Sunday morning thoughts – December 31, 2023

What a year! But I had some other thoughts this morning.

Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with a recap of 2023. It’s been an extremely freaking turbulent one. There’s so much going on in my head that I don’t know how much I can fit into this newsletter. I’ll stop at 1,000 words or thereabouts. I promise.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing and right now there are three newsletter word documents open on my laptop. One is on “conservative values”, one has the working title “broken finger” (not sure I like that title) and the last one doesn’t even have a working title yet, but it’s gonna be on how feelings are at the root of any trauma healing. That one’s for my other newsletter. And last night I was reminded that I never finished the one on the word/concept “friend”. That one started by the confusing way the word is used in German (and other languages) and how it’s different from English. Stay tuned, I’m gonna dig it up. I think it has potential but needs more work.

So, this week my linguist brain suddenly thought about the English words snail and slug. I might need a table to explain what happened. Here you go. Explanation follows below.

My own table based on my own use of the word in Swiss German and on what Dutch friends told me.

I found it interesting and yes, I mean interesting! that in Swiss German if we want to specify what kind of a snail it is we say “snail with a house” whereas in German it’s the other way around. A slug is a “naked snail”. That’s how it started. I then stupidly asked in a family group chat what people would call a slug in Swiss German. Not even in my family we agree on a word or whether there even was an actual word and I won’t mention the 140-page document on the subject that was sent to me.

I also asked a few Dutch friends and they agree that “slak” is the main word and if you need to specify you can either say “naaktslak” or “huisjesslak” which is kind of a mix of the German and Swiss concepts. See? I told you this was fascinating.

Was my brain done? Of course not! I then looked up slug/snail in French. I had no idea they had a separate word for slug, but then “escargot” is a bit overbearing with it also being a food. I added Swedish in my table for good measure. I have nothing to add there.

Now how do I get from escargot to firefighting? That’s a bit of a stretch …

Anyway, a discussion with friends led me to check if what I’d said was still accurate. It had to do with volunteer firefighters in Switzerland. I know I said I wouldn’t look things up for my Sunday morning thoughts, but these I had to. It’s only what is in the next paragraph though. While we do still talk about “freiwillige Feuerwehr” in Geman it is not really volunteer work as such. For us it’s to make the distinction between people whose full-time job it is and everybody else.

There are only 17 professional fire departments in Switzerland. And I was correct in saying that they are in bigger cities (with a population >100,000) and also at airports, or certain industries (e.g. pharma in the Basel area). Anywhere else, the “volunteers” is what you get.

So let me explain that system. Once you turn 18 you have to join the local fire department. If you can’t or don’t want to you pay a “fire department tax”. That means on your tax return you have to put whether you served as a firefighter and if you haven’t they’ll take a percentage of your income.

Once you join the fire department you get proper training and paid leave (or partially paid leave) from work to complete the training. You might have to remind your employer that it’s actually paid leave, especially as a woman. Women have been required to serve as firefighters since the late 1990s where I live. I believe we were one of the first cantons that extended the requirement to serve to women.

Then there’s also company or plant fire departments. That’s where people have their regular jobs and are also trained firefighters. So, if there is an incident at their company they are right there. I know that the chocolate factory right down the road has a company fire crew. It’s actually a pretty common thing.

Anyway, as a “volunteer firefighter” you’re basically on call 365 days a year 24/7. BUT you only have to go in if you’re at home. It used to be that your landline had a special ringtone if it was the fire department, and we were not allowed to answer it. Because answering would have meant that our dad was on his way to the fire. Nowadays you get alerted on your cell phones.

Because they can’t assume that everybody is at home during the day, the groups that are called in vary depending on the time of day. There are usually two or three towns working together. And if the fire is really big your nearest “Stützpunkt Feuerwehr” (kind of like a fire department base) is called in as well. Those are fire departments that have to have a certain percentage of people who work in town and are ready at short notice. They also have more specialist equipment.

Yikes!

It’s past 11 AM and I just got the message that it is already 2024 in Kiribati. Also, I’m at almost 1,000 words.

So, let’s talk favorite holiday movies. What are some movies you watch every holiday season? For me it’s The Holiday and Love Actually. There is one specific scene in each of them that always makes me cry. And yes, I still have Love is all around stuck in my head. And I also think The Holiday should be updated and Amanda and Iris should end up together. But maybe that’s just me.

On January 1, 2023, I went to the Rhine Falls. I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow morning. I’ll have to have a look at the weather. I might just go walk around Aarau early in the morning before everybody else gets up. Or I could go up a mountain. Too many options! I’ll leave you with pictures of earlier this week when I went up Mt. Rigi.

Happy New Year everybody wherever in the world you are. For those of you in Switzerland - Es guets Nöis!

Notes:

https://www.ifolor.ch/en/inspire/the-fire-department-in-switzerland

https://www.swissfire.ch/pages/mod/getMedById.cfm?medId=15401