I will fast-forward through the days of frustration of having an unfurnished apartment or a way to contact the outside world. It took about a million years to get a phone or an Internet connection. The beauty of storytelling is that I can gloss over the annoying and sometimes painful “stuff” and skip to the funny anecdotes. I will probably just sound like I’m complaining anyway. Don’t get me wrong, Europe has its perks, but I forgot how debilitating it could be not to speak the language. Daily tasks become daunting.
There is another way to look at it: the daily grind, which can become just that—a grind—is never boring when limping along in a foreign language. A random trip to the drug store is a glorious adventure when a mispronounced word resorts to charades. The grocery store becomes a scavenger hunt when you can’t ask an employee for help. Sure, strolling up and down the aisles can get annoying, but I try to think of all the exercise I’m getting. It’s become my new cardio routine.
The hip thing to do in Switzerland is to go grocery shopping in France. It sounds exotic, but the Swiss-French border is so close that it’s literally a twenty-minute drive. The meat is tastier, the croissants more authentic, and the prices are cheaper. Plus, there are certain items that you can only buy in France. Like bathroom cleaner that burns the hair off the inside of your nostrils. The only bummer is that there is a meat allowance of 500 grams per person in the car. So, if you load up your car with an extra friend or two you can really bump up your meat quota. The Swiss are known to bust people for exceeding their beef cut.
A friend took me on one of these lovely grocery-shopping adventures. In Switzerland, all of the packaging is printed in German, French, and Italian. With my modest knowledge of German, I have a fighting chance of getting the products that I want. France was another story. It’s all French, all the time. No German hook-up for me. Still, I was able to decode most of the products. I was feeling smug until I got to the dairy aisle. The cream, whole milk, partially skim milk, and shelf milk (ultra-pasteurized milk that is not refrigerated) were all staring me in the face, daring me to make a selection. I chose one that had the word “demi” in it, hoping it was “partially something” and I wasn’t buying milk straight from an udder.
