Ever since I wrote the posting The Swiss Male – Who is he?  I am often contacted by women asking for advice about Swiss men… I seem to have become the go-to agony aunt for lovelorn women around the world who have fallen for Swiss men and are very confused.  WELL THERE’S A SURPRISE. 

I know that it is all too easy to fall into the stereotypical trap here and confuse character and culture but hey you are getting this from the horse’s mouth. I am reporting from the coal face of 25 years of life with a Swiss man which should give me some credibility and a smidgen of insight into what makes a Swiss man tick.

Of course I can only talk about the Eastern Swiss Man, those hailing from the German speaking parts with, usually, a Protestant background.  But here is my take on Swiss Men and please feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below:

- Swiss men are parsimonious with their praise.  They do not compliment or praise unless by accident.  They won’t notice when you have been to the hairdresser’s or whether you are wearing a stunning LBD.   The flip side to this is that they don’t criticise or complain either.  I could go out to dinner in a bin liner for all Mr. Jules cared.  Only once has he said anything faintly critical as to my attire and it was a neutral but clever,

 ”Er, you’re not going to like the way that looks from behind” 

And because he says this and not “Jeeeesssssuuusssss!  Are you kidding me?” I am rather fond of him.

- Swiss men are not cuddly.  Don’t expect a cuddle, ever.  You might get a pat on the shoulder or a derrière squeeze at the moment when you least want it but that’s it.  There’s no smooching in front of the telly or public shows of affection.  He’ll willingly take your suitcase from you when you arrive off the plane but that is the nearest he’ll get to intimacy in a public space.  (Note:  If they start calling you odd names like chatzli, minou, etc. which the Swiss Germans deem as a sign of affection, put a stop to it at once.  It is a huge turn off.)

- Swiss men only have the left side of their brains working.  Hence they are brilliant bankers, brokers, negotiators.  Anything that involves logic is right up their strasse and if they have developed a brilliantly creative design concept alongside a brilliant piece of engineering or software for example, you’ll usually find there’s an Italian involved.

- Swiss men do not like emotion.  They are happy to analyse using logic until the cows literally come home but as their right side brain has no neural pathways having shrivelled up through non-use, feelings and emotions are something they cannot fathom.  So to Sofia in Argentina the reason he hasn’t written a letter of explanation is that he has no idea he has hurt your feelings. A Swiss man is very unlikely to give you closure although logically he knows he ought to – good manners and all that – he is incapable of writing “stuff” in an expressive heartfelt way.  Eyore’s dumbfounded, woebegone face in Winnie the Pooh springs to mind here. 

-Swiss men are perfectionists.  They can be a bit pernickety about their homes, cars, the food on their plates.  This is a country of high standards and they are used to upholding them.  To be fair they all work extremely hard and return those high standards in their work.

NOW THE GOOD STUFF

-  Swiss men are funny.  You will laugh at them (a lot) but also find that like the Brits they have a very dry, sense of humour and can also be extremely silly and childish.  They love British and American Sitcoms such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fawlty Towers etc. Mostly because they are so law-abiding that they wouldn’t ever dare do anything as naughty and anti-establishment so watching other people doing it, even if only pretending,  is absolutely thrilling.

-Swiss men need to marry foreign women.  They need to be shaken up out of their robotic thinking patterns, forced to let their hair down, spend time away from a landscape of mountains and lakes and eat something other than cheese and sausage.  (When Mr. Jules and I lived in America he would get lost every night on the way home from work.  Without a mountain or lake as guidance he was completely flummoxed by the grid-system).  I think all we foreign wives should receive a special allowance from the government.

-Swiss men will never let you down.  Your bills will be paid, your car will be serviced, your health insurance will be up-to-date and he’ll even put his loose change into your car so that you never run out for the parking meters.   They are never late, always do what they say they will and are extremely fair-play. (Apart from when partaking in family board games). 

-Swiss men are the best travel companions.  They never get stressed or nervous or angry when flights are delayed or hotel bookings lost or any kind of disaster strikes.  In fact they are good to have around in any kind of  emergency as they are so level headed – no emotions just the facts – which many put down to the compulsive military training they all undergo and of course the lack of a right sided brain helps here.

Marry one if you want to.  Preferably a Catholic from the sunnier, southern parts (the food’s better and they tend not to wear white sports socks with leather shoes), but wherever they hail from they are intensely loyal and easy to train if you go about it in a logical way and keep all the touchy feely stuff under wraps.

When the days grow longer and the chill goes out of the air I drive a 1975 open-top Beetle.  Ever since watching Annie Hall this has been my dream car until Mr. J.  brought one for me for my 40th and then it became mine! (Luckily without a Woody Allen accessory).   I love this car.  It has a musky smell that reminds me of my long dead Irish grandfather and when changing gears is required there is a lot of coaxing and fiddling involved,not I always imagine, unlike making love to an old spinster.  Sometimes at Stop signs she doesn’t take too kindly having to go back into first gear and will huffily stall in the middle of the road but that’s only if I haven’t warmed her up properly with a few good revs.  It is a joy and an on-going work of love to keep her road worthy; little children point at us in the streets and policemen smile and I am proud to drive a vintage piece of art.  Her nickname is The Bubble.

She has only one major failing and that is she doesn’t like to stop suddenly.  She reacts quite well initially to the sharp pounding of her brake pads but like a large ship coming into port has a long gliding period before coming to a standstill.

All those who drive in Switzerland will know about the give-way-to-the-right rule, unless on a main road.  They take this a little too far at times such as occasionally and crazily you will find yourself on a roundabout having to give way to traffic filtering in from the right.  (The overlooking of such rule caused me to fail my first driving test in Geneva – the examiner having to use the brake pedal on his side sort of put a dampener on the whole thing).

The problem is sometimes it is difficult to discern when the road you are driving on is designated “main road” worthy.   For example coming into our village, a main axe, you would think it was a main road but it is not, no no no and on reaching the fountain the give-way-to-the-right rule is enforced. They have jutted the Salle Communale (village hall)  just enough to obscure the view making it really exciting. 

And I know this!  I know this!

Because there are several sneaky give-way-to-the-rights in our village and experience has taught me where they are.

Flashback to Saturday morning.  It is a beautiful spring day with a promise of summer.  I am cheerfully driving along, having brought white geraniums and large pink hydrangeas for my garden. I arrive in the bubble at the fountain to see a white van inching out from the right.  I brake and then slowly glide to a halt leaving plenty of room for the van to pass us.    The old syndic (mayor) Monsieur Bovet, the driver of the white van, shouts out of the window in a voice not suitable for a bedroom setting.

“Priorité à droite!” (Priority to the right you ignorant expat)

I nod my head through the windscreen keeping my foot firmly on the brake pedal willing her to stop gliding.

Madame the old syndic sits up in her seat, brings me into her visibility line and bores holes into the back of my head.

“Priorité à droite!!!”  He yells again as he passes me this time so angrily I look over my shoulder to see if there is a rabid , salivating dog in the street about to attack some innocent, sweet Swiss children.

I am offended for The Bubble.  She was ignored, dismissed treated without respect. 

She’s an old-timer, be nice, be patient, don’t shout.

I have just eaten a Hot Cross Bun downed with a very large glass of port.  This is on top of dinner and two glasses of white wine… It’s school holidays with all its madness, I have the remnants of flu, four mouth ulcers  and no driving license – I ran a red light last year and me voilà a pedestrian for the month of April. 

I caught the flu at the writing course at Charney Manor.   I  sat next to lovely Rhys from Wales and his  erm…. flu germs.  It did cross my mind, as he pulled the chair away next to mine, that I should move as I had spotted his red nose and heard his congested voice earlier, but a quick look around the room confirmed that there were only the number of chairs as there were participants, which were all taken, and in any case that would be rude. 

Wouldn’t it?

 As he coughed and spluttered turning as best he could away from me, I kept telling myself, you won’t get it, think positively and you won’t get it.  He even gave me an orange in the break “for extra vitamin C“, he’d said in his lilting Welsh accent, so I could hardly say sniffily in return,

  “If you don’t mind I’m going to move elsewhere.” 

My skiing was buggered as I lay feverish in bed, but Happy Heidi our neighbour in the mountains invited us for a casual raclette in the Carnotzet so I staggered down there in my edelweiss slippers, greasy hair and no make-up to find, to my horror, that there were about 30 trendy fit people all dressed in Mover outfits and I was underwhelming them.  I slunk into the corner with a pot of mint tea and listened as they talked about skiing ”le backside” of Mont Fort (snigger) and Mont Gelée this and Gentiane that all night.  I have skied in Verbier for 15 years but  when I and my family talk about particular pistes we talk in terms of restaurants.  The long run down from Chezy Danny or that path that leads to the fondue cabin…  Different strokes for different folks, as they say.  After an hour and 45 mins when they’d moved onto Heliskiing in Turkey and the wearing of ski masks in Vail,  I excused myself and snuck upstairs back to my duvet and  my new box set of Private Practice.  

Now Mr. Jules has caught la Crève (translation the knackering thing) and is not a happy bunny.  He  keeps saying “You should have moved away from him…” in an accusing way.  Subtext: you give me a flu virus AND I have ALL the driving.  

As for the wine and port well, I went bikini shopping with Sophie G today.   The shop lady didn’t even bother with woe begone sniffling old me.  It didn’t help that the flu has meant I can’t exercise and thus everything has gone AWOL in just one week.  How does that happen?  That is so cruel.  I even bought myself a special hoola hoop this year with extra nodules which are supposed to massage the wobbly parts away from a very serious website in Swiss Germany.

How is your week going?

When it was finally time to get up I took three black dresses from my wardrobe and lay them on the bed.  Boots or shoes?  I added a black and white Hermès scarf and my pearls.  I think Graham would have approved although in the grey light of early morning it all looked a bit contrite.

“I saw just the hint of a chartreuse bra strap, can you believe it?  Sexy old bird, it made my day.”  Graham had once told me about an older female friend with whom he had lunched.  Chartreuse was such a Graham word. 

So I took out my La Perla underwear.  He would have appreciated that too.  Not that we were each other’s type.

“I thought you’d be taller,” he’d said to me barely disguising his disappointment when we’d first met.

“I thought you’d be thinner,” I’d replied.

“C’est les Anglais…”  said the woman sitting opposite me at a dinner party a few months back. “The English  are ruining Verbier.”

“Les Anglais sont les buveurs de bière.” (Beer drinkers).

This Swiss lady had obviously not picked up on the fact that I was in fact one of those ”buveurs de bière” as she so charmingly stereotypes us.  As in my early days living here, when I couldn’t quite tell the difference between a Swiss and a French accent, she had obviously thought that I was the same nationality as the hostess – an American.  I let it go. 

Then this holiday up in Verbier we had a seven year old Swiss neighbour over for tea to play with Lexi and it happened again.  Firstly, she told me that she found the English tourists were “très bêtes” (very stupid) on the slopes.  I was amused by this and explained that in England we don’t have the possibility to ski and thus the English here are very excited by the snow and the mountains and most of them are still learning so would indeed look and feel very stupid.  Then they went into the garden to make a snowman.

“Mum come here!”  shouted Lexi.

I went out and saw them pointing at a patch of snow into which some unfortunate had vomited.

“C’est les Anglais,”  said the little Swiss girl-next-door.  “They vomit into our garden too.”

Scene change:  New Year’s Eve Place Centrale, Verbier.  French, Swiss, Dutch, Swedish, Russian youths all happily dancing and falling over in the snow looking very stupid having drunk, no doubt, some of those beers the English drink.