Just How Different?

2014.02 feature KarinMohler different

“Auntie Karin, why do I have to shake Auntie Sarah’s hand?” asked my six-year-old nephew when they visited us from London last year. This seemed a strange concept for a child who barely noticed the existence of grown-ups in his world full of Spiderman and dinosaurs. It certainly brought him out of his comfort zone and forced him to reach out and touch an alien adult world – that’s what it looked like to me, anyway. I understood him though, perfectly. I’ve lived in Basel for 15 years and I still have a hard time remembering to shake my children’s Swiss friends’ hands. It just doesn’t fit into my world, the one I grew up in.

I was brought up as a true expat, moving every two to three years from Libya to Spain, Oman, Holland, Peru and then Colombia but always with our traditions close at hand and celebrated to a T. Thus, I learned all about the first of August Chloepfer, or sausage, flown in to celebrate the Swiss national day. Standing in the embassy gardens, surrounded by Swiss flags and red and white lanterns gleaming in the hot sun, we would be silenced to listen to the speech taped for Auslandsschweizer (Swiss nationals abroad) by the Bundespraesident. I wondered how relevant Swiss politics was to me so far away from Switzerland, but by then the speech was over and the Swiss Fendant wine together with the Hudigägeler  music (folk music with yodelling, alphorns and accordions) were flowing freely. Hiding behind a palm tree, I wondered what I had done to deserve such rotten luck as to be born Swiss, when my English friends had fun things like Bonfire Night and fancy dress parties to go to.

Luckily the Swiss aren’t a nation which celebrates unduly so I was spared for most of the year. But now, as an adult, having returned to my ‘home’ country I am grateful to have an understanding of the procedure for things like Fasnacht  (Carnival) and Christmas – it is, of course, lovely to experience them firsthand amongst people who are all doing the same.

In fact, because I had been brought up bilingual I thought nothing of moving ‘back’ to my roots – after all I could say Chuchichaestli (small kitchen cupboard) like a native and I knew all about Aelplermakaroni (cheesy macaroni), rösti (fried potato dish) and skiing. And even if I had no direct experience, I knew all about village life in Waldenburg and Liestal, where my parents had grown up. I soon found out that I still had so much to learn.

Speaking Swiss fluently, being born in the country and having sung the national anthem at every 1st August from embassies around the world just wasn’t enough to make me a part of the actual culture. It is the little everyday nuances, which have been a continuous cause of tears and laughter and endless questions that I have learned to appreciate are the key. Now it is my children asking, whereas, in fact, having grown up here, they know more about the ‘how’ here than I do.

First, there is punctuality. Now, even though I try so hard, I just can’t seem to live up to the inbred sense of time that my children seem to have inherited (from their father) so just getting ready for a birthday party ends in an ordeal. Frankly, I’m more interested in their appearance but they insist they want to go dressed the way they are. As a child, I remember my excitement at being allowed to wear my favourite party dress. Here I was, facing my children with a compromise: the clothes they wear have to be clean. That’s as far as the deal goes: “No-one wears dresses or shirts to a birthday party, Mami, they all go in the same clothes they were wearing at school that day!”

Then there is the event itself, which has often caused tears of incomprehension: “But, Mami, you said I have to invite everyone who ever invited me back, so why wasn’t I invited to Sophia’s party when I invited her to mine?” Honestly, I ended up asking the mother who calmly explained the birthday party rule where you only invite as many children as your age. A concept which my youngest daughter now insists on and I am coming to appreciate. It means I am no longer under pressure to organise a massive event and think of an exciting idea at a hired fun location with more people than I really have the time to talk to. Now we play a few games in our home, and bastel (make with your hands) a handicraft, which they then take home – so no goodie bags. As a Swiss friend of mine explained, “I don’t really understand why I should give the kids more presents than they came with. I prefer to bake them a cake and they can take home something they have made themselves.”

Even though I’m not much of a handicraft mum, I have learned to appreciate how much my kids have learned to bastel here. My ten-year-old daughter spent weeks planning her Hallowe’en outfit and insisted on sewing it on her sewing machine. After the trick-or-treating they returned with the funniest stories. One dear old lady had given them 20 Swiss francs because she didn’t know about Hallowe’en. Another had shooed them away from behind her kitchen curtains because she must have been scared. But mostly even the most hardened Swiss have now come to appreciate this foreign tradition. One confused neighbour was relieved to find out when to be ready, when she bumped into me stocking up for the event in the local COOP.

As for adapting, I actually found myself saying: “Sweet or sour?” to a young English child! Inadvertently, I had translated what the German-speaking children say: “Suesses oder Saures!” back into English before I realised that, judging by the look on the child’s face, there was something rather odd about what I’d just said.

However, it is not just between cultures that everydayness can be different but also within families that live in different countries. My youngest sister lives in London with her family and they usually visit us for Christmas. We have the hard task of explaining both cultures to the kids: when her kids get excited about Santa bringing their presents on Christmas day, mine have long forgotten Santichlaus who visited on 6th December bringing mandarins and chocolates and threatening to take the naughty children with him in his large bag. Mine get their presents from the Chrischtchindli (Christ Child) on Christmas Eve but only after we’ve all sung carols, which of course takes twice as long as we have to sing them in German first and then in English. In the end we have double the fun (with double the presents). The Christmas meal takes on a completely new dimension – we haven’t found a way of combining turkey and fondue chinoise so here too we simply opt for both, on different days, of course.

One thing I’m still unclear about though is whether I should shake Santichlaus’s hand when he comes to our house – I’ll remember to find out for next year.

By Karin Mohler

Karin has a pre-teen boy, aged 12, and two girls, aged nearly 11 and nearly seven, as well as a wonderfully spoilt beagle named Sherlock. She has lived in-between cultures for her entire life and has come to the conclusion that this will always be a big part of her. She has taken a lot of inspiration to understand her ‘in-between-ness’ from the book, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds by D. C. Pollock and R.V.Reken (2009).

Illustration by Lara Friedrich

Currently a senior at the Kantonsschule Ausserschwyz in Nuolen, Lara is a freelance illustrator for Mothering Matters Magazine and a demo singer for the songwriter Kate Northrop. She has also written an article for the newspaper Marchanzeiger and is bilingual in English and German with a Cambridge First Certificate in English.

One thought on “Just How Different?

  • February 9, 2014 at 12:36 pm
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    I know what you mean about dressing up for parties. My son was happy to wear a buttoned shirt and my daughter a party dress to birthday parties, on Christmas Day etc, when they were in KG and younger but after that, forget it! Now it’s the jeans and t.shirts like everyone else. Not a big deal I know, I just think dressing up makes the occasion more of an occasion! And it makes the photos that you send to grandma a bit prettier!

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