Arriving

Date: Jan 14 1990

It's now almost 2 weeks since I've been here. There was enough for a letter just from the first day alone. It's hard to describe Switzerland. You have to experience it.

The flight:

I got on the plane in Toronto. The Stewardess says to me as I get on : "jhj shdsaid asdlfd sdffd". Actually, she didn't say that but it sounded like it. It was German. I was in the peasant section on the end of the row of 5 middle seats. I got the entire row to myself. We fly to Montreal. It's -20 degrees C there.

A family of 5 sits in the 4 seats to my left. The woman beside me says : "plop plop zoople blat". It was French. So I answered some French back : "No". (She asked me if I spoke French. She didn't speak English). So she wants my seat. So the Stewart gives me a fantastic seat in the drunken business-man, or first-class section. Since I was in the front row and was in the middle with the seat on each side empty, it was perfect except I think I was in the smoking section. We were given lots of weird good food and we watched James Bond, "A license to kill". After that the last 2 or 3 hours were boring since I couldn't sleep.

The flight was 45 mins to Montreal, with a 1 hour wait and then 7 hours from Montreal to Zürich. There is about 10 different pre-recorded music selections you can listen to with headphones. The cloud cover was very low and it's very hazy. The view was not exciting even though the mountains were supposed to be to my right and Black Forest on my left. I didn't even see the runway coming up.

Arriving at the airport:

I get off. I walk for miles and follow a sign "To Zürich" that happens to go through Immigration. I get all my billions of papers ready and as I start to hand my passport that has "CANADA" in big letters on it, she just waves me through. I find my luggage, stick it in a cart and go through the luggage-police section. He's interrogating the middle-age lady with kids there, finishes with her, looks at me and waves me through.

I go to Information (after wandering around aimlessly a bit since I was too tired to read the signs). She tells me the train station is in the next building connected to the floor above me, and that I can't change my American Express Travelers cheques there and no bank in Switzerland will take them. Yeh, right... I tell her that I saw on a itty-bitty sign that I can get change on this floor so WHERE IS IT !?. She points me to the bank on my left. I change $200 of my cheques for pocket money.

The Medical place I'm supposed to go to is closed for the next couple of days. I take my big luggage cart down the escalator (it's scary but it works) after crossing to the next building 1 floor up. I'm at the train station.

The Train station:

Pretty boring. I ask the conductor a question. He doesn't speak English and looks like he hates my existence. I get on the train not knowing whether I'm in the peasant class section I paid for or not. On the way to Zürich he stamps my ticket. Thanks to English speaking people there I get off at the right place. There's lots of trains there. I guess thats why they call it a train station. I wander about and finally go outside and grab one of the taxis waiting there. He doesn't speak English. No problem. I came prepared with the address of the hotel written down. I give him 10 Swiss-francs and he's happy.

The Hotel:

The lady there speaks English. She gets all flustered when I tell her I want 2 days and she says that I reserved it for a week. After I convince her that I had nothing to do with that and that it was ETH, she calms down. I get a single. She accidently puts me in a double. Good! - because the double, at the single price of 46 francs/day ($35 CDN) is smaller than my old office at UW, has a small sink, but no phone, TV, or toilet. There is a shared bathroom on each floor.

On each floor is a telefone that calls get redirected to and you're expected to go get whoever it's really for if you answered it. The lady gets all agitated if you don't answer. She knows you're there since you turn in your key when you leave the building. She calms down after you explain that you'd answer the phone if you heard it and you don't hear it when you're asleep.

The price includes a free breakfast. The woman that slops it out doesn't speak English, is downright hostile, very unhelpful and doesn't hand over my token free breakfast, whatever it's supposed to be. So I pay for some corn-flakes and orange juice. The next day though, she gives me the free part - some bread thingies and stuff to put on them. Why the change? dunno. Maybe it was because there was an older woman there (her boss?) working with her then? Maybe she just had a bad day before. Anyway, she seemed surly to everybody.

There's a pay phone on a separate floor that loves your money. If you haven't used up all your time, it eats your money if you hang up if you don't press the red button. Sometimes you don't get a red button. If you want to make a long distance collect call, you arrange it at the desk for 2 francs, and maybe 5 minutes later she tells you to run to the 1st floor phone thats ringing, and answer it.

Zürich :

There are lots of really old interesting buildings. All the buildings are old. Many of the streets are very small winding cobble stone streets. There are lots of trams and buses. The trams run around every 10 mins. They have their own lanes. Sometimes cars have to use the same lanes on some streets. I've bought a pass for around $35 CDN that lets me have unlimited use of the trams for a month. Otherwise it's about $1.50 per trip.

There are lots of Kiosks that are magazine stands. There are lots of small stand-up places to eat that sell bread things and stuff. The Swiss seem to always be eating as they are walking. I don't really see normal style restaurants. The McDonald's here was packed Saturday afternoon. Many just take their food with them. Some take their trays outside and eat on the ground. The Swiss don't seem to notice cold. They wear half of what I'm wearing.

Stores are open from around 9am to 6pm or so except Thursday when it's 9am to 9pm and Saturday when they close at 4pm. At a big super-general-market kind of store called Migros, you are expected to bring your own bag. Or buy one of theirs for a buncha francs. It's like Toronto on major shopping streets for people playing instruments for money.

There was one North American (?) playing a electric guitar with mega-small Peavey amp and a harmonica singing "Roll over Beethoven" in German. Except on streets like this, you'd be crazy to drive a car. I don't know if you're allowed. I saw trams and taxis. It's not always obvious what the rules of the road are, and where cars can go without getting crushed by buses or trams. The signs are weird. I now know that a red circle with a red slash thru a blue center doesn't mean 'No blue cars' or 'No labbats blue', but instead 'No halting or parking'.

It is around freezing here or a bit under. There is no snow. It is almost always hazy, foggy, smoggy, whatever. I haven't really seen any mountains yet, though they won't be far away. Zürich is in a valley with river belts so theres lotsa moisture causing the fog. This has a neat effect on trees that are pure white in a snow-less place.

If you go to a supermarket, and go the meat section, ground beef seems to be a small very expensive frozen hockey puck. blech! Don't look for milk or orange juice in bottles in the fridge section - they are vacuum sealed cardboard boxes. I haven't seen sliced bread yet. It's hard to buy stuff in supermarkets when everything is labeled in german. I bought some eggs. It's hard to disguise eggs. Then I find out that I don't have a fry pan...
The hamburgs I've had around town are weird and not really very good. Chicken doesn't seem to be too bad. I keep lots of mini-babybel cheese things at work for when I'm starving at weird times.

The Swiss are a little better dressed than north-Americans but I can't really tell much difference with the young people.

Some of the cars are what you would expect to see in European or Petter Sellers movies. They look like funny snap-together ugly things. There have been a few nice Porsches around. Lots of German cars. Lots of Opel Kadets. A few motorcycles. Lots of scooters.

The Money :

The bills are different mixtures of colors and are different sizes. ie: a 100 francs bill is larger than a 50 fr bill. It seems the smallest bill is a 10. Five francs is a coin. I've had them down to a 5 cent piece. 1000 fr bills are HUGE !

One fr is about the size of a quarter, 2 fr the size of a loon and 5 fr is huge. The banks are a pain in the ass. They are primitive. The reason people think they are great is because they won't tell anyone about what you have there, making them great for shady business and drug dealers. The reason they won't tell is cause they are so dumb and beaurocratic, you're lucky if you find out what is in your own account. I've been trying to deposit my money in the Union Swiss Bank. Although they finally accepted some of my money after I argued with them for 5 mins, it may not actually show up for a couple of weeks. I've heard horror stories from other people.

They still have separate lines for tellers instead of funneling people to the first available teller. And they don't have a separate place for long transactions, like setting up a new account. I was only in 1 bank, but I would expect all banks to have these features.

I heard that the banks and insurance companies own either 40 or 60% (I can't remember) of all Swiss property. Maybe thats why the housing situation is so pathetic (see below).

Looking for a place to live :

You know how hard it is for a student to find accommodation in Waterloo? There's no comparison to here. Here it's a joke. My boss called a couple of places for me (since he speaks German). The first one he called wasn't taking any more applications since they already had 200. It got worse after that.

If they talk to you, you make an appointment, and go fill out an application there with lots of other people. The applications are in German and want about 4 references. A foreigner doesn't have much chance.

Another UW person, Tim Snider, has a nice place. Apparently it's 2700 fr/month ($2000 CDN) - if he were paying full price. ETH got his for him, which was easy for them since they own the building. Mike Monagon took over my predecessor's apartment. I think it's 850 fr (630 CDN) / month for a 0 bedroom. ie: a bachelors apartment.

Here apartments aren't advertised as number of bedrooms, they are advertised as number of rooms with bathroom and kitchen implied. So Mike's place is a 1 room apartment. A 2 bedroom would be a 3 room apartment. If it says 3 1/2, it probably means the living area is large. I've been looking at a couple of places that are 1 and 2 bedroom for around $1800 fr (1330 CDN).

Right now I'm staying in Mike's apartment while he is in New Zealand. When he comes back next week I guess I'll go back to the hotel again if they have a place. The last 2 nights I've slept on the floor as Paul (a friend of Mike's who is passing thru Switzerland) and I share the place.

Work:

I got together with my boss the day before work actually started. He gave me a tour so I at least knew where to show up the next day. The first day of work, I figure I'll wow them, so I wear a button up shirt and black Reebok walking shoes. (The 2nd day I'm back to running shoes and t-shirt). The place is great. Very modern, lots of hardware. There's a neat revolving door entering the building that senses you coming and starts rotating. There seems to be lots of smart doors, many of which is not obvious how they figure out they should open. Even a big oak(?) door to the main university swings open as you approach it on the huge stone walkway.

My office that I share with my boss is about 2.5 times that of my old UW office with windows all down one wall with electrically controlled outside blinds on 3 windows that can raised, lowered, tilted, whatever. The view is of some unknown building and an old church. Sun Microsystems has given me (actually my predecessor) a bottle of wine. I have a few nice modern desks and tables.

There is a great place called Mensa for eating here, until it gets busy when the students come back tomorrow for the new semester. It's very efficient. As you walk in, there is a table with about 5 plates showing what there is available. If you want what you see in Menu 3, you get in the number 3 line and grab a plate of it. So you don't have to waste time ordering.

There seems to be a great physical activities place here. It seems comparable to the PAC (Physical Activities Complex) at UW. They have stuff like Karate, Judo, Aiki-do, and then all the other wimpy stuff. Their dojo is about the size of my old Kendo dojo at UW (ie: studio 1) and I think has permanent mats.

People here at work are great. Already met some interesting people. Being an employee of the government, I got a card that allows me half price train rides. I don't see how a person in this job can get any work done during normal hours though. People wander in and phone all the time wanting something. I gather that there is a weekly department meeting. My boss and I don't go cause he says it's boring.

Computer type stuff (ignore this if you aren't a computer geek) :

I have a Sun 3/80 on my desk, a X window station that came in with 5 others On my bosses side of the office there is a Mac and 2 weird things I haven't looked at yet. One might be a thing that Niklaus Wirth is developing called a Ceres.

I think Mike Monagan stole my boss's Sun so my boss uses a Sun in a workstation room 20 feet down the hall that has some Apple laser-writers of ours. I don't know how many machines I support yet and don't know where they all are. I got a pile of keys for their rooms though.

The software is pretty much stock Sun 4.0.3. blech. There is a home-groan centralized database thing here that uses X-windows for accounting stuff. I've been fighting with that to make my account stable and to be able to be "su" everywhere. ie: I can't use brute force since the accounting stuff will later clobber it. rdist likes to clobber things here. Yellow-pages is evil and they have a really complicated setup here with yellow pages and rdist. Mail is grabbed by ean (a UBC product). Sendmail when used by mail hands it to ean. We are not running the SMTP sendmail daemon.

News here was messed up. The guy who was taking care of it will be giving it to me soon. We have Berkeley and System V source somewhere. Lots of knowledge around here is scattered and it's taking me time to find out things. My boss helped me fill out some beaurocratic form to be processed so I can use some terminal server or something to talk to datapac.

There is a separate group that takes care of communications. ie: UUCP and handing out internet numbers. I was talking to the guy there who will be leaving in a month. They seem like a cool bunch (all 2 of them? Just like me and my boss). He gave me an account on his machine. I think it's Ultrix. He seems interested in setting up a UUCP link to UW for me.

Backups are very simple here. I'm supposed to wander around when I come in sticking 8 mm video tapes in Exabyte drives on some machines, come back to my office, and run a backup shell script for those machines. The tapes rotate. ie: I stick the #3 tape in if the last one was #2. Once a week a full save is done. The full save tapes rotate also. I think every 4 months or so, a copy of the full save tapes are hid somewhere else. There is no cryptic tape library. The backup tapes, all 6 of them or so, sit beside the tape drive.

We are a class B network, and will be on the Internet sometime. Don't know when.

Me:

I'm still trying to get on a reasonable sleeping schedule. In fact, I took off around noon on the first day to go the bank and get my medical. Instead of going to the medical, I went home to sleep. For a long time I could only sleep 2 hours at a time. Now I can get about 4 or 5 hours at supper time followed by another couple around 2am, and end up coming in to work around 6am, even on my weekend since it's more fun here than at home at the moment.

Right now I'm killing time writing this letter until I jump on a train and go to some unknown funny place called Aarau where my boss lives. He's gonna feed me real food.

After a couple of days, you don't notice it at all that you're someplace weird until you're hungry and you wanna be able to order something. Or you look at the posted menu outside a restaurant and you don't know what it says. I haven't been in a real restaurant yet. I hope to start some kind of course within a month when all the errands are done. I know ETH has courses I can take for free.

I finally go back to the airport to get my Medical exam. They take 30 seconds to xray your chest. You have to wait 3 hours to get your passport back. If you don't get it done when you arrive (ie: when they are closed like they were for me), they will charge you. Everybody I know got charged 15 Fr. I got nailed for 20 Fr.

There's alot of motivation to learn German, since I don't know what the hell is going on most of the time.

Ok, it's now a week later as I write this paragraph. I'm on a early day schedule and come into work earlier than everyone else. It's not a fragmented schedule either. I feel great.

Outside of Zürich:

So I'm going to go visit my boss. So I got on the train to go to the city of Aarau. It stops somewhere. I think this is it. I get off and look around - I don't see my boss. I jump back on to ask someone if this is Aarau. The train leaves with me on it and yes it was Aarau. Eventually we come out of a long tunnel and now theres sunshine since we are out of the valley that holds in the fog. I end up in Basel. I think I'm in the french section. I get on a train. It takes me to Olten. I jump on a train. I get back to Aarau 2 hours late.

My boss comes and picks me up and gives me a tour of Aarau. It's amazing. The "old" part (I thought the "new" part looked old) has these twisty little passages with neat little corridors to get to the next cobble-stoned street. Buildings have intricate stonework done. Some with little statues of critters way up there. The tile shingles are neat. The under-surface of the three foot roof over-hangs have murals and neat patterns. Even doors have amazing detail in places.

Other stuff:

Pets are allowed in restaurants. If fact, you might get told off if you leave your pet outside all alone. My money has showed up in my bank account. There are CD sales in a big shopping place called Migro's that go for around 12 CDN. I found real beef. I think lean beef is 3 times as expensive as normal beef. The normal beef is expensive. I don't think there is any such thing as hamburg relish here. My quest for it has failed. In fact, my boss who is English and has lived here for 20 years doesn't know what it is. There are lots of big kids skate-boarding in down-town. Almost all the taxi cabs are Mercedes.

There are 2 English channels on TV. MTV and CNN - the international news channel. For those that can email me, the address rjwhite@inf.ethz.ch should work. By the time you get this, it probably won't work because apparently it's against policy and my userid has to be "white". I will attempt to set up an alias when I change my account on 30 machines but... I'm moving around too much to have a real physical address. I got the impression that mailing me personal physical mail at work might not be a good idea, but in case anyone wanted to know, my work address is: