It's strange but, when you've been an expat for a while you begin to realize that you haven't in fact become part of the country you are living in. You've become part of a "village". A village of expats, often of many nationalities who have something in common. In our case this is the Swiss. The "bl**dy Swiss!" to be exact.
The "bl**dy Swiss" is a unifying experience for us
all. I must stress that most Swiss people are an ordinary
mixture of the sort of people you could meet in any country in the world.
The "bl**dy Swiss" could best be described as the Little Switzerlander
: "my country right or wrong" type people for whom Switzerland is
the paragon of all that is great and good in the world and, in some cases,
anything that Switzerland can not be said to excel at is an idiocy, an example
of human folly in it's extreme. We have all met them, speaking excellent English,
generally superficially friendly, and always capable of telling you exactly
why your country is in such a wretched state and pointing out how lucky you
are to be tolerated by this country - so that you may learn better.
That aside, the thing about living in a village is that you all get to know each others business. It travels mostly by word of mouth, as only the best gossip can. It can best be characterized by the half joking phrase "I don't repeat gossip; so listen carefully the first time". And so you hear the tales : the man whose CV was described as the finest work of fiction of the 20th century : the woman who is married to a banker and has no idea of the value of money : the couple whose marital relationship is more liberal than one would expect. Sometimes it's better than the Archers!
