this one was powered by an outboard motor, as opposed to last week's oarsmen) but it was still extremely charming. And freezing. And popular.

7. I failed to call my parents. Apparently the phone card thingie that I usually use has become completely pathetic and unreliable, and so I think I might toy with joining the Skype age. Finally. It seems ridiculous to have spent years in an international relationship and then years more living on the other side of the world from everyone and to never have even looked into using Skype. Any second now, though, I might give it a go.



* And possibly some not-so-super things

Stray Photo For The Day

This is apparently the Swiss Corner at my parents' house.

The calendar was a christmas present from Reto and I, the cuckoo clock was apparently my father's long-held dream, realised about 15 years ago when we went on a European Adventure, including a brief whiz around Switz. I think the clock might be broken now (not such a disaster after my parents having to listen to it cuckooing every quarter of an hour every day for more than a decade) but that certianly doesn't mean it's going to be thrown out.

Carrot Wonderland

Today is the day of the much-anticipated Aarau Rüeblimärt, aka carrot festival, aka the day the town turns into a carrot wonderland. Try as I sort of did to keep my hopes realistically low, I was quite excited about the whole thing, and I'm not even such a fan of carrots (although I do like them, but only really raw. Or in juice form. Cooked carrots leave me cold. And in a slightly-related story, I used to have a friend who once ate so many carrots that she turned kinda orange. Which was funny).

Anyway, carrot wonderland. Reto and I wandered off to the main drag (or near enough) where the carrot market (because that's all that a carrot wonderland consists of, apparently) was being held. I had a checklist of things I was expecting from the carrot fest, and the only thing I was disappointed by was the absence of a person dressed as a bunny. There were carrots galore (obviously, but also in a veritable rainbow of colours and shapes. Who knew that carrots came in other shapes?), all manner of baked carrot products (carrot cakes, carrot muffins, carrot bread etc), carrot soup, carrot jam, carrot cheese (ergh), carrot pizza (again), carrot art, fake carrot decorative items, real carrot decorative items, and, possibly best of all (and definitely better than a person dressed as a bunny), a stallholder dressed as a carrot.

Sadly we both somehow forgot to take any money with us, and so none of this wealth of carroty goodness could be ours, but at least we are rich in memories. Or something.

UPDATE: We went back to the market and bought a bunch of carrots. Which are delicious, but they were a total ripoff (4CHF, aka about $4 for that crappy bunch!). In other news, the main drag (not the same one as the carrot wonderland one, but the actual main drag that actual traffic drives along) was plunged into some sort of chemical hazard disaster situation. The road has been totally blocked off for a few hours (and still with no signs of being opened to traffic again in the near future when we last saw it) with firetrucks galore, some sort of chemical hazard people, lots of floodlights and all sorts of pipes and hoses everywhere. It all seems to involve some chemical-transporting vehicle. We are keeping an eye on the local news.

Goats Etc

I had such a goat-packed weekend. Which is something that I don't think I've ever had the chance to say before.

On Saturday night Reto and I went to see Circus Monti. I haven't seens a circus since I was a wee young thing, but happily this one was really quite adult-friendly, and featured no clowns whatsoever, no audience participation, almost no kiddies in the audience and no putting of heads into the mouths of lions. Instead there were performing goats (kind of poorly performing in some instances, which really added to their charm rather than detracting from it), lots of juggling and leaping and falling over, all those circusy things that you would expect like tightropes and trapezes and good looking, well-muscled young men, and all those circusy things that apparently people here would expect but that came as a bit of a surprise to me, like crepes (apparently crepes are to Switzy circuses what fairy floss is to Australian circuses. Although they also had fairy floss for sale as well. We ate a crepe though. Not lemon and sugar, sadly, but banana and chocolate, which was kind of horrible). Anyway, the circus was full of high points (I think I liked the tiny woman who juggled the enormous ceramic pot plant pot thing, and the table (not at the same time) on her feet the most) and had one small but influential low point - the seats were really uncomfortable. So much so that I could hardly move by the time it was over and have been in absolute agony ever since, including all of yesterday, when ...

Reto and I went on an excursion to Engelberg with his parents. We had planned to go somewhere else, but the weather was deemed inclement, so we went to Engelberg instead, where it was all blue (sky) and green (grass) and white (glaciers. Or maybe just snow, I don't know) and lovely. We walked around and gawked at the scenery and the many thousands of parapenters, and I became progressively more and more crippled as the pain from my back spread down my leg and up my neck and basically everywhere. It was really a lovely day for it, though.

The goaty highlight of that day was this weird sort of small and temporary saleyard that was set up in a parking lot that we passed by on our way to Engelberg. A bunch of people had brough along a bunch of goats and sheep and tethered them to some fences, and then assorted passers by (like us) turned up and gawked a bit and considered buying a sheep/goat. Presumably some people went there deliberately with the intention of actually purchasing some livestock, but we only stopped there because we were passing by and it looked wacky. And so sadly we didn't buy anything (where does one keep a sheep or goat when one lives in a one room flat on the 8th floor?) but I did pat some baby goats and a few adorable little puppies, and I successfully managed not to get bitten by anything.

A successful day all round. If you don't count the cripple thing.

Movies n Music

Well, yesterday was an excellent day of loafing and culture. Reto finished this big hideous exam that he has spent the past zillion years studying for on Thursday, so he spent the first half of Sunday being sort of hung over and vile, but by the afternoon everything was shipshape again (relatively).

We went to Zurich and availed ourselves of some more of the Film Fest. We saw this Spanish film called La Caja (aka The Wooden Box, although I do wonder if that should really have been "The Coffin"or similar, which seems more likely. Apparently I don't wonder enough to go and look at a spanglish dictionary though), which was really great and dark and full of secrets and grimness. There was a question and answer thing afterwards with the director, not something I normally enjoy much, but at this screening there were only about 50 people and so the whole thing had a really intimate feel. People were asking questions in all sorts of languages (well, spanish and german and english) and it all had a really informal, friendly, funny vibe, which is really pretty different from the Q&As I am used to at the Sydney Film Fest, which are often more about people pontificating and showing off. Interestingly, the movie only had english subtitles, and it was all in spanish. No german in sight.

After that we had some dinner and then went and saw a Crowded House concert with my Australian Zurich friends, Sarah and Kathryn, which was really fun. It was a nice change to be surrounded by english-speakers (let alone english-speakers with Australian and New Zealandy accents!) and to be able to eavesdrop on people with ease (not that anyone was saying much worth eavesdropping on). We stood behind the sound desk for the concert, which I always enjoy because it usually makes it easy to see the stage, and also because I enjoy spying on the set list (or whatever it's called) and spoiling the surprise for myself. As you would expect, they played some new stuff (which no one knew), lots of old stuff (which everyone knew), and the odd bit of this and that. Interestingly, Davey Lane was part of the band.

Swiss people, as it turns out, are strange in crowd situations. They have this mysterious mock mexican wave thing that they do that involves holding both arms out in front of you and waggling your fingers in a "spirit fingers" kinda way while simultaneously humming a constant note (ie. making you look like a zombie having a fit), and then ideally I think someone at the front sort of takes charge so everyone knows when they can then wave their arms in the air in a more traditional mexican wave type style (except not around in a circle as in an arena, but more of a front to back thing). I have seen this a few times (at the schwinging, and at this concert we went to in Baden a while ago), and people sort of tried to do it last night at the concert, but it was evidently confusing for the Crowdies. The first time it happened the humming was much more prominent than the hand wobbling (I think the lights were down) and Neil Finn dealt with it admirably by assuming we were giving him a note and then he turned it into "Friday I'm In Love", which was funny. The second time the hands were everywhere and the humming was nowhere and Neil looked confused for a while, then he tried to join in a bit as well and started waving his fingers in more of a "black and white minstrel" (or at least black-and-white-minstrel-as-featured-on-The-Goodies) sort of way. Then everyone sort of gave up (which we surmised might have had something to do with the fact that the audience was probably less Switzies and more antipodeans). Katherine, who is quite the veteran of Zurich living (7 years!), says it's always interesting to see how foreign bands deal with the zombie wave. I think the Crowdies coped admirably. Hopefully the next chance I have to see will be in November, when the Cat Empire are touring Yay!

The Cold Hard Light Of Day

My sunnies broke the other day. It's not the first time, and they are only a crappy cheap pair from Manor, but I still have every desire to rescue them and none to go and try to find a new pair, and so I have been forced to try to fix them myself. The tiny screw that holds the arm on fell out unexpectedly while I was in a cafe the other day, and so after grubbing around fruitlessly on the floor for five minutes I gave up, went home, experimented with a toothpick and then mangled apart the biggest paperclip you have ever seen to create this:


Which is not ideal. Not only do I have an enormous metal spike living dangerously close to my eye, in this land of excessive kissing I am also in danger of inadvertently poking other people's eyes out too when they lean in for the kill. I mean kiss.

So consider yourself warned. Until such time as I get new sunnies or some sort of metal clipping device, I pose a great threat to your future visual opportunities (assuming we meet and I kiss you. Or you kiss me).

Apple Day

Yesterday was apparently Apple Day, which meant that farmers (or possibly not really, because I imagine they have better things to do. Strapping outdoorsy-looking and kinda hairy young men, in Aarau's case) were giving away apples at the train stations and on buses* and so on. The apple I had was the most delicious apple I have had in a long time**, so crispy and crunchy and not too sweet. Yum.

* The strapping/outdoorsy/hairy men weren't on the buses, actually. I saw only unmanned boxes of apples on the buses. The men were at the train station.

** With the possible exception of an apple I had at lunchtime yesterday, actually, which was in this weird salad that seemed to involve little except slices of Granny Smith and a bunch of mushed up avocado. Possibly some lemon juice or something as well, I suppose, because it hadn't browned at all. It was absolutely delicious, and kind of odd.

On The Hustings

All the electioneering that is going on in Switz at the moment is kind of interesting. The blurbs we get in the mail are reliably entertaining (usually as a result of the funny photos of politicians trying to prove what normal people they are by being photographed with their binoculars (because they are such birdwatching fans, or because they are peeping toms?) or while cooking vast quantities of hearty Swiss fare (because they want to nourish the nation, or because they want us all to die of roesti-induced heart attacks?). Sometimes because of the rage-inducing racism, apparently, but we haven't got any of those here. Yet). People are enthusiastically embracing the poster vandalism, which I will probably bring you some photographic evidence of one day.

Now I hear that a website has been set up so that foreigners living here can (unofficially) vote in the elections too. Which I think is a great idea. Come on, everyone! Cast your pretend vote!

Howard Out (of switzerland)

Oh, and then there's this version of the SVP poster (one of many that I found while googling idly the other day). I presume the dude is supposed to be Christoph Blocher from the SVP, but don't you think he bears a striking resemblance to our own proud leader*?

* I mean John Howard, for those of you who are UnAustralian.