Love is a great feeling. Happiness and a sense of completeness come with it. But usually , a love relationship also has its rough patches. I love our democracy. But at the moment, I wonder what in the world is wrong with it. Switzerland will vote on an initiative that in case of a majority of votes and a majority of states saying yes would add a clause to our constitution to prohibit the construction of minarets on mosques. A scary thought. Mind you, Switzerland is the depository state of the Geneva convention and the fight for human rights is an important part of our foreign policy. And yet do we have a considerable number of people who believe that the clause of religious freedom in our constitution is limited to Christianity. Experts on constitutional law apparently see no problem in this initiative as it does not prevent Muslims from practicing their religion. Nevertheless, I am appalled by the thought that a sizeable group of people in our country (there are about 300,000 Muslims living in Switzerland. That is a bit less than the population of Zurich) would not be allowed to add an important symbol to their house of worship.
Once again, our right wing party was successful in demonizing a group of people in my country. Instead of seeking an open dialog, demagoguery is their choice of method to deal with an issue. Yes, Switzerland has to deal with its Muslim population. Yes, we have to accept that our homogenous society is becoming more and more a heterogeneous one with all its disadvantages – and advantages. Instead of showing a lot more curiosity towards the new and unknown, we choose to take the easy way out by simply believing the stereotypes that are so readily available. Hardly anyone has a detailed understanding of Islam and the various values and practices. And this initiative gives the impression that some want to rather leave it this way. I think the statement of Hisham Maizar in yesterday’s edition of “Der Bund”, the newspaper in Bern, exemplifies it very well. He said “if someone sneezes in Afghanistan it is the fault of the Muslims in Switzerland.”

In a way it is funny. We are willingly accepting the variety of Christian movements and sects, some of which can probably be called fundamentalistic. Yet, we seem to be unable to accept that a similar variety could exist among Muslims in Switzerland. Instead, all of them are considered a threat and should therefore be hindered as much as possible to live their religion. There is no doubt that there are probably fundamentalist Islamist at work in Switzerland. And they have to be stopped, if they do not want to accept our society, our culture and our values. But it would be considerably easier to achieve this goal in cooperation with the moderate Muslim population. However, why in the world should they trust the majority Christian population and decision makers when they throw everybody in the same pot? How can we as a society possibly be successful in integrating a new group of inhabitants, when we are refusing an honest and open dialog? I do hope that the pragmatism in Switzerland will win once again and that this initiative will have the same fate as so many before: it will be turned down. I really hope this is just a rough patch as I do want to continue my love affair with our democracy.

The woman behind the counter looked at me suspiciously. Where does he come from? What is he doing here? As if this intruder meant a threat to the peace in the little village 30 km north of Bern. I pretended I wouldn't notice. Typically Swiss, she would of course not dare to ask any questions. Well, I packed the eggs, joghurts and cheese in my bag and left the cheesery. Welcome to Leuzigen, a country side community between Solthurn and Biel.

Since the Swiss authorities want to know where all the people in this country live, you have to register at the municipality. Not doing it is a guarantee for trouble. Being good citizens, the two of us made the journey downtown (5 minutes down the road by foot) to citizen control office. Right in front of us were two out of the 240,000 Germans that immigrated into Switzerland so far. No problem. Then it was our turn - and it turns out that the person who does the data entry was on vacation. Welcome to Leuzigen.

Imagine this. It is 6:54 am. Five or six people are already waiting at the bus stop. It is still dark. The, passenger seven joins the crowed. Now, would we be in a city, I would have told you everything with the previous three sennteces. But living in Leuzigen, of course, everyone knows everyone and hence it is just normal to arrive at the bus stop and wish everybody a good morning. What a civilized way to start the day - even if it is 6:57 in the morning. Welcome to Leuzigen

Not having a car in Switzerland is considerably less of a problem than it is, say in the US. Hence, the first thing Seba and I bought was a General Abonement. However, to profit from the reduction they offer, when two people in a household buy such GA, I needed to get a form signed by the municipality, confirming that the two of us really lived together. Well, how do you that, if the municipal office opens after my bus leaves in the morning and closes before my bus arrives in the evening. Simple. You send it in by e-mail and get the promise that you can pick it up in the mailbox of the municipality the same evening. Great service, I think. it is 19:00 the same day. I am still in my office. The phone rings. Well, it was the friendly lady, who was on vacation earlier, who asked me if I already attempted to pick up the form. I said no. "Oh, I am so glad. Because I forgot to fill it out. Hence I just returned to the office to finish it. You can pick it up when you get home. " What a refreshingly dedicated and customer oriented civil servant. Welcome to Leuzigen.

Even though it is full of friendly (and in a few cases also very curious) people, I am more convinced than ever before that I am a city person. As of December, Seba and I are house sitting - in Bern.

It has been four months already since Seba and I returned from Bushland to little Switzerland. Was I looking forward to coming back? Yes! Do I miss the US now? Yes! Luckily I had the chance to go back twice since. And both times it felt like coming home. There are so many things I cannot stand about this country. Why is 1% of DC's population living on the street? Mind you, we are talking of the capital of the richest country in the world. Why, on average, has an Afro American coming from a lower income family no chance in his life, when he is born in DC because the school system does not give him the education to excell at university? Two small examples of many construction sites in that country. Yet, and that is the reason why I also admire the USA quite a bit, for millions of immigrants, it offers simply a better life and - if you are smart or simply hard working - it offers incredible opportunities. The slogan of the Obama campaign - Yes, we can! - describes this attitude very well. You have an idea? So what are you waiting for? Get going and try. If you fail, you learn your lesson - and try again and again. And that is not just true for immigrants - but fore everybody.

Living abroad widens ones horizon. I realized that once again. Living in a privileged, small country with a very homogeneous society distorted my perception about the world quite a bit. Living in the US showed me once again, how much more diverse the world is. DC has 19 (!) Ethiopian restaurants. Walking through the streets you see all races, hear all kinds of languages and encounter the most interesting personalities. They are not tourists (most of the tourists in DC are Americans visiting their capital), but they are immigrants. Living their life. Trying to live the American dream. And some also succeed. Does Switzerland offer the same opportunities? Probably not.

There are many areas, where I feel we do a much better job. But again, that is not really such a surprise given the size of our country and the composition of our society. But no other country I have visited so far is so resilient and so full of drive like the US.

The past eight years were a disaster for this country, as if the lord Voldemort himself has put his gloomy veil across the country. However, the mood is changing with the election of Barak Obama. At least that is the feeling I got when walking through the streets in DC. Of course, DC is not representative for the rest of the country. As usual, 92% of the people voted for the democratic candidate. Overall, he only had 53% of the population behind him. Yet, I would assume that the feeling is similar across the country, even though not as strong as in DC, I guess (there are lots of Republicans out there, who still believe that the country is doomed now. Maybe they should life abroad for a while, too).

The 18 months passed quickly. And they were considerably different from my exchange year in 1989/90. Living with my partner meant to basically run a Swiss household on foreign soil. Skype & Co made communication with home extremely easy and watching the Swiss news also helped us not to loose touch with home. Hence, I thought it was no surprise that coming home felt like returning from a two week vacation. Of course I am fully aware that time didn't stand still back home. Yet, so many things still seem to be exactly the same as when we left them. The facts speak a different langauge, though. At least 10 kids were born among our friends and we missed at least five weddings. Bern has a new and very beautiful station square and politics got considerably less civilized during this time.

More than four months ago, Seba and I steped on board of United 936 service to Zurich. It feels good to be back. But it also feels good to be changed, and inspired by that huge country across the pond and its people - at least some of them. Home can be many places.

Pride is omnipresent in US culture. Hence it is not surprising that the Washingtonians are very proud of their metro. The third largest in the country. I have to admit that it is a very clean and somewhat stylish system they have. And since Seba and I have the privilege to consider ourselves part of the group of red line snobs, we should not have any reason to complain. (But since I take those US citizens very serious who believe that only the almighty US can offer quality of life, I find lots of reasons to complain.) You do not know what a red line snob is? Well, the red line is the main line in the five line DC metro network. All you need for a decent city life is located somewhere along the red line. Hence, all people living within walking distance to the red line are so called red line snobs, while all the other poor buggers have to accept the inferior service of the other lines. The red line has the tightest schedule and the longest trains. That reduces waiting times in stations and allows you to breath in trains during rush hours - as long as things go as planned. However, very often things do not go as planned. Delays on the DC metro are as common as rain in Switzerland during summer 2007* For some reason it seems impossible to do track maintenance or train testings during the night, when the metro is closed. It is no problem to buy milk around the clock, but working on the metro during the night seems unthinkable. Plus, frequent break downs of trains raises questions about the maintenance. Usually information is scarce when there are problems on the network, and even if they announce something, one has no chance to understand a thing due to the horrible sound quality of the PA system in the metro.

What strikes me even more is the number of elevators and escalators that are out of service every day. The information boards usually switch back and forth between a long list of outages and the arrival of the next train. To reduce the pain for handicapped people, Metro usually offers a shuttle service, which is a car or a bus that pick you up at the station where the outage occurred and brings you to another station where things are ok. Pretty nifty. But I have not talked to anyone yet, who actually used this service.

It seems that like many other parts of the countries infrastructure, the DC metro does not have enough funds to regularly maintain the trains and tracks. Hence we are faced with a considerable increase in fares as of January 2008. Maybe that helps to reduce incidents like the other weeks, where several lines had to be closed due to fires caused by failing electrical infrastructure.

Even more interesting is the bus system. I could not recognize a pattern yet on how the bus routes are designed. Buses run allover the city, many lines even the entire night all week long. But to be honest, I can understand why people prefer other modes of transportation. Many bus drivers would rather drive in NASCAR or in the F1. Slamming the gas or the break pedal in very fast intervals makes sitting on a bus as pleasant a drive as sitting on a roller coaster. This combined with the bad road conditions in some parts of the city make a metro bus ride a sickening experience at times - literally speaking.

The good thing when using the bus: there is a bus stop almost in every block. The bad thing when sitting on a bus: there is a bloody bus stop almost in every single block. Adding the lack of preferential treatment of buses at intersections or designated bus lanes make a ride worthwhile for people with looots of time. You are in a hurry? Then stay away from the DC buses...

The funniest experience I had so far happened some time ago. Sitting in the small Ride-On bus (that's the name for buses in the neighboring Montgomery county) alone with the driver, he all of a sudden asked me, whether he has to do a certain part of the route, which they only serve in the evening. The guy did not know where he had to drive... Of course I was flattered that I had the privilege to answer him his question. How did I know? I didn't of course, but it shortened my ride by five minutes...

There are no ticket machines at the bus stops. Instead you pay when you get in. Exact change only. 1.25 if you hop on for the first time, 0.35 when you come from the metro and can show a transfer, which you should have taken at the metro station where you entered the metro or nothing when you have bus transfer ticket, which you get when you pay on your first bus ride of the day. However, no discount applies, when you enter the metro coming from a bus. Confused? Well, so was I. And so seem the bus drivers as I ride for free quite frequently: the drivers are at times too lazy to punch a hole in my ticket or the machines do not work.

But then again, being a spoiled brat from Switzerland, where hundreds of millions are invested into public transportation every year, I should definitely lower my standards - even in the capital of the richest country on earth. Unlike Europe, subsidizing public transportation is not a priority here. It shows - no matter how proud the Washingtonians are about their public transportation system.

Grocery shopping is always fun when you are in a different place. The same was true here in DC. At least at the beginning, when things were new. Now I sometimes crave for a strall through the lavish produce section of a Coop or a Migros back home or having the chance to buy really good quality for an affordable price. Here things are a bit different. The choice is bigger, that's for sure. But quantity is not necessarily quality. Shall we go to Safeway, Giant, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's or Harris Teeter? That's the question. Well, each has some special characteristics which makes the choice somewhat easier. Let's start with the first one.

Safeway: The chain with the most branches in the District and thus the closest to where we live. There are so many, that the Washingtonians created names for many of the branches. For example there is the Unsafeway, the branch located in a former shady neighborhood. Another one is called the Soviet Safeway as it frequently runs out of products. In response, staff distributes the remaining packages on the shelves giving them the look of shops in former socialistic countries: a small selection distributed on a maximum of space.
Then there is the Spanish Safeway and many others. In general, Safeway has three characteristics: the selection is huge, the quality is often not so good (in particular when it comes to fresh produce) and the cashiers are incredibly slow.

Both Seba and I were walking incredulously through the store the first time, counting the aisles with frozen food products of which most can be thrown into the microwave. Those aisles are the center piece of any Safeway. In our home safeway, there are five rows of endless meals. We usually follow the rule of thumb #1: walk along the shelves along the walls of the store to buy the healthier food. Rule of thumb #2: never, but really never, should you go to a Safeway when you are in a hurry. Even though you might be able to collect your desired food items fairly quickly, you will be waiting your time at the cashier. I think Coop or Migros would be confronted with a customer revolution when they would allow staff that works sooooo slooow. Since produce is weighed at the check out (requiring the cashiers to identify the PLU number and typing that into the computer, hoping that there was no typo) and because they have to bag all your items (making sure that the weight is more of less evenly distributed over the bags, sometimes requiring repacking bags to balance the weight...) the ritual of checking out a Safeway seems to take an eternity. I have found a very successful technique to further prolong this ordeal by regularly buying produce which usually leads to the ultimate time killing question: what is that? Since many staff have no clue what their employer sells, it can be quite tricky for them to find the item in their lists (which do not have pictures...). Since not all produce is labeled with the appropriate PLU number, they have to walk around the store to find a colleague that might recognize the weird vegetable (e.g. leek) or fruit (e.g. rhubarb) I put on the conveyor belt. Since they are paid by the hour and not by the number of items scanned, there is usually enough time to chat with some people on the quest for the right PLU. Oh well, it's part of the deal and you get used to it. After all, this is America!

It wasn't him, but one of his kind. He walked only about 20-30 m ahead of us through the forest. and looked at us as we passed him on our hike today in Shenandoah valley. For the third time, we jumped into the car and drove the two hours to the Shenandoah National Park for another great hike. Certainly, it is not the big mountains there. Yet, the wild forest, completely left to itself is a very beautiful and romantic place to walk around. And it is full of bears.



On our hike last weekend we met a guy hitting two rocks against each other. He was trying to scare away a sow and her cubs, who were close by. What we did not know as we came around the corner: we apparently walked right in their direction. Not a good move, would they have still been in sight. Very curious whether we would find a bear on our own, we continued our hike. However, we had to leave without a spotting and knowing that we met people on our have seen several bears strolling around the forest.

Today, however, we were lucky. The cute (not its size, but its looks) animal trotted a few yards in front of us, then turned off into the forest before it stopped, only to stare at us as we were walking by. What a cool experience on a great hike through canyons alongside dreamy brooks. See some pics in the gallery.

PS The new picture in the header was taken by Seba in the Shenandoah Valley. Somehow the two of use to not seem to understand the American word "Antique" very well... But we find this sign rather amusing...

One thing I enjoy a lot since I moved to the US: cooking and baking. Since our neighbor has a fantastic kitchen, loves good food and gets along with the two of us quite well, it happens quite frequently that we stay more in his house than in ours. (What is lacking is the door in the wall, which would shorten the commute. Yes, I moved out of a commune - only to found a new one in DC... )

Trying to cook certain Swiss dishes is quite difficult, though, as not all ingredients can be found here easily (what a surprise...). Every once in a while there are some surprises, though. The most recent success is the discovery of a shop that sells quark ("German-style soft cheese"). A rare item in this city. The US food industry offers a lot, no doubt about that. While many of them are not necessarily on my list of most favorite culinary treats there are others which I will miss fore sure. Orange juice for example. Not even the best and most expensive OJ you can buy in any store (exluded the one freshly squeezed in front of you) in Switzerland comes even close to the stuff you can get in stores here. Simply delicious! Then there is the cheese cake prepared by David, our neighbor. What a treat!

Then there are certain things I just was not willing to give up. For example a good coffee in the morning. Of course, I could go to Starbuck's every morning to get me an overpriced coffee (which tastes nice...). But there is no Starbuck's on my way to work and I can imagine better ways to ruin myself. Being a keen reader of Dilbert comics, I was very much aware that any decent company in the US would offer coffee to its employees. However, we are talking American coffee here. The blackish brew they offer you in restaurants here and pour you continuously if you would like. Since I learnt how it is made (I pull away my nose every time I open one of those infamous coffee portions, which are used to brew this potion they call coffee), my desire to get a cup of coffee in the office dwindled considerably. Thus I decided to support the Swiss economy and got me a Nespresso machine. An ecological sin given the waste it produces, but an incredible indulgence compared to all other options. By now, a few of my co-workers joined the club.

But not everything needs to be replaced of course. Sometimes you just have to look carefully in the endless aisle of the supermarkets to find what you need. Yet, making the right choice is not always easy. Just recently, I had to learn the hard way. Very happy to find some rhubarb in the store, I got the necessary quantity to make a "Rhabarber Kuchen" (Kuchen meant in the Bernese sense of the word. Others back home would call it a Tünne, a Flade or a Wäie or something along those lines).

However, back from the store I decided to try something new and found a nice recipe on the lovely world wide web. I invested quite some time, energy and material to prepare this delicious looking cake. Still incapable of comprehending the US measurements, I was quite happy to finally have a scale with metric measurements at hand. It makes my life somewhat easier. Content with myself, I put the cake in the oven.

Half an hour later, I was pleased with the result I took out. However, it was too early to taste the product. Hence it sat on the stove until we decided to go down to the home movie theater to watch yet another movie at our neighbor's. Eventually I cut three large pieces and put them neatly on a plate followed by a fork and a paper towel for each of the connoisseurs who waited tickle their senses with a new dish. It was moist and the rhubarb flavor evaporated from the pastry we were about to enjoy.

Very curious about the most important feature of my undertaking (the taste), I cut off a healthy piece with the edge of my fork while the opening credits were flickering across the screen in front of us. The first piece of rhubarb cake entered my mouth and dropped off the fork onto my tongue. My taste buds initially sensed a nice mixture composed of the sour rhubarb and the sweet cake embedding the fruit. Yet, this most pleasant sensation was immediately followed by a rather unpleasant after taste that reminded me of ammoniac. Strange. This must be a strange reaction with the wine I just had and my senses are simply playing a trick on me. Somewhat less content with what I took out of the oven earlier, I shoveled a second piece on my fork and led it to my mouth - only to have the same nasty taste in my mouth after the initial lovely taste. ??? The rest of the audience copied my behavior, only to be equally disgusted by the taste. David, the only American among us, soon asked the right question: what did you use in the cake? I read down the ingredients from my mind and he immediately discovered the culprit: What I thought would be the equivalent to our "Backpulver" turns out to be something slightly different. For once I would have been better of with a literal translation. Baking powder is what I should have used. Instead, I decided to use baking soda convinced of doing the right thing given the cookie recipe printed on the box. Well, the result told me something different. A small difference - that made all the difference and turned a nice rhubarb cake into a fairly big pile of garbage. I guess I had just learnt something new.

17:25. It is early to leave the office. But hey, the International Conference of YFU in Buenos Aires is over, which gives us in the International Secretariat of YFU the opportunity to call it a day at a reasonable time. Being a rather lazy person in some respects, I choose one of the few offices. Quickly in, close the door, close the shutters and change quickly. No worries about windows, because there are none. 10 minutes later, Seba and I are on the way on our bikes. 18 kilometers separate the office in Bethesda from our house on Capitol Hill. Many of you might start wondering, why in the world we would pain ourselves with traveling through the horrendous rush hour traffic of DC. Well, we don't. On the contrary, we choose the biker super highway called Capitol Crescent Trail, a multi use path on a former railroad track. This fabulous path leads us through woods along the Potomac from Massachusettes Avenue to Georgetown (click here to see where the cars would drive through). From there we make our way to Constitution Avenue along the mall back to the Capitol and to our home, only a few blocks away where currently Democrats and W are fighting over the funding of the Iraq war. Constitution Ave is not pleasant if you do not like traffic. However, since I do like zooming passed the cars standing in the daily traffic jam, it is definitely a pleasant ride home.

Now, since all Americans are overweight, only eat fast food and NEVER leave their car, you might think that we are the lonesome weirdos on two wheels. Far from that. We are actually quite lucky since we drive against the traffic. Otherwise we might get stuck in the hordes of bikes that bring their riders into town every day. No wonder, there are more than 7'000 members in the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. Thanks god, our super highway has two lanes. True, the large majority only started biking when it got warmer. But most of them are incredibly fit and thus painfully fast when you want to keep up with them. Every once in a while it is fun, though, to team up with someone and speed towards our destination.

Biking in the city is also very comfy. The roads are in a horrible condition in many places, but after a while you figure out where the biggest pot holes are (even though I am living in the capital of the richest country on the planet, the roads at times remind me more of a back country road in rural Russia...). However, they are a lot wider and therefore leave plenty of room for bikers. In addition, there are plenty of bike lanes (!) and above all car drivers are very considered (if they see you). Different country, different culture. Thus I decided to let go of some principles: traffic lights are mostly part of the city decoration: they are plentiful and they rarely make sense for a biker (or at least their switching patterns). No one seems to mind. Not even the police, as long as you drive carefully. One way streets are as frequent as Starbucks coffee shops (thus more frequent than McDonald's), but none of them are open for bikes. At least not officially. But then again, drivers are considered. Finding a bike shop is not as challenging as I had anticipated. Plus they are fast, cheap and usually impressed with the bike, as it carries various parts which are hard to get in this country. How hard it is, I had to learn the hard way this winter: the halogen light bulb for my front light does not seem to exist here. One would think that such a common part is standardized. Wrong! I tried everything - and ended up importing them from Switzerland. Oh well, there are worse things in life than that.

18:15. We turn into the driveway in the back of our house, Seba presses the garage opener and we simply drive into our garage which is filled with the bike of our landlord and the two bikes we ride. Biking is so much fun in this city!