The European Tampon Terror

Quite possibly one of the most horrifying but least spoken-of cultural barriers ever encountered. I am aware my male audience has no idea what I'm talking about, so here is a brief information session.

Here is your typical american tampon. Note presence of plastic applicator, minimizing contact between your fingers and your bloody bits.

On the other hand, here is a typical European tampon. Note lack of any kind of application device surrounding the tampon, which is ironically shaped like the jumbo Sperm Mothership.

Apparently when Europeans decided that showering, shaving, and deodorant weren't really that necessary, their tampon use habits also followed suit.

And so today, after an entire year abroad having been able to avoid the situation, the inevitable finally occurred. I had to borrow a tampon from my coworker, and it was indeed as French as she was. The bathroom sink didn't even have hot water, but at least I don't have TSS...Yet.

**TSS= spontaneous, serious complication that can develop from a single tampon use and require hospitalization. Chances of this happening are roughly the same, if not less, of chances of getting pregnant with a perfectly used condom.

Ode To Mandostan

So basically this is one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard:

A friend of a friend of mine was a volunteer worker at the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy a few years ago. After a disagreement with their boss, however, he and his friends quit, but still kept their volunteer access passes. They then went to a bar, and started to brainstorm what they could possibly pull off with such useful equiptment...

What did they do? They invented a country.

They designed a simple, typical third-world-looking flag for the small and newly independant, but proud, country of "Mandostan" (similar to an italian expression, "ma andò stà ‘sto?", which literally means "but where is that?"). They made a bunch of shirts and caps with the logo emblazoned on it, and went to check-in as the Mandostan Ski Team. It worked.

They then spent the next few days (or two weeks, depending on which story you adhere to) partying into the wee hours of the morning in the Olympic Village with such famous atheletes as Bode Miller. (I have seen the pictures. He is wearing a Mandostan t-shirt and our friend still has his sunglasses). Oh, and apparently the phrase "party like a rockstar" should be changed to "party like an olympic athelete." There was one medalist who stayed up till 5am doing lines of coke before competing the next day.

Sure, eventually all the atheletes realized that these people never seemed to be training and were from an entirely fictional country, but they liked hanging out with them so much that they totally played along with it. It has even been rumored that a BBC reporter, not wanting to seem ignorant, interviewed one of our proud Mandostani citizens about how he felt about an upcoming competition.



You really can't beat that.

The Chicken Truck

Way back when, OSK blogged in great detail about nostalgia. The feeling you get when you're going to miss a place even though you really didn't enjoy it all that much when you were there. While at the time he was blogging about France, I've started to have similar feelings about Switzerland.

After almost an entire year of "why the fuck did I do this," "I would have been so much better off in the US," and "God, the food/tram/people suck" (well not all the people obviously, but you get my jist); I think I've reached the point where I've finally fully accepted and assimilated to life here enough to enjoy it, even if it's not at all what I first had in mind. Like I always seem to get used to the freezing winter weather right before I'm about to step inside, I have realized, just in time, that come a month or two from now when I leave, I will miss Switzerland. I don't know whether this is genuine joy, pure nostalgia, or just not wanting to accept the fact that my might-have-been-epic year is over and I accomplished so shockingly little, but the fact remains. I guess it was always a love/hate relationship.

Oh, but I'll def miss my stoner roomates.



(Though I suppose I can always come back next year when OSK, apparently, will be in Europe all year long. Wow.)

"Though Maybe It's Different in the Sciences" (Education at Home and Abroad)

Ever since I arrived in Geneva, I have had the unique experience of being the only science major in a given group. Though once "humanities girl" (oh so many years ago), and normally a slacker amongst much more talented science students than I, being more-or-less labelled as "science girl" was all very new to me. As if this wasn't a big enough unecessary boost to my ego, being the first student to take science classes abroad on the program, not to mention a lab, made everything a special case for me. Exam registration was at different times, no one else took classes in my building, and many other tidbits of academic advice were always suffixed with "though maybe it's different in the sciences." I cannot deny, they had goood reason to say this.

In the US, there is the permeating belief (at least officially) that all majors require the same amount of work and intelligence, just in different forms. In Switzerland, however, there is no question among students from all facutlies as to who is working harder. Since I have had the unique opportunity to walk in both pairs of shoes, I'll tell you about it, and perhaps you can decide:

In the History and Litterature school (Lettres), students laze with wine and cigarettes on the lawn that shares greenery with a public park. They don't seem stressed- nor do they need to be. Class always starts 15 minutes later than indicated in the schedule, and while attendance is taken, they are allowed two skips per class per semester. More importantly, Humanities students only have to take a few graded classes at once, the majority of their curriculum is just pass/fail. They can pick which classes they would like to take pass/fail as opposed to graded, and weekly reading assignments (when assigned) rarely ever exceed 10 pages. My history professor, once upset with the class for not doing the reading well enough, singled me out and said that in the US students get 100-200 pages of reading a week, so to me this must be like Club Med. If students take a class pass/fail, their only assignment is a 20 minute oral presentation. If they take it for a grade, then they must also write a single 10-12 page paper on the same topic, or arrange to have an oral or written exam (also on only one subject within the course). Teachers are lax, not wanting to give the students "too much work" and the students can pick all of their own due-dates at the start of the semester. Now I understand that if I were taking six or more classes the workload could add up quickly enough, but you have to admit, what these kids are getting away with is pretty disgusting.


Four tram stops and a short walk down, we find ourselves at the Science buildings. Creatively named "Sciences," "Sciences II," "Sciences III," and "The Isotope Pavillion" the air is entirely different. In a more urban setting than Lettres, students occassionally huddle in groups to smoke cigarettes during class breaks on the steps outisde, but there are no luxurious lawns in sight. Classes start promptly when indicated, sometimes earlier if all the students are assembled anyway. On the bright side though, students are often given a 15 minute break in the middle of class to keep them paying attention better, and attendance is never taken. In the dark buildings with narrow hallways, students on the first floor socialize, play cards, and do work together in the cafeteria, while on the upper levels students flit about in lab coats. While many science majors in the US only take one or two science classes at a time (maybe matching up a notoriously challenging class wth a lighter schedule otherwise) Swiss students have no such luxury. Here, for example, students will take Biochemistry I, Organic Chemistry I, Both Physical chemistry classes, Analytical chemistry I, and intro Inorganic all in just one year. But that's not even the kicker. Lab meets three days a week, starting after lunch and often not ending until after 5 or 6 PM. Each week, each pair of partners is responsible for producing two, single spaced, 8-10 paged, full lab reports, in addition to their weekly problem sets in lecture. All classes have graded exams. Needless to say I have gained a ridiculous amount of respect for these people. When I asked a friend of mine "Ca va la vie autrement que chimie?" [How is life other than chemistry?] she responded "Haha, Quoi de vie autrement que chimie?" [What life other than chemistry?]


Still wondering?

There are also some other interesting differences between academics here and in the US that are worth noting.

• School is mostly sponsored by the state, and it only costs a few hundred dollars per student per semester. Many students go to university in the same town they grew up in and continue to stay at home with parents and the same friends. Only a few foreigners need to pay for independant housing. Since repeating a year is inexpensive, it's not uncommon for students to fail a class and be allowed several retakes (the exact number depending on the faculty).
  
• When students come to the univeristy, they pick a faculty and stick in it- rarely taking classes that are not required for their major. As a result, it's not uncommon (in Sciences, at least) to have the exact same small group of people in almost every class, day-in and day-out. Degrees tend to come more quickly here: a Bachelors, Masters, and PhD each taking roughly three years.

• Classes are also more numerous than in the US: students often take 5 or more at a time depending on how many individual credits each class is worth (there is a much larger variance here than amongst classes in the US). However, classes are easier to do well in, with exam questions pulled directly from the homework. Papers are mere cumuluation and recitation of fact without need for personal analysis. (After all, you've only read a few books in the subject and you don't have a doctorate, why should it matter what you think?)

Selection: The Enemy of High Fashion?

Bien sûr, je fais du blogging actuellement du café !

Having found myself alone with time to kill in the world's fashion capital, I decided to do one of the few activities that is actually fun alone: go shopping. As I gazed up in awe at the stained glass ceiling of the infamous Galleries Lafayette, and then proceeded to wander through an unending seven floors of pure decadence, an epiphany occurred to me: Selection is the enemy of high fashion.

Allow me to elaborate: Let's say you are a wealthy consumer looking to wear only the best in fashion. You enter an expensive store that sells all jeans, but only one pair is embroidered and the rest are plain. If you prefer a touch of creative flair to your jeans, or even just anything colorful, you will likely try on and consider buying the embroidered pair. The nature of the embroidery itself is not important. It could be any design, but the important thing is that the jeans are embroidered and looked unique, at least in the context of that store and the few others comparable to it. Now, if there were several pairs of embroidered jeans available, you would inevitably become a more picky consumer: judging them by the nature of the embroidery to select between pairs. This brings your attention to the embroidery itself, and thus, leads you to possibly turn down hypothetical purchases because of a detail that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

This may initially sound ridiculous, after all, if the embroidery is not exactly what you want then why not wait until you find another, fully perfect pair? Unlikely. After all, you've constrained yourself to just the nicest of stores, which isn't a lot, so the likelihood of finding embroidered jeans to begin with may not be so high, let alone another pair that you prefer. By providing you with just one pair of embroidered jeans instead of several, the designer is actually manipulating you into making a less informed decision, and buying that one pair.
Louis Vuitton is a perfect example. Would you like a large bag? OK, we offer a selection of styles, but almost all in the exact same print. When Louis Vuitton does offer things in different colors, the product immediately looks more appealing to a consumer simply because it's more unique and creative, while in reality the designers only had to change a simple detail to generate extra interest, and ergo, an excuse for extra profits.

This fact becomes obvious when looking at the bigger picture: expensive boutiques and top designer stores are small- selling just a few items that rarely come in more than one or two colors. Larger and less expensive stores however, often have entire racks of the exact same sweater in 20 different colors, hoping to draw in and please as many consumers as possible. One might even refer to it as democratized fashion.

This discovery also fits perfectly into the classical irony of high fashion. Every good designer knows that fashion is never simply a question of what outfit is the most form fitting and appealing; it's always about personal identity and expression. The classic irony of high fashion then, (in my opinion) is that top designers often draw their inspiration from sub cultures and less glamorous lifestyles. Where would fashion be without beat, hippie, army/navy, agricultural (think ripped jeans), or punk inspirations? Ultimately, you have people shelling out $200or more for a plain, subtly floral shirt that says "look at me, I'm just a simple farm girl." Clients who wish to express their personality in a certain way while sticking only within designer circles are immediately cheated of the selection they would have if they dropped their airs and headed down to Marshalls, which many are unlikely to do, insisting on nothing but the "best" quality. To return to the first example, If you want to dress well but also look like a hippie, and there is only one pair of embroidered jeans available, you are almost definitely buying those jeans.

But what about the embroidered design itself? Does that mean anything? Allow me another anecdote. A few years ago, I became a fan of the color brown. Not only was it my top choice school at the time (har har) but it was warm and neutral without being as impersonal as black or grey. Since Pink had been a favorite color of mine for awhile, I went shopping for bed sheets hoping to find a combination of the two colors. Low and behold, it seemed that Target’s entire bedding collection had gone brown and pink that year. No joke. As great as this was for me, the brown-and-pink-desiring consumer, I couldn’t help but be a little freaked out. Was this just a coincidence? Or were there other forces at work that had somehow subconsciously driven me to desire specifically brown and pink bedding?

While Target arguably falls on the more "democratized" side of the fashion spectrum, this is still very much related to the question of the nature of the embroidery on the jeans. By being ambivalent as to the specific type of embroidery on the jeans but buying them anyway, the consumer is, in fact, propagating the style chosen by the designer even though they have had little say in what it is. (Imagine voting for a party but only understanding half of the platform, who knows what could fill the other half?) Shall sparrows be big this year? Ok, the embroidery will be sparrows then. Flowers? Hearts? Brown and Pink? It's subtle, but it's very possible.

And this of course brings us to the ancient paradox: are the designer chickens controlling our eggy taste in fashion? Or are the tastes of the people hatching designers that better "suit" our needs? Are such decisions best left up to us, the average consumer, or the "talented" fashion designer? I'm not quite sure, but one thing is: if you've actually bothered to read this entire blog post (making you awesome, by the way) shopping may never be the same again...

Hotel Pools: The Answer

A friend of mine once deeply mused: "Hotel Pools: Why?"





The answer is simple: so that residents of the neighboring area deeply desiring a dip can subtly pretend to be guests at the city's most luxurious hotel; and therefore swim in their pool, lie in their luxurious canopied pillow-tents, and pick up complimentary towels on the way out.









Now if only the spa had been open...

Don't Surround Yourself with Yourself

I check on the carrots. My improvised recipie seems to be working out, or at least isn't a total failure just yet. I rarely put this much effort into eating vegetables, but it's my friend's Pot Luck Birthday dinner and she wanted vegetarian. I go back to my room to change: a nice, ruffled skirt and slightly heeled boots. The stylish, yet casual kind that leave only my knees revealed above their frumpy, layered tops. I wouldn't have been interested in boots like this a year ago, but there's something about them that's grown on me. I return to the kitchen to finish up the card, and finally transfer the carrots to a piece of tupperware.

Arriving at the party- a small gathering of a dozen or so women in my other friend's appartment- a surprisingly thoughtful guest offers to take my purse and jacket. I pour myself some wine, wish my friend a happy birthday, and then take my pick of small conversation circles. Visitors introduce themselves. People discuss the food they brought and where the recipies come from. A friend of mine sagely informs me that, apparently, you can't go wrong with lemon in a group full of women. The warm, ambient jazz music gives the evening a very classic feel as the conversations start to shift over to work. Several of my friends have snazzy UN and NGO internships and it's always interesting to hear about what they've been up to, especially with many large conferences coming up. I can't say anything too impressive, or even remotely similar, about my own work at the moment, and I start wonder if I'm missing out on this entire second life that they seem to have developed. The conversation takes a lighter turn towards office gossip, and I am again struck by how easily my friends seem to have integrated themselves into these novel social networks dominated by the 25-35 crowd. One girl even got hit on by a diplomat.

The clink of the hostess's glass pulls our attention towards the buffet, and we meander over in cliques to get our food. Before eating, the hostess toasts the Birthday Girl, who inturn makes a surprisingly refelctive toast as she thanks us all for coming. Another toast is proposed to the friend who prepared the main course, though she quickly brushes off the attention as we all turn our attentions to our plates. At the end of the meal, more surprisingly helpful guests offer to help the hostess with the dishes while others lay out dessert. We sing happy birthday. In a rush to get a drink of water I temporarily forget that you can't chug champagne, and the burn sends a slight shiver down my spine. After the cake is done we sit around for awhile and chat until the first small group has to leave, starting the inevitable domino effect of goodbyes. It's about nine o'clock. I thank the hostess and tell her I had a nice time. Which I did, though this might have surprised me a year ago. Two of my friends go back to another's appartment for a night cap while I head out alone to pick something up that I had been meaning to print.

I feel old.

The air is pleasantly brisk for Geneva. As a tram speeds by me, the city seems more dynamic and exciting than it usually would, especially on a Sunday evening. As if the night had something in store for me that I had not yet witnessed and could not possibly imagine. And for a brief second I am not walking in the city, but I am the city. A respectable, invisible figure in the background just going about their daily business. Walking quickly and determindly, slightly hunched over, and clutching a large bag.

Oh, Canada!

Every spring, multitudes of American college students head north to escape the brutal, oppressive liquor laws of their country. They go towards hope, they go towards dreams, they go... to Canada.

The general consensus? Excellent. Going on vacation to Canada is exactly like going on vacation to Europe, except you only drive several hours instead of flying, and the exchange rate is actually in your favor. Really, cultural novelties, cobblestone streets, quaint pubs, and (in our case) awkward language barriers included. Poutine anyone? I might just never bother crossing the Atlantic again.