Why not Switzerland?

I think only New Zealand would challenge Switzerland in a competition called "where I would live if I could, not counting the U.S.A." But I wonder. . .

Varese is very close to Switzerland - about 10 miles to the border. People go there to shop all the time, and the Swiss come here. Like in most border situations different things are cheaper on different sides of the border.

CaJacob is a Swiss name (as is Straub, Susan's last name). I spent a year in high school in France but very near Geneva, so I visited Switzerland often, and have several times since. In a word, for me, Switzerland is difficult.

Switzerland is very small - a third the size of Ohio. It would be the 42nd largest U.S. state. It has about 7 million people, double the population of Oregon, 2/3 that of Ohio. It would be the 12th biggest state in population. This means that it has a very high population density, all the more so for the fact that about half the country is mountainous.

Despite a very warlike history - they were famous mercenaries - these days the Swiss like to stay neutral. They just joined the United Nations in 2002. They are not in the European Union. They are not in the Coalition of the Willing, although I think the Marshall Islands are, and I know Italy is.

Although an old democracy, they are not exactly progressive. Women just got the vote in 1971. (Swiss-like little Liechtenstein held out until 1984!)

The country has four native languages: 64% of the people speak German, another 20% speak French (they call the line between the two regions the rösti trench, after the delicious hash browns that the German-speakers love.) Another 5% or so speak Italian, in the area near Varese. About 60,000 speak Romantsch. CaJacob is a Romantsch name - "Ca" = casa for "house", so "house of Jacob." I have visited our ancestral village and people there actually do speak the language and hardly any German or anything else. But I'm afraid Romantsch's future is bleak as an independent language.

This Italian canton, Ticino, is isolated by mountains from the rest of the country and has strong affinity with Italy. Ticino, with about 300,000 people, is on the Southern slope of the Alps and has a much nicer climate than the rest of the country. It is startlingly beautiful. Big, deep, blue lakes, clean-looking mountains - stunning. So a person might wonder: why not live here? Italian restaurants and Swiss toilets? Doesn't sound so bad.

Not so fast. Ticino has a bit of an identify crisis, it seems. Are we Swiss? We don't get the respect from the French Swiss, much less the German Swiss. Are we Italian? No, not really - much too untidy for us.

Switzerland has a lot of rules for a democracy. I joke with my German friends that Germany is the place where "everything that is not forbidden is mandatory." Well, the more I learn about Switzerland the more that label seems to fit better.

Here is a partial list of common rules in Swiss apartment buildings:

- Linen must be aired on a specific day.
- No loud parties, and your neighbors get to decide the definition of "loud."
- No toilet flushing after 10 p.m.!!!

The list goes on.

But it's not that simple. We spent a fun weekend with Susan and Barbara Straub's old friend Chris Luisi in Zürich. Yes, it's true, I got what I have to believe was a scolding from a gentleman speaking Swiss German about how I parked my rental car. I'm still not sure what I did wrong, although I'm sure he's sure. But Zürich is nice, not just efficient, or beautiful, or logical. It's nice. Human-scale. High quality. Walkable. Excellent transportation. You could live there, if you could afford to.

Still, I'm finally ready to admit that my friend Jim Caldwell is a neater person than I am. There must be others. With that chilling realization I must face the very real possibility that Switzerland might not, after all, be right for me.