Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump
Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump
Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump
The ‘music’ knocks you senseless!
Nearly one million people and almost every one of them has stood on my foot in the past hour.
Sweating bare skin everywhere — apparently the Street Parade in Zürich is just the excuse the girls have been waiting for, to strip down to their undies and to show the world just how fat their backsides and belles really are. 500 people were treated for emergencies; Sun-stroke, alcohol-poisoning or shock at seeing yet another bared colossus.
O.K. — been there, done that, couldn’t be bothered to get the t-shirt and most certainly won’t subject myself to that again!
I let myself be persuaded to go to Zürich on Saturday. We left the car at home — one, because I could not imagine where we could park with one million people converging on Zürich; two, I would be able to drink a beer or two without worrying about my driving license.
The Inter-City that shuttled back and forth between St.Gallen and Zürich looked as if a bomb had hit it. Before boarding, I purchased two beers at CHF 2 each — the same beer suddenly cost CHF 7 at the parade. Roast chicken on a skewer cost CHF 13 — the skewer contained about a third of the meat you’d find on a Kebab at CHF 8. Madness!
A friend asked “You didn’t pay for the train-ride, did you? There were so many people, they gave all the conductors the day off and didn’t check any tickets!” Well yes, actually, I did pay!

One day, somebody will probably be able to explain to me where the fun is in pushing through dense crowds for more than a kilometer to stand behind a fence in an even denser crowd, to be able to see a lorry-load of ravers crawl past in slow motion and to have your ear-drums pulverised in the process.

Punctually for 1st August, the Swiss National Day, the People's Party [SVP] announced the launch of an initiative against "mass immigration". The SVP wants to use the initiative to 'regain the ability to control immigration', after Switzerland has lost control. More and more people are flocking to Switzerland, with serious consequences for economy and society.
The main reasons for this development are particularly immigration from the EU, too simple family reunification from third countries, many illegal residents and asylum numbers that are on the rise again.

"A sovereign state must be able to determine for itself the scale and the quality level of immigration" the party states.

The initiative provides for ceilings and quotas for immigrant aliens. Moreover, the right to permanent residence, for family reunification and social benefits will be limited. With 66'000 immigrants arriving in Switzerland every year since the Swiss/EU agreement, things are getting out of hand.
While I am not blind to the problems immigration has caused in France, Germany and, not least, Great Britain, I am, once more, shocked at the choice of expression. First, we must control the 'quality' of immigrants, second we have to make family reunification more difficult!
Erm, excuse me Herr Brunner, SVP, you are talking about third-class-citizens again, and about the fact that you want to restrict internationally accepted human rights.

Here is some news that, while not as comforting as a full English breakfast, is still going to lift the spirits of some British expats and even a few ‘foreigners’.
 
BBC worldwide has just launched a new global BBC iPlayer app, available exclusively on iPad www.bbc.com/iplayer/tv. This service will give access to a rich selection of British programming to audiences across Europe.
The app can be downloaded free of charge and a selection of programmes are available without a subscription, so you get a chance to try before you buy.
While the subscription-price is a bit steep at €6.99/CHF9 a month (or €49.99 for an annual subscription), this brand-new video-on-demand subscription service means that Brits abroad can reminisce with classic comedies such as Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses, share the adventures of Doctor Who and track the team from Top Gear, discover bright new talent and pioneering new shows like Sherlock and Luther or fall in love all over again with Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

Designed to be intuitive, the app is fairly easy-to-use (it took me a while to find “Henry VIII - Mind of a Tyrant” after watching a preview). A key feature of the app allows subscribers both to stream and to download shows to a personal library for offline viewing for when they can’t access Wi-Fi connectivity.
Text and image mainly courtesy of BBC

This, supposedly, is a sign of quality. The question is, when applied to food, what is the quality compared to?
I recently spent three weeks in Great Britain. One of the things I look forward to, when I am visiting home, is an English breakfast. Sausage, eggs, bacon, beans, fried tomatoes, etc. English sausages come in various shapes, sizes and colors. There is nothing that can be bought in Switzerland or Germany that is comparable.
Many Swiss or Germans will say that English sausages are terrible. Please feel free – I don't like your sausages that much either! (But the Swiss could do with some sausage-making-lessons in Germany)
There is a similar situation with bacon. I have lived the life of an ex-patriate for 30 years, now, and during that time, I have seen many packs of meat that look similar to bacon. The purchased result is always disappointing. Recently my hopes were raised, when I saw something labeled as 'Swiss Bacon'! It immediately found its way into the shopping trolly and, next morning at breakfast-time, into the frying pan.

Who was responsible for this label? Does the manufacturer even know what bacon is? Had he seen it before, did he sample British, Irish or Danish bacon before he decided to call this product bacon? I think not!
Maybe he saw a picture of stripy bacon somewhere, compared it to some smoked Ham that he was unable to palm off as Schwarzwälder Schinken, and decided to repack it. The result?
Just show Swiss Bacon a hot frying pan and it will shrivel up and turn black immediately! If you want to heat it, do so gently. I heated it ever so gently. Just the same, the smell of salt was so strong that it clung to the back of my throat and made me cough. The taste was even worse — the salt made me gag as soon as I took a bite! I tried one piece — the rest landed in the bin.

Yesterday I saw a tin labeled 'Swiss Corned Beef'.
Don't be mislead. It looks and smells like cat food and tastes revolting. The cats turned up their noses at it and refuse point-blank to even try it!
My conclusion, then: if any food is labeled 'Swiss [name-of-foreign-product]', it is something that bears no resemblance at all to what the label says it is!

You might remember the house just up the road? I wrote about it twice,now, here and here.
What began so quickly, seems to have changed very little over the last five months. The colour of the new house has altered as shingles have been added to the walls and tiles to the roof, but all in all it looks pretty much the same as when it was erected in March.
One thing has changed, though, we now have a dog to keep us company.
Now, as you know, a dog is man's best friend. You might also have heard that dogs and cats don't particularly like each other.
Until last week, we had four cats in this house — the-lady-downstairs had two and we have two. [1]
All four cats have been attacked by the dog during the last few months. All four were bitten quite seriously.
Complaints to the neighbour, whom I've come to know quite well over the years, resulted at first in
"No, our dog would never chase cats, it was brought up with cats, even eats out of the same bowl ..."
And then in "Well, just throw something at the dog, if you see it stalking the cats!"

The bites that Benson, our tom-cat, suffered didn't look too bad. I cleaned them with camomile and they healed quite quickly — superficially.
Sadly, even though there were no symptoms for weeks, the poor cat contracted blood-poisoning. With no symptoms on display, the first thing we noticed was that he was unable to pass water. The little water he did pass, contained blood!

We immediately rushed him to the vet's. Blood tests displayed disturbing results. Benson's kidneys had ceased to function. This meant twice-daily-visits to the vet's for a week for treatment which would seem to have helped. One very frustrated cat was forced to remain in the apartment for over a week, whereas he normally has the run of the fields ...
During this week, we noticed that Benson seemed to be getting more and more clumsy — he would suddenly misjudge the hight of a chair he wanted to jump on to. It was when I wanted to feed him some fresh chicken meat that I realised the cat was blind. He could smell the meat but couldn't see my hand holding it out to him!

It is impossible to know, at the moment, if the blindness will pass. Some days he can see shadows, so he will suddenly duck in fear, when you put your hand out to stroke him. Sometimes he'll walk into a door or stumble over a step. The vet says that we shall just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile the dog is still lurking outside the cat-trap or next to the bushes the cats like to sleep under.
I showed my neighbour the vet's bill for CHF1400. He was quite shocked.
'He will definitely have to do something about the dog.' He told me.
He definitely will!!

[1] [I wrote that we had four cats — one of them got in the way last week, as the meadow was being mown. Sadly she didn't survive.]