Category Archives: Culture

The Craziest Hotel Sign I Ever Saw

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It’s different in Europe.

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My wife and I once stayed at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, one of Italy’s grandest hotels. We don’t usually stay in a place like that but it was our anniversary so we splurged.

We got into our room, put our suitcase down and admired the view over Lake Como. Nice!

Then my wife noticed a card lying on the nightstand. It was like a “Do Not Disturb” sign, but different. Really different.

“Take a look at this,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

The card was in four languages and it took me a minute to find one I understood. Then I saw it. It was an instruction to the guest: “If you leave your baby alone in the room in the evening, please hang up this sign on the door (outside).”

I flipped the card over. This was the side that would be visible when you hung it on your doorknob.

At the top was, “Silence, baby is sleeping.” And below, “I’m alone. If I cry, please tell the concierge.”

“Do you think this is for real?” I asked. “You just leave your baby in the room by itself?”

“I guess,” said my wife. “But I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

I can’t say if anyone actually used the card. We kept our ears open but didn’t hear any abandoned babies crying in their room. Nor did we see the concierge scurrying around with a wailing infant in his arms. But still.

Definitely a WTF moment.

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Read more at www.keithvansickle.com

Remembrance of Truthiness Past

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Myth and Memory in France

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A French friend gave me the book 1940 by Max Gallo, a fine writer and historian. It’s the story of the first year of World War II.

I liked 1940 so much that I read the following volumes, covering the rest of the war and the immediate post-war period. The books take a French perspective and concentrate on things like the Vichy government and the liberation of Paris.

I was struck by how Charles de Gaulle, immediately after victory, went about rewriting history. French society had been deeply split before and during WWII and there was a real risk of civil war.

So de Gaulle created the enduring myth that it was only a few bad apples that had collaborated with the Nazis. The vast majority of the population had instead been part of the glorious Résistance. This wasn’t true, of course, but it helped French society hold together and move forward after the war.

I was also struck by the gigantic role that the Soviet Union had played. It was Stalin who stopped Hitler’s main advance. It was the Red Army that inflicted the majority of German casualties. The war would not have been won without the Soviets.

But that’s not what I learned in school. I grew up during the Cold War, when the Soviets were our enemies. No way those darned Russkies were going to get the glory!

So while their role was minimized, ours was magnified. I was taught that the war in Europe pretty much started with D-Day and we were the heroes. Yay, USA!

This made me wonder: if France and the United States had created our own national myths about the war, what about other countries? What did they think really happened? So I sought out three friends – one British, one Italian and one who grew up in the Soviet Union.

My British friend told me, “Well you know, old chap, the Battle of Britain is what really stopped Hitler. And we English bravely held on for years until you Yanks figured things out and finally showed up. Pity that you weren’t a bit quicker on the uptake, old boy.”

My Soviet friend was more nuanced. “What I learned in school is that the Red Army was welcomed as a great liberator as it marched west to Berlin. In fact, it was so welcome that all the countries it liberated asked us to stay and run them. It was only after I moved to America that I learned that last part wasn’t true.”

The best response came from my Italian friend. She had once asked her grandmother, who lived near Genoa, what had happened in the war. “We won, of course!” replied her grandmother.

“But wait, Nonna,” said my friend, “I thought Mussolini was Hitler’s ally!”

“Well yes, yes, there is that,” said the grandmother, “but we got rid of him. And after we surrendered to the Allies, we changed sides.”

“So we won!”

While Stephen Colbert may have coined the word “truthiness” in 2005, playing with the truth goes back a long way.

Trying to Donate Blood in France

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don-du-sangI tried to donate blood a few years ago, when my wife and I were staying in Provence. I didn’t speak much French at the time.

The temporary blood center had been set up in the salle des fêtes, a big space that the townspeople used for gatherings and celebrations. All the donors sat around a table and filled out a long form (the French love their paperwork!) Then one by one we were called into a small room in the back.

I watched my fellow donors go into the room, spend a few minutes there, and then go to the donor station to have their blood drawn. Hm, I wondered, what’s going on in that room?

When my turn came I walked in to find a doctor examining my paperwork. He gestured for me to sit down and started asking questions. I learned later that this private interview is required by law, to make sure you have not been participating in risky behavior (sharing needles, having unprotected sex, etc.) During the AIDS crisis, tainted blood had gotten into the French blood supply and people had died. Now the French are extra careful.

The doctor spoke quickly and had a thick Provençal accent so I couldn’t understand his questions. After a few minutes of trying to interview me and failing, he finally shook his head, wrote a note on my file and said I could leave. I knew enough French to ask, “I’m not going to be able to donate blood, am I?” “No,” he said, “your French isn’t good enough for the interview.”

My blood was rejected due to insufficient command of the French language! That’s got to be a first.

The only good thing was that I got to enjoy the snack laid out for the donors. And instead of the usual cookies and orange juice we get back home, here it was baguettes, French cheese, paté and wine.

Ah, France!

My Life as a Swiss Criminal

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It started with the clothes dryer

I became a criminal during my first week in Switzerland.

It began when I moved there for an expat assignment, back before Val and I started living in Provence. We needed to supply our own clothes washer and dryer. And because Swiss appliances are ridiculously expensive, we were advised to buy a washer and dryer in the US and ship them over.

There was only one problem: Swiss electrical standards are different than ours. So I found a specialty store that carried “international appliances” and confirmed the specs.

  • 220 volts? Check.
  • 60 hertz? Check.
  • 3-phase electricity? Check.

We were all set. Or so I thought.

When our stuff arrived in Switzerland, it was easy to plug in the washer. But the dryer was another story – an electrician had to wire it up.

I called the village electrician but he could only come during the day so my neighbor let him in. When I got home that night I learned that the electrician couldn’t do the wiring due to some mysterious technical thingy. I was stuck.

So I talked to the head of facilities at my company. He agreed to send out the electrician who had helped build our factory, Monsieur Jeanneret. I was assured that he was the best – no silly clothes dryer could stop him!

I met M. Jeanneret during lunch hour. He inspected the dryer and his eyes got big. Uh, oh. Then he went to the basement to check the electrical panel and as he walked back up the stairs he shook his head.

I hadn’t learned much French yet so I didn’t understand his long explanation. But I understood “big problem” and “very expensive.” M. Jeanneret left without doing any wiring.

My facilities manager spoke to him later that day and explained the problem to me. It had to do with amperage. Wait, what? I had the right voltage and hertz and all that, didn’t I?

Well yes, but they only describe the kind of electricity. There’s this other thing called amperage that describes how much. The higher the amperage, the more of an energy hog an appliance is.  And mine was the biggest, fattest, hungriest hog that M. Jeanneret had ever seen.

How hungry? The dryer drew 30 amps of electricity. That’s no problem in an American home, which is typically wired for 200. But my cozy little Swiss house only had 25.

This meant the dryer used more electricity than the entire house!

It put into perspective how much energy we Americans use. And how energy conscious the Swiss are.

So now I faced a dilemma. I could buy a Swiss dryer (very expensive.) I could rewire the house (very, very expensive). Or I could become a criminal.

I went with criminal.

I plugged the dryer into a wall outlet and set it on low. That worked but it was highly illegal.

Why?

The Swiss are clever. They know that lunch is the big meal of the day. Millions of stoves cooking at the same time creates peak electrical demand and the Swiss government wants other big appliances off the grid; otherwise they need to build new power plants.

One way they do this is by requiring that all dryers be wired into special circuits that shut off electricity around lunchtime.

My dryer, my lovely big American dryer, was not connected to one of these special circuits.

I was a Swiss outlaw.

My crime was never discovered, thank god. I didn’t care to experience the rigors of Swiss prison life.   Rumor had it that Swiss prisoners are deprived of Lindt chocolate and forced to make do with Hershey’s.

In Switzerland, that’s considered cruel and unusual punishment.