Zurich - Arabic Classes

Volkshochschule, Zurich

I didn’t want to lose what little Egyptian Arabic I’d learned over the last year or so; indeed, I would really like to progress, if at all possible.

It was a bit tricky deciding how to go about this. I thought about a personal instructor, but that was very expensive. Also, the more I thought about it, the more unsure I was about what exactly I wanted out of the classes (it was a natural question for them to ask of me!). I wanted to know too many things and I didn’t know what to prioritise.

I would really like to be able to read Arabic fluently and understand the television. If I could do that, I could quickly improve. However, the dialect spoken on television changes depending on which country’s channel you are watching. I believe the news is in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Most subtitles on films and most writing is in MSA.

I also want to understand the people in Egypt when they are speaking so that I can regain a sense of control in situations and feel I can halfway belong. I want to speak their language and not seem such an idiot or seem so rude by demanding they speak English. But Egyptian Arabic is a world away from MSA.

The more I looked into it, the more difficult it was. MSA has more rules and is more difficult, but is what everyone learns. However, no-one speaks it. It’s not even like High German, where at least the Germans speak German, so if you learn German in Switzerland, even though you may not understand the Swiss-German speakers, you will be able to read things and you just need to cross the border and everyone’s speaking the language you learned. For Arabic, you learn MSA, go to an Arabic country, and they’re all speaking something completely different, and different from each other, too. And none of it is MSA. Help!

In the Arabic countries, so I understand, each nation speaks its own language but calls it Arabic, and no-one speaks MSA. All writing and maybe some TV is in MSA, though. So what’s it best for me to learn?

I ended up deciding on a course on MSA – it was cheaper than private tuition in Egyptian Arabic (it also seemed too bizarre to pay Swiss prices for tuition that would be cheaper in Egypt) and I decided it would do me no harm to learn what they all learn at school. I didn’t want to start at the very beginning again, so I jumped in at second semester.

I felt a bit nervous about it as I was in among all the Swiss people, so I was dealing with two foreign languages all at once. And, of course, I was entering a class where everyone already knew each other and everyone had exactly the same background of Arabic learning. Apart from me.

Tom and Kath had given me a CD of Arabic, so I worked through that religiously for two weeks before starting. It wasn’t until it was time for me to start the classes that I suddenly realised it wasn’t MSA but was Arabic in the Levant. So, it was different from Egyptian Arabic, but still wasn’t MSA. Ugh.

But how different can it really be? I’d surely be OK. Especially now that I had a smattering of two different types of Arabic already.

Fortunately, the class was in High German, so I had no problems understanding the teacher. The class was quite small – only 8 of us and I was the only foreigner. The small group made it a bit easier. I was delighted when he started off saying we would learn past tense by the end of the semester, but he since seems to have completely forgotten that (although, he just started it again last week).

Anyway, the first class was a complete shock to me. It was all so very different from what I’d learned. “What’s your name?” was different (I’d originally thought, when I tried speaking to Yasser in Arabic, that he had been being difficult by putting on a strange accent that I couldn’t understand – I now realise he was speaking MSA to me rather than the Egyptian Arabic that I’d been learning). The word for “yes” was different (Safi had already told me this and I’d seen it from reading TV subtitles), you say “how are you?” in a completely different way, the word for “what” was new, as was the word for “teacher”, “friend”, oh, just so many terms that I thought I knew and now I didn’t; some words were the same but pronounced quite differently. I felt quite lost as I just didn’t know much of the vocabulary at all. They’d also learned quite a lot of words I’d never taught myself (for one word I didn’t even know the German!).

We were also reading from Arabic script. I was pretty impressed that they’d learned that within one semester, but I found myself struggling because I had the disadvantage of not knowing the words in the first place. Also, they’ve been learning to read with the vowels included (which are usually omitted), which I hadn’t learned, so I’ve had to pick that up as I’ve gone along.

It was interesting to be in a class, though, as you get extra information and you can ask questions. I learned that Al Jazeera means The Island, Algeria in Arabic is the word for “The Islands”, and that the Taliban means “the students”, which I’m sure I knew, but I’d completely forgotten, but now makes a lot more sense.

Anyway, I felt renewed enthusiasm after my first class and so I signed up for the whole semester. Let’s see how it goes.

Zurich - Internet Problems

My Old Office - With Internet

Well, I’m back online again. It was a rather strange four days without my own internet access – even in Egypt, I’ve never been without internet for that long, so everything was starting to feel very un-Swiss.

I was on the internet Wednesday evening, I woke up on Thursday and it just wasn’t functioning. I went to work, thinking it would have resolved itself by the time I got back home (that’s what happens in Egypt, after all), but when I got back, the connection was still dead. I had wifi, but no internet (I don’t understand that!).

I will usually avoid using the phone all costs. However, internet access is one thing that I will finally pick up my mobile for and use it. At least the conversation would be in German and not in Arabic or an Egyptian speaking English that I can’t understand due to some fault of my own.

But I also hate helplines. At least they had an English service. After wading through the obligatory menu system and intervening adverts, I sat and waited on the phone for 40 minutes. The muzaak sounded like it was on a tape that was getting worn out. I began to wonder if perhaps their lines were actually closed. I got fed up and hung up. Then after half an hour, I was too itchy about not having any internet, so I phoned up again. I did wonder if they would have more people on the German-speaking helpline, but I stuck with the English one in the end. After half an hour, someone answered the phone. I’d decided to busy myself with playing a game on my tablet in the mean time.

I must have been on the phone with him for 45 minutes (thus explaining the long wait times!), only to find that he couldn’t resolve it. He said he’d send me a dongle. I asked if I could pick it up from the shop (thinking that it would take a long time for it to come through the post because the weekend was fast approaching), but no, it had to be done by post.

I hoped for a miracle, but the next morning, my internet was still non-existent.

It happened to be the day we were moving offices at work, so I should have been working from home. Instead, I ended up going into the office, was asked to go somewhere else when they moved my stuff, and I ended up sitting all alone in one of the meeting rooms. There were only about three people in the whole building.

I got a call on my personal mobile. It was Swisscom; they wanted me to go home to do a few more tests on my connection.

After another long phone call, it was decided again that they couldn’t do anything about it. I now faced a weekend without the internet. That’s my idea of a nightmare.

I decided to see if I could access UK TV via my work internet (no internet also meant no TV). In addition, I was worried about potential urgent personal emails, and I needed my daily fix of reading up on my stocks and shares. I took a bottle of wine with me into the work building to stop it feeling too much as if I were back in the office and I made myself comfortable in the lounge area off the kitchen as another compromise.

It turned out that I couldn’t get to my email because yahoo wanted to confirm who I was via my Egyptian mobile phone, I couldn’t get the TV link to work (it works in Egypt, so that was very strange), although I could get BBC. I read up on my shares, had a glass of wine, and ended up going back home. Egypt was starting to look like the centre of efficiency by comparison to Switzerland.

The next day I took a tram into the nearest shopping centre, lugging my personal laptop with me, so that I could go to Starbucks and check my emails for any urgent matters. It was like I was in some kind of alternate reality. All the trams had been replaced by buses because of construction on my route. The street looked a right mess. And other buses also had the same number as my bus, but were clearly not doing my route. It all looked rather disorganised. Was I really in Switzerland?

I had an hour in Starbucks, stuffed myself full of calories with a cafe latte and a raspberry cheesecake, did my blog, sent off a few emails, and then that was me cold turkey for the weekend. No more internet.

I did get loads done. I finished writing “25 New Year’s Resolutions – for Fish” (I still need photographs and it needs an edit), I did all my ironing, I scrubbed that ceramic hob clean, I bought some plants and potted them out, I pruned the existing plants. I washed, I vacuumed. I worked on my novel “Space Shapes”. I went to the gym.

On Monday morning, I eagerly looked in my mailbox, but no dongle had arrived. I received a text message from Swisscom apologising that they were no further forward.

I went to work and made sure that everyone knew that I had experienced the indignity of having to come in on Friday. I went back home, and, to my astonishment, found that the internet was finally working.

I have no idea what went wrong. I had an email from Denise saying that she had the dongle and would bring it round, so I emailed back to let her know all was fine and that there was no hurry. I’d just cleaned, but I still felt nervous about her seeing the flat! 

And, to be honest, I wanted the luxury of an evening to myself, just me and the internet.

Zurich - Back to Work

Walking to Work - Nature Watch

[I'm posting this from Starbucks - I have no internet access at the moment, so any responses to emails will be delayed. Sorry!]

It might not sound like it from this blog, but I returned to Switzerland to take up a year’s work contract. This wasn’t what I’d imagined to be part of my dream.

Predictably, and showing that I haven’t really changed much over all these years, the thing I like the least is having to get up at a specified time. I really enjoyed being able to decide when to get up when I was in Egypt. If I wanted to sleep in, I would. There was no need for an alarm, no need to adapt to a new sleeping pattern. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

My walk to work – at least at the moment – is quite pleasant as I walk by a small stream for most of the way. I always look over the wooden bridge and gaze at the water for fish on my way, but only once have I seen any (I had actually given up all hope). I do wonder whether the fish in Sahl Hasheesh miss me. I knew where certain fish would be at a certain time of day and I reckon they must also have expected to see me after a while. I think a couple of them fancied me, actually, as one parrot fish at Palm Beach would follow me about, as would a rather scary triggerfish in El Andalous.

But I digress. It’s strange, really, how all companies are the same. It’s your first day and your IT equipment doesn’t work properly. Nobody’s been briefed about what to do with you when you arrive. Your phone doesn’t work (although I quite like it that way).

I’d already done this job for 6 years before, so I felt I should know what I was doing, but then you run against the brick wall that you are new and you don’t yet know what this company’s procedures are. It’s quite frustrating as you feel you should be able to forge forward, but you’re blocked by your sudden lack of knowledge.

It also takes a while to know where things are in the building and you find yourself getting lost in the early days. Later, of course, you can’t see the difficulty at all. I spent ages trying to find the stationery cupboard only to find it didn’t exist (huh?).

People forget to tell you the simplest of things. I hadn’t realised that when I’m on the phone and it says “Press 1 for English”, there’s another button on the phone that I have to press beforehand or it won’t accept me pressing the number. For a long time, I thought my phone was broken. This impression was encouraged by the fact that the first two times, just by coincidence, when I put the receiver down after another failed call, one of my colleagues’ phones would start ringing. I was convinced that my phone was somehow causing it.

Nobody told me that if I had a meeting in the other building, I would have to register. I stood for ages in the lift, wondering why my badge wouldn’t activate the lift, but it was because my badge was only for my building. Everything takes so much longer when you’re new.

As usual, my phones (landline and iphone) took forever to get working properly. I had to get my landline working in order to be able to schedule teleconferences and WebEx’s, otherwise I had been thinking I wouldn’t bother. Surely one phone is enough for anyone? First of all the landline phone wouldn’t work, then whenever I picked it up, it would ask me to dial my number (huh?). It turned out that the latter was part of the process of getting it to work, only they’d forgotten to tell me what my phone number was. Doh!

My iphone was a traumatic experience. I am not sure what happened, but whatever it was, I ended up having to do a factory reset. Then I had to install an app and that went horribly wrong and I had to uninstall it and also ensure that any hidden files had been deleted. When I finally got it working the phone would beep whenever I got an email; I was convinced I’d set everything to mute. I share an office with two others, so they also got the full benefit of the annoying noises and my squeals of frustration each time it beeped.

I did manage to get it to shut up in the end. My landline also had a day of giving mysterious beeps, although finally I discovered that it was my personal mobile that was doing that. Too many phones in life just make things complicated.

It’s good to get to know new people and everyone has been super. I’ve ingratiated myself with the Friday cakes group and have even obtained higher-level permission to continue to join them when we all move offices, even though it is now to be a department-specific event only (and it’s not my department).

This leads me nicely on to lunch. In my new workplace, people tend to eat at their desks for their midday meal (at least in my building). This was a bit of a wake-up call as I’m used to work providing my lunch for me. Consequently, I’m in the novel situation of having to make my own lunch to bring into work. It takes me back to my school days. It feels quite bizarre, as if I’ve somehow regressed.

Sometimes I forget to bring my lunch in with me, so I just buy a sandwich from the supermarket across the road (I may end up just doing this anyway, if I get lazy). As I exit the building and walk down to the main road, I see a mountain with snow on top of it. We’ve had some very sunny days and it never fails to surprise me – both that a mountain should be visible from this rather industrial location and that it has snow on.

It’s nice to be reminded that I am in Switzerland

Zurich - Washing Traumas

Denise's Cat Sitting Next to the Mint

How can the simple task of washing your clothes take up an entire blog, I hear you wonder. Well, you’d be surprised...

In Switzerland, you usually have shared washing machines and dryers in the basement. Each person in the block of flats has to book the time they wish to use them. When I lived here before, my flat, unusually, came with its own washer and dryer, so using communal washing machines is a new experience for me.

I’d heard all kinds of complaints from people who have lived under this system of the difficulty in booking the time you want; however, I have to say, that hasn’t been a problem so far. I’ve kind of settled on every other Saturday morning  (two washing loads are included in one session), and the slot has usually been available.

However, the whole system baffled me a bit, and still does, to be honest.

Denise had showed me how to work it a few times, and there were instructions on the wall, so you would think it would be easy. However, the instructions didn’t say that you first had to switch on the electricity for the machine, and I don’t think Denise mentioned that either.

I’d just assumed that once I put my credit in, the electricity and machines would turn on. I hadn’t noticed the switch to turn the electricity on once credit was there  (even though it was obvious and had “washer” written over the one for the washer and “dryer” over the one for the dryer).

Actually, the switch was a bit scary looking as it looked more like a heavy-duty dial that might switch off the electricity in the whole building (or, indeed, start a bomb). The light to the laundry room had a switch of the same design and I was too scared to try turning it at first in case it set off some kind of alarm. At some point, I plucked up the courage, and all that happened was that the light came on.

Basically, you have to put your card in the control panel, which should switch on your machine, then afterwards you put your card back in the control panel and ask for it to take the money from your account. Simple! But somehow it wasn’t. I was in such a state of confusion that I can’t honestly describe what I did as I just tried many different combinations of things.

Of course, at first the digits I was looking for to show on the control panel when I put my card in didn’t light up because I hadn’t switched the electricity on in the first place. When I finally understood my error and turned the electricity on, the display came up with various error messages. I eventually latched onto the fact that I had to leave the card in the slot for a certain amount of time and only then yank it out again; Anyway, by the time I'd worked out what was happening, my card became no longer functional (the display kindly informed me via another error message). That was 20 CHF lost!

Denise had given me two cards, but the second card had only enough credit for one wash, so I was unable to dry my clothes. In Egypt, I’m used to doing my washing with my own machine, hanging it out on the balcony, and it’s dry within the hour. Here, I hung my clothes out – actually Denise had some very weird clothes pegs that I couldn’t fathom out how to use either (yes, I’m that useless!) and so I ended up just draping them over the line - and then I went off to the gym. Two steps down the road and it started to rain, so I had to go back and take in all the washing again, and hang it in the basement drying room. The drying room turned out to be a bit of a misnomer, because my clothes were still wet the following day.

What a lot of work this washing malarkey is when you’re in Europe!

The second time I did my washing was a little more successful, only I hadn’t realised that to get the second wash in, you had to do it within a given time frame. I spent too much time going up the stairs with my newly-washed items and down the stairs bringing down the next load of dirty washing that I missed my window of opportunity for my second wash, so I had to pay again for the second load. More money wasted!

I thought my third time would be trouble-free. Having learned from the last time, I got my second wash in promptly and without a problem and I busied myself with my other household tasks. When I went back down, an alarm was going off, screeching away to inform the entire building that someone entirely incompetent was doing their washing. Not knowing what to do, and in a considerable panic, I shoved my card in the payment machine and the noise stopped. However, the machine immediately shut down and all my washing was trapped inside. The "open the door" button didn't do a thing. Meanwhile, another person would want to come down and have their washing session soon. I stood and looked at the machine door and my wet washing inside, feeling completely dumbfounded.

I went up to the person in our block who looks after all of this. She was very pleasant and said it was something to do with the machine thinking there wasn’t any money. I think she meant that I had to charge the wash to my card before I could get it out, but I’m still not 100% sure. I thought I’d already done that? I’m also not confident that the card wasn’t charged with another wash to get the electricity to come back on so that I could open the machine door; if I’ve been charged again for the wash, that’s another waste of money. 

I am now less confident that my fourth attempt will be trouble-free since I’m really not sure what’s going on.

Anyway, it’s all pretty traumatising, but maybe one day I will look back on all this and wonder what it was that I found so difficult.

Zurich - Cooking in Someone Else's Kitchen

My Kitchen in Zurich

When it comes to looking after the flat, I think it’s the kitchen that causes me the most concern.

For instance, I seem to burn something most nights as I just can’t get used to the hob and the way the pots retain the heat; Denise has left me very high quality pots and pans that would cost a fortune to replace, so each time I make my evening meal, I’m sweating – not due to the heat, but due to my nervous tension! Fortunately, so far, high quality seems to mean that burnt materials are removed without too much elbow grease, but it’s stressful each time and it can’t be good for me or for the pans.

Denise was excited to tell me that she had absolutely everything in the kitchen. It was true, she had things I’d never ever heard of before. She showed me something to put over the frying pan to stop it from spitting and marking the wall. Unfortunately, I didn’t identify it properly afterwards and used something else instead that promptly melted all over the frying pan. Consequently, the frying pan now has melted plastic burned onto it all round the rim. I did manage to yank most of it off using a sharp knife, but some black patches currently still remain. I hope I may be able to remove these over the course of a year.

It turned out that the thing I’d used by accident was actually some kind of mat for the sink; its precise purpose still escapes me. Fortunately, I discovered that she had five spares (??), so I’m hoping she won’t realise that she has one less now.

She may have everything, but I think there are cultural differences. She didn’t have a potato masher, which, when I come to think of it, is probably quite a British thing (although they do have them here). I dug out something else amongst all her utensils – it looked like a large netted spoon – and made do with that. It was surprisingly effective and gave me a beautiful, smooth mash. When I went into the shops later, I found it was supposed to be used to make foam. I guess it’s for those cappuccino soups? I’m really not sure. Anyway, it did a good mashed potato.

Another thing she didn’t have that I really missed was a microwave. Again, this is probably the contrast between the Swiss desire for culinary perfection and my British background of slobbishness. I never really cook with a microwave, but I need it constantly for defrosting food that I’ve forgotten to take out, reheating food that I’ve already cooked, and reheating my cup of coffee when I forget to drink it. I’m just not Swiss.

Denise had also left me her herbs and spices. Although she had a huge variety – including all those Swiss special seasoning ones that they have here – she didn’t have mint or cinnamon. I’ve since decided that this must be a cultural difference too, since it was difficult to find these in the supermarket. In fact, I ended up buying a mint plant that I’ve put out in the garden. I just couldn’t find dried mint at all. I had a mental blackout when I tried to buy cinnamon and couldn’t remember clearly what it was called or what it smelled like, so I ended up with some nutmeg that I will never use. I did manage to get some in the end, though.

Another problem with using someone else’s kitchen for a year is that you forget exactly what it looked like at the beginning. She has a Roemertopf, which I’ve used multiple times for roast chicken now, but I can’t remember if the crack down the side was there from the beginning (I hope it was!) and whether the blackened rim had already instated itself before my arrival. I do know it wasn’t new-looking, but I didn’t pay enough attention to the details.

The same holds for the ceramic hob, where I am less optimistic about flaws that I am suddenly noticing. There seem to be white water marks on it now, which actually I’m pretty sure weren’t there before. I’ve tried scrubbing, but they seem to be permanent. I’ve only been here six weeks as I write this, so it’s a bit disturbing. If I keep on destroying the kitchen at this rate, I’ll have to buy a new one by the time I move out. I think an internet search to solve this problem is in order!

Alternatively, maybe I should just give up on the idea of cooking altogether.