A Year After Departure

On February 3 2010, one year ago today, I boarded an airplane bound for Geneva, Switzerland with only a one-way ticket in hand. I have now spent a year living outside my native country. When I left, everyone called it an adventure, this experience I was about to have, and they were right. It has been an adventure, as long as one keeps in mind that often the heroes of adventures spend a lot of time tired and confused and working like mad.

So as I sit in my cozy apartment and reflect on what I've learned in the last year, I thought I would record a few of the lessons I've learned on living in on the Franco-Swiss border.

0. French survival phrases
S'il vous plait = please
Merci = thank you
Je ne parle pas francais. = I don't speak French.
Parlez-vous anglais? = Do you speak English?

1. Dress up for any and all business dealings with other people.
It is hard enough to ask for help in a foreign country, where you know you are about to slaughter someone's native language and probably need to ask for someone who speaks yours. Holey jeans and worn out shoes make it much harder to stand your ground, make your request, and not feel like an idiot. So dress up. The confidence boost is well worth the extra time it takes, and you will probably be taken more seriously, too.

2. Be agreeable, but don't always agree.
I believe it is the natural tendency for Americans to agree rapidly when we want to avoid a possible confrontation and make whoever is trying to speak to us go away. The desire to quickly kill conversation only grows when it is happening in languages and accents one doesn't comprehend well. I would recommend fighting the inclination to automatically agree unless you are positive you know what the person is talking about. So smile, be pleasant, and say no. He's probably just trying to get your phone number, anyway.

Along those same lines, sometimes playing dumb and a strong American accent work wonders at ending conversations. So does not having a phone number at all.

3. On opening doors
The two most useful verbs in the French language are not "etre" or "avoir" or anything like that. They are "pousser" and "tirer." Pousser means to push, and tirer means to pull. Since roughly half of the doors around here open the opposite way of what an American seems to expect them to do, you can spare yourself some embarrassment by scanning the door for forms of these words. If it says pousser or poussez, push; tirer or tirez, trying pulling. It will make your entrances and exits a little easier and more graceful.

That being said, it is still preferable to try both pushing and pulling just to be sure that a door is really locked, to tugging at the thing for five minutes in the cold and giving up only to have someone walk past you and push it open without a hitch.