When a ski season goes wrong

And here we are again with another winning example of "How to Make A Sale". Swiss Style. Remember, here in Switzerland you can't just fail your GCSEs and get a Saturday job. Here, you have to go to sales assistant school for several years. This is what you learn:

Today in Zürich, I made my way to Manor, a department store not unlike John Lewis. Looking for an air mattress in case of occasional guests, I made my first mistake, and foolishly went to the bed and bedding dept. Luckily I found two friendly ladies to help.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for an air mattress..."

Lady folding pillow case: "No. We don't have them. (To her folding friend) "blow up mattress? She's looking for an air mattress."

Friend: "No. (This was that special smirking no, which involves breathing out a laugh just before the 'N'). We don't sell them."

"But I phoned earlier today, and a woman told me that you have them in stock." In fact, she even took me uneccessarily through all the different measurements, equating their size to a normal bed. Point is, I knew they had them.

There now followed several minutes of them insisting that I was mistaken, if not lying, and demanding to know the name and department of this so called woman I had spoken to.

Friend: "No. We don't sell them. IF, I repeat, IF, we have them, (sic) they'll be in Sports. But we don't have them."

At this point the two break to share an undisguised and unsubtle laugh at my absolute foolishness in thinking that one of the largest department stores in Switzerland may have the product which I had phoned ahead to confirm they had in stock.

At this point Pillow lady starts suggesting some of their competitors who may stock blow up mattresses.

"I'll just try the Sports section first then. Thanks so much for your help."

And so off I go, wandering on the way over to the householdy bit, as we're thinking of having our wedding list here. As I pick up a special offer wok, the friend follows me over.

"They don't have them here either. We don't sell blow up mattresses."

"I know. I'm just looking around."

She waits.

"Are you suggesting that I should leave the premises?"

At this she does an about turn and stomps off without another word.

Luckily, I made it safely to what turned out to be a HUGE range of air mattresses, and went over to happily complete my purchase. It seemed the pillow ladies did not deign to work the tills, so I had high hopes. However, my second mistake had apparently been to pick up some delicate papery butterfly ornaments while on my unauthorised rampage through household wares.

"Hello. Do you have a bit of tissue paper or anything to wrap these up in?"

"No."

"Nothing? Anything just to protect them a bit?"

"No. What, like wrapping paper? No. Hans, do we have wrapping paper? No."

"Well, could you give me a few little plastic bags and I'll wrap them myself..."

"No."

"No? You have no plastic bags?"

"No."

"You have no paper and no plastic bags, nothing at all in which to put my goods."

"No." Puts the mattress in a plastic bag.

"Like that bag; could I have another one of those?"

"What, a plastic bag?" Half heartedly chucks a bag at me. (I can only assume it was half hearted, what with the nature of a plastic bag blowing about as it lands).

And so I left the shop, grateful that security didn't take my elbow to escort me out.

Customer service - invented in Switzerland.

* I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.

On Wednesday evenings I go to a German Grammar class in Zürich with my friend Laura. Anyone who knows Swiss German, will also know that it leaves you woefully unequipped to actually write anything in actual, proper German.

The class has been running for a few months now, and they're quite a nice bunch, if a bit special. Most have quite good Swiss german, and we get along fine, often splitting up to have converations with those who share our mother tongue. This is great for me and Laura as the only English speakers there, as our approach to adult learning is disturbingly close to our approach to childhood learning, and involves much note writing and sly chats (like pig latin but without the effort).

Yesterday we had a new teacher, who asked us to go round and introduce ourselves. Finally we got round to the slightly stuck up one who has only talked to us once, in German, to announce that she's a nobel prize winning physics genuis or something, and a few times to interrupt our German conversations with the South Amerian lot to speak to them in considerably better Spanish than ours. You wouldn't really call us bosom buddies, but hey, we don't know her.

"Hello new teacher, my name's *** and I'm a scientific genius. I'm from England."

Laura and Zoe: .....

This girl has NEVER spoken to us, or anyone else, in English. I thought she was English at the beginning because of her accent, and asked her where she came from, but I don't remember the reply. I do remember that the reply wasn't England.

I'm really not sure why, but for some reason this has made us really angry. First there was the panic of running over everything we might have said to each other in the past, thinking that we were not being understood. This led us to equate her ommission with a lie. We feel like she conned us.

Is this normal? Or is this a twisted perspective that you get only if you live abroad? Are we going to turn into one of those awful ex-pat types who live in Zug and only talk to other English people?

It is clearly NOT because yesterday the fit Italian who we have been wooing with after-class coffees sat next to her, huddled together over a shared text book. Don't be ridiculous. Are you suggesting that just by placing us in a classroom setting, we have instantly regressed to the mindset of teenagers? You better not be, or I'll tell Laura what you said about her haircut last week behind her back. And that bracelet makes you look fat, anyway.

- We're signing on the house tomorrow. The deposit is in place, the mortgage is organised.
- My parents came over and fully approved the flat that I'd found for them.
- My German is good enough to find out how to get planning permission to renovate the windows on a listed building.
- I've handed in my rubbish (but finished!) essay.
- I've handed in my Greek translation.
- It turns out you can just pop down and get baptised. The wedding is go, and my place as grandchild numero uno is secured. As my sister said, "none of us are ever going to be able to beat that." Am managing to keep internal theological anxieties at bay.
- Yesterday I had time to have a bath and wash my hair.

As a reward I bought myself some nifty shoes and some vintage crochet tights. And tomorrow as an even bigger reward we're going to see THE FLYING PICKETS!

Goodbye stress, hello a cappella fun!

...we might have the house again. But it's not certain. Blogging will resume when I've had a good night's sleep.

Which may be after Wednesday, when we have to meet with the priest to convince him to let Bruno marry a heathen. Good times. Still trying to tell my grandmother that he's not going to offer for me to "just pop down and get christened" once he realises that I come from a good Catholic family. Although if you're Catholic here, they slap another hundred quid or so on your tax bill, so maybe he will.

I was all very relaxed about it and explained to Bruno (and my grandmother), that the Church had been letting you marry non catholics for decades, but then I spoke to the local priest, and discovered that something like that had never happened in Village Bruno. He had to go and look up the rules in some vatican guide book.

Next post:

either "Zoe and Bruno get married in Registry office. Shunned by Village Bruno."

or "A lengthy and self-absorbed treatise on the moral implications of accepting baptism into a Church with which you have fundamental theological differences."

or "Why I am the favourite grandchild."