hey guys welcome back to how to switzerland
sarah here today and in today's video i'm going to be talking more about some swiss culture shocks
so i recently had an interview with a journalist from the website swiss info she did a little
article about how to switzerland which is really exciting but that prompted my idea for this video
because in that interview she asked me what were some initial culture shocks or just like
surprising things that i noticed basically like what did i first notice when i arrived to
switzerland for the first time and i just didn't have a really good answer for that i couldn't
think of anything even though i knew there were like a million things i could talk about
so i asked myself that question sarah when you first got here when you got off the plane your
first few days in switzerland what were the things that really stood out to you and i've
got a pretty long list here and we will just discuss some of those today and i quickly just
want to thank every single one of you for watching for liking for sharing for supporting the channel
lately i have been running into so many of you just in the streets here in zurich or wherever
all over switzerland and it has been really fantastic hearing so many people's stories about
moving here or living here or all that kind of stuff it's just been really really awesome i love
the community that we are building here so i really really want to genuinely thank you for
all of the support so one of the first things i noticed that was very different in switzerland
was just how attractive and thin and well dressed so many people are in switzerland especially in
big cities people are just dressed so sharp here people look really really put together and i was
not really used to seeing that you guys i grew up in a small town in the midwest in the us and it is
very very casual okay the attitude is pretty casual people might get dressed up for work
but after that people are you know all about those you see those american t-shirts with like
university names on them or hoodies or casual clothes and you don't see a whole lot of that
especially in zurich like if you are walking on bonjour strasse everyone
is dressed so nice and they really take care of themselves and i honestly think that it is
really really great and inspiring it inspires me to take care of myself better to try to dress
better to make a little bit of an effort um with how i present myself to the world um i know people
say oh you shouldn't have to care about that it doesn't matter just be comfortable just do you
and i get that but i just think that there is something about carrying yourself a certain way
presenting yourself to the world a certain way and i think the swiss are really really good at
dressing well and staying in shape and all of that and it was definitely like something i noticed
right away when i moved here i'm like how do they do it how do they do it another initial shock
you guys was keep in mind i was 17 when i first moved to switzerland and that was just everything
to do with alcohol so one finding out that the drinking age for beer and wine is 16 years old was
very very shocking to me that seemed very young coming from the u.s where it is obviously 21.
so seeing teenagers people 16 years old drinking beer outside you know around a lake or in a park
or whatever was very very weird to me just to see them openly drinking beer and wine and
having a party out in public and they looked just like kids obviously they are kids
um that was very strange to me so definitely when i first moved here i had so many questions about
alcohol and how does that work when the drinking age is um 16 can you go to bars how does that work
i really didn't get it i was just like my mind was blown about how all of that works here and
it took me a little bit to understand how it works and yeah basically just because you can
drink beer and wine at 16 it doesn't really mean those are the kids going out to bars and things
like that especially in big cities like if you're in zurich and you're 16 you're probably not going
to get into many nice bars and be allowed to drink there um but yeah it all depends
on where you are in switzerland also having to do with drinking i thought it was so weird this
was one of the weirdest things to me you guys that i could go to a grocery store and buy beer
at 17 18 years old and not get id'd okay that was so so weird for me because in the u.s i was used
to my mom literally being 40 and getting asked for an id at a gas station or at walmart or at a
grocery store or whatever in the us they are very strict about checking ids for alcohol purchases in
fact a lot of companies put out signs like we id anyone who looks under 40 or who looks under 35 or
basically they're not looking for people that look 21 they just have like a store policy or whatever
obviously it depends greatly on where you're shopping but i'd seen definitely my mom
or step dad or whatever get id'd to buy alcohol all the time and obviously they look much older
than me so to come to switzerland and not get id'd at 18 17 years old buying you know a bottle
of wine i thought it was just mind-blowing and so so weird and just the lack of people asking
for ids just in general um in zurich or you know in bigger cities of course you might um
be more likely to get id'd but if you're in like a mountain village bar drinking beer if you look
16 they're probably not even asking you for an id and that was just really shocking to me another
initial shock i just remembered that i had was when i first got here and i saw the cash the
money the currency i did not understand how they cannot have a penny i'm like how is there no penny
so in switzerland the smallest coin is five cents so they do not have a penny i think in
in the euro you have a penny obviously in the us you have a penny and i was like how does that work
how do they give you exact change and everyone's like well it's usually you know ends in the price
usually ends in a zero or in a five it's not going to be 997 or whatever like you see all the time in
the u.s it would just be 10 or 95 or whatever and i just thought that was super super weird and they
said well if it's not you know i was like how does that work like if you pay cash and you end up with
one of these odd amounts you're like oh well they will just like round up and give you the five and
i just thought that that was a little bit strange um but yeah it's actually true in switzerland most
prices end in like an even number so there isn't really a need for a penny and if you
are in that situation they just round up and give you the five cents coin i remember also
being very shocked seeing people just carrying around a lot of cash and bills with very large
denominations so there's definitely places in the u.s um you know i don't know certain gas stations
stores again it all depends on their individual policy where sometimes if you would pay something
with a like a crisp 20 the store gets like the pens out and they're holding it up over a 20 bill
definitely over a 50 or a 100 again depends on the store but it's quite common that if you pay with a
large denomination um they do not like to do this obviously because they have to give you a lot of
change and also then if the bill is a fake you know this is more problematic um if you're paying
with a fake 100 or whatever i don't know how it all works i just know growing up if you would pay
large denominations you would always see people getting out the pen holding it up or they would
ask do you have anything smaller and you you definitely feel like you're inconveniencing people
if you pay with large denomination notes and here it is absolutely normal to order a four franc
coffee and pay with a 100 franc note really nobody will blink an eye i don't think i've ever heard
somebody say like oh do you have something smaller they might ask if you have like a a coin if it's
like and 10 cents or whatever they might ask if you have the 10 cents but i've never asked them
heard them ask for like a smaller bill like oh do you have a 20 or whatever which i have heard
in the u.s all the time also i worked in many bars in switzerland and dealt with a lot of cash
and it was never really a problem to make change there was always a lot of cash so i never
had to be in that situation myself but i remember when i initially moved here i was just shocked and
also to find out that there is a 1 000 swiss franc note that was a shock on its own i was like what 1
000 francs and in one bill like it was just it was just blowing my mind also that the smallest bill
is a 10. i remember being really really shocked about that when i was in high school i worked
um as a waitress i worked at a golf course so i was making a lot of my salary and one
dollar bills so coming over here and seeing the smallest bill was at 10. i remember being like
that is crazy how do people tip you like what can they tip you they're not going to tip you with 10.
um and yeah anyways i figured all that out i just remember being like the currency here is
really different this one might sound kind of dumb to you guys but when i first moved here
when i was 17 i was kind of shocked to find out that swiss people watch mainly us um movies and tv
series for some reason i don't know if i thought they were all gonna have like if there were
like swiss tv shows or stuff obviously there are swiss tv shows there are german tv shows you have
all of that here but i remember when i first moved here in 2009 2010 everybody would talk
to me about the big bang theory and two and a half men those were like the two tv shows
so many people were obsessed with them and i was like i really don't get it in the us i never
heard people talking about these shows or i didn't even really realize that these shows were that
popular but then in switzerland everybody was like talking to me about these shows they were like
oh what about this big bang theory two and a half men and i was like are these like popular shows i
thought these are just like cable tv shows in in the us nothing very popular i could be wrong on
that um but i remember being surprised that people were so interested in like american television and
american movies and um that they just watch it dubbed a lot of the times in german i was for
some reason surprised by that obviously it makes sense to me now of course switzerland is not going
to be producing a ton of movies and dramas and tv series and stuff like that but i remember when i
first moved here i i was a bit surprised by that another shock that i had was seeing random police
checks of cars so i remember um after i moved here and we were driving in a car and we got like
flagged down by some police and i was like oh like what happened were they speeding like what did we
do like is everything all right here and they're like oh no it's just like a random check and i
was like huh and they're like yeah like the police just set up like a station and they just randomly
check cars and i'm like what are they checking for like why are they how can they i don't even know
if that's legal in the u.s to just like stop cars without any sort of intent other than just random
checks but they're like oh they're going to check if you have like winter tires and they're going
to check like some stuff on your car and i just thought that that was super weird and seemed sort
like mod moderately unethical i was like how can they just randomly stop people without any reason
that was very strange to me but the swiss people i was with didn't really seem to think like it
was a big deal at all they're just like yeah they just set up random checks sometimes another shock
that i had was seeing so many people smoking i was really really surprised by this in the
states and especially where i grew up i really i don't think i knew a single person that smoke or
a single person's uh parents that smoke you just don't smell cigarette smoke like it just was not
a thing and then after i came to switzerland i was like wow you smell cigarette smoke like in
the streets um there are people smoking all over when i first moved here smoking was still legal
in most bars and restaurants now you have like smoking rooms but i remember like just seeing
wow there is really like this smoking culture still here people go for smoking breaks and
um even when i was in university like so many people went out for smoking breaks and i just
thought that was very strange especially to see so many young people smoking i guess in my head
i thought okay maybe the only smokers that are left are like older people that still smoke but
i don't think there's a lot of like new smokers um but i was totally wrong about that in switzerland
you see a very large amount of young people um that still smoke um it's just quite common here
still i don't know how else to say it i feel like in the us it's a little bit more like
people would maybe say something like oh you know like why are you doing that or that's bad or
um it's very much like well i don't know how you say like socially it's socially okay if
somebody's smoking to be like oh maybe you should quit or something like i feel like that's more
okay to talk about whereas here people just kind of accept it and i don't really hear people
talking about like quitting smoking or stuff like people just they just smoke and they don't really
seem uh too concerned about it they just keep smoking okay i have so many to talk about you guys
i feel like i've already done so many of these videos then i might even need to do another one
but the last one that i'll mention was seeing the military people everywhere
so we've talked about this before but in switzerland you have mandatory military service
and when i first moved over here and i would see all these young men um sometimes in civilian
clothes depending on what they're doing or being um in their military uniform walking around
the town with like these massive guns or rifles and that was very surprising to me i grew up in
the countryside there's definitely like you know gun culture and like hunting and like a lot of
people had like gun lockers and stuff like that but i had never really like seen it or it's never
really since i didn't hunt or do anything like that i'd never been around guns had no interest
in that and then when i came here and i would be in the train and you would see like five young
guys get in with like these massive like rifles on them or you're at the airport and you see
people like with machine guns that was the first time i had seen any of that i had never seen um
in the us at an airport or in front of like a bank and stuff like people with
guns um i guess you don't see people with guns in front of banks in switzerland but i've seen it
around europe but in switzerland you might see it at like the zurich airport or whatever and i just
remember being shocked by that like wow that's like really scary and intimidating and um yeah now
i'm quite adjusted to it you really see um like the military uh people going home on the weekends
or going to the military um and you see them with their guns all over the train station and
you know everybody kind of knows what's the deal what's it about but before i knew about the whole
military thing i thought it was it was a bit strange and confusing um but yeah i remember
just being really taken back and surprised by that all right that is it for today's video you
guys these were some of my initial shocks um that i just had no idea about when i first moved here
keep in mind i have been in switzerland now for about 10 years on and off so i've gotten adjusted
to absolutely everything um it was actually a bit of an exercise for me to try to think back on to
that initial initial uh thoughts so if you just moved to switzerland like i know a lot of you have
leave your initial thoughts or shocks or things that you notice in the comments down below i would
absolutely love to read them but that is it for today guys i'll talk to you soon the next one bye
you