Sunday Morning Thoughts – February 23, 2025

How to annoy a person from Zurich … and more

Clearly that’s a crucial thing to be able to do. It’s also really fun. Especially if you’re from Aarau. And if you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, that’s perfectly okay.

I posted that Switzerland doesn’t have an official capital. I mean we have a de facto one that we all agreed on - or people did in 1848. It was not a straight-forward process, there were just a couple of things that were clear right from the start – it can’t be Zurich was one. I mean that’s totally obvious to anybody who is not from Zurich, but that’s a different story. So, with Zurich off the table Geneva was up next – very international, airport, home to many international agencies. An obvious choice really.

Not so fast! That was too far away from everybody and in the French speaking part. We can’t have that. Lucerne was in the running too, very centrally located, but too in the center of German speaking Switzerland. Aarau was actually the capital for about five months before Bern was chosen. I think that’s a very interesting fact. Especially given that Zurich was never even considered.

Yes, I’m totally rubbing that in.

So, in the end it was Bern that was chosen as a de facto capital. Officially (de iure) we don’t have one, but for all intents and purposes it is Bern. Bern was chosen because we all like it. They have the most charming dialect with the weirdest words – apart from Valais, but that again, is an entirely different story. Also, Bern is bilingual (French/German) and sort of centrally located. Not right in the middle obviously because that’s where the mountains live.

It’s been working well for us.

Why did that pop into my head? Well, I went on a little adventure to the outskirts of Bern on Friday. It was bus, train, bus and I even had time to go to my favorite bookshop in Bern. Well, they no longer sell Swedish books. I mean they have the “easy readers” but no proper crime novels. Not sure what happened. I’ll just have to go to Sweden then. They were also still moving stuff around. So, maybe those books will be back. And yes, that just occurred to me now sitting on my sofa in the semi dark of an early February morning in Switzerland.

It's 7.30 as I type this. And it’s now 9.30 as I re-read what I wrote.

As I mentioned above Bern is a bilingual canton (state/province). They’ve always had a huge section with French books at this bookshop. Now, they have an entire floor of French books and it really does look like a bookshop in France. You walk up the stairs and are greeted by “Bonjour Madame” and later asked (still in French) if you needed any assistance.

Was I ready to speak French on my day off in Bern? Nope, definitely not. Was this the end of it? No, it was just the beginning.

I took the bus to Zentrum Paul Klee where they have a permanent Paul Klee exhibit and at the moment also one honoring the work of Le Corbusier. Did I remember that Le Corbusier was Swiss? Well, not really. He was born and raised in La Chaux-de-Fonds during the heyday of the watch industry. If you ever go to La Chaux-de-Fonds there is a huge watch sculpture right outside the train station. It might also be home to one of the longest inner-city streets in Switzerland (Numa Droz). I haven’t fact-checked this, but that’s the road my great-aunt used to live on and it’s super LONG.

Anyway, Le Corbusier – fascinating person, fascinating art, fascinating architecture. And the exhibit was in French and German. I was reading the same things in German and then French or vice versa. My brain needs to stop doing that.

I didn’t take any pictures other than this one. I loved the symmetry of it. It’s not entirely coincidental that there are two people in the picture on either side. Took a bit of patience and people kept moving. I think it works really well in black and white.

There were a lot of French-speaking visitors – for obvious reasons. So, we did the very Swiss thing of all just speaking our mother tongue. It works pretty well. Friday was also international Mother Language Day. It’s when we – and by “we” I mean countries other than the US – celebrate linguistic diversity.

Switzerland is not the country with the most official languages (India and South Africa come to mind) but we’re doing okay with our four. Of course, when you’re job hunting and all interesting positions require excellent French skills, it’s less great. My French is okay, but not excellent.

I’m a sucker for a Scottish accent. Gets me every time. So, here’s something Scottish – in case you missed it. This was the opening of the BAFTAs. David Tennant is my birthday buddy and also a proper LGBTQ+ ally.

On that note – well, kind of … I can’t get over what happened when I was shopping for jeans yesterday. You know what cut fit me like a glove? The “boyfriend cut”. Yes, you read that right. How is that even possible? I bought them, obviously, it’s not their fault I’m gay. I’m still laughing though. It had to be that cut. Of course it did.

Still on that note – again sort of … When I say that my DMs are open, I don’t mean open to be hit on by random men. Total soulmates. All of them. Telling me I’m cute. Well, I know I’m cute, thank you. I also know that you’d never pass my dating criteria. Here they are:

• female

• at the very least bilingual

• creative

• hiker

• smart

See, you’d fall at the first hurdle. Stop being creepy.

And that brings me to why I’ve now set up a paid version of this newsletter. I’m going to give live video a try. Not sure if and how that’s gonna work but why not. I’d suggest that you all wait until there actually IS a video up that’s paid subscribers only. And if you’re happy to go without and prefer to be a free subscriber that’s perfectly fine as well. I just don’t want everybody to have access to my videos. At least for now.

So, here’s the deal. I wanted to do $2 a month, but the Substack minimum is $5. Okay, so I thought, I’ll just make it $24 a year then. Nope, the Substack minimum on that is $30 a year. If the pricing I went for looks weird to you – this is why. So, it’s $5 a month or $30 for an entire year (which makes it $2.50 a month). That’s the best I could do.

You’d of course not just be supporting me to watch my videos but also supporting my writing. Anybody who can’t support me but would like access, let me know – we’ll work something out. No shame in that at all.

What kind of (live-)videos might you expect? Well, how about I take you along on my adventures? Wanna stand by the Rhine Falls? Or up Mt. Rigi? Or cross Lake Lucerne with me? Not sure if that’s gonna work well as live videos. I’ll have to try it out. I want to improve my video skills. So that’s a way to do it.

Remember when I started a podcast because I wanted to force myself to learn more about plastics? Similar thing. Making it paid subscribers only puts a bit of pressure on to actually do it. Comfort zone and such. I’ve done some video on IG so it’s not totally new.

This could be such a train wreck. But this is what’s been going on. I’ll try and remember to put an “Upgrade to paid” button at the end of this newsletter. I disabled the “remind people that they can upgrade” message because I find that annoying myself.

Before I forget, thanks to everyone who reached out after I posted my iceberg newsletter. I’m doing well. It’s part of healing. Pretending to be a penguin helps too. I’ve got the waddle down to a T. There is some other stuff that just makes me sad though.

Want me to bum you out too?

How many times did your parents hug you? How many times did they tell you they loved you? Add up those four numbers. Impossible? I’m so happy for you! Me - I don’t even need all fingers of one hand for that one. That my friends is trauma caused by neglect. Is it talked about enough? Nope. It’s next level harmful and those wounds run super deep. Of course they do.

There were some other things I wanted to say. Let me try and remember. This is gonna be like the quick-fire round on WILTY (Would I lie to you – BBC show, funny!).

I totally know what I want for my birthday. I need a proper easel. I don’t have one at the moment. It’s gonna go in the middle of my living room. I love that idea.

Do bookshops where you are do “mystery books”? That’s books that are wrapped like presents and you only get a very short description. Last Tuesday pretty much all my trains got cancelled due to a suicide by train on platform 2 at the station in Aarau. Yes, I needed to be that specific. To keep my mind off this, I bought a mystery book. Not sure if I’m gonna like it, but it’s funny. It also kept me entertained on a very crowded S-Bahn train. Those were the only ones running. Love the mystery book concept – hate that suicide by train is so common here.

Polyvagal theory? Super interesting. I need to dive in deeper before I can talk about it. I also continue to be fascinated by epigenetics.

Last week I went to Bellinzona, an often-overlooked gem in Ticino. I love it there. Here are some more pictures from that little adventure.

Oh and since we’re not talking about architecture at all. I also took some pictures outside when I went to Zentrum Paul Klee. There is a freeway between me and that first picture of the center. Then there’s the main entrance and some headphones (the colors represent pre-set languages). At the end I had some overpriced tea at their café and I was looking up at the architecture.

I needed to sit down and have tea to digest what I had seen and read. Art museums always trigger something. In this case it was perfectionism. Or the realization that these works of art were far from perfect. Imperfections I see in my own paintings were in these famous ones as well. There’s a lesson in that.

And yes, trauma survivors and perfectionism is a thing. It’s a thing for many people. For me it’s rooted in a feeling of “maybe they will love me if I’m good and make no mistakes”. Again, this one runs deep. So, that got triggered along with a deep feeling of sadness when I read that Paul Klee died of an auto-immune disease that was fatal back then.

For both Paul Klee and Le Corbusier there were parts of the exhibit that talked about 1930s Germany. Clearly a trigger at the moment to anybody who’s been paying attention.

Damn, I wanted to end on a positive note. How am I going to turn that one around? Don’t think I can. It’s gray and miserable here today. And looking at a weather map of Switzerland, there’s no escaping it. Maybe I’ll go on a quick adventure. I haven’t decided yet.

I’ll keep you posted on that video project. Have a lovely Sunday everyone. Stay sane.

P.S.: There’s no preset “upgrade to paid” button - so, maybe I’ll have to change some of the settings or create one myself. I’ll do that some other time.