David Frodsham

My brother Simon is what in the old days would have been called 'a bit of a wag'. One of his party tricks is to expound philosophically on the ways of the world as seen through the eyes of an old woman. He wrinkles up his face (being older than me he is of course rather good at this) and curls his lips over his teeth to give the impression of having forgotten to put his false teeth in. Most of his sketches then start with "It's a funny ol' life, ininit?"

Well, it's certainly funny on Swissair.

Funny, rather than fun, to be more precise. They are a microcosm of that wonderful country Switzerland, which I've always thought of as beautiful but having three strong national characteristics:
- They are extremely tidy and clean. (By 'they', I mean more than the people, but their towns, the countryside and their houses. This goes further than just buying a lot of soap)
- They have too many languages, each of which is spoken with a truly horrible accent. Their French, with its slow drawl, sounds as if they are still learning it at school (and not getting top marks either), their Italian is impossible, and their German (Gruezi miteinand!) is so different
from Hochdeutsch, that you sometimes hear Germans and Swiss-Germans speaking English together. This is of course to prevent the German from going insane.
- And they are all very keen on money (they also seem to have an awful lot more of it than anyone else, especially me).

I saw two examples of this last characteristic today: in driving over the border from France to Switzerland in my Porsche, I was waved through by the customs man with a smile. I could almost see his mind working, it went something like: "Porsche=money=welcome" or "This is good, this guy has money and he's entering Switzerland. Better instead stop that rusty Opel behind him; they're probably centime-less and hence up to no good."

Going across other countries' borders in the Porsche the customs officials look suspicious and ask me lots of questions. Their thinking is definitely more along the lines of Porsche=money=possible drugs smuggler". (Except for crossing into Italy, where they ask whether they can please sit in the driver's seat, press all the buttons and talk about why having a German car is OK because of Schumacher: I do love the Italians!).

The other example I saw today of the Swiss attitude towards money was in the Duty Free shop in Geneva airport where a tourist made the big mistake of asking why the prices were so high, compared with Brussels Duty Free (the Belgians have a reputation for being a bit tight - like the Scots). Anyway, this was a big mistake. Everyone knows that you must never, ever spend
any money in Switzerland; after all this is a country that thrives on saving because everything is so ridiculously overpriced. (I still remember emptying my wallet in order to buy a coffee at Geneva airport - I won't make that mistake again). The Duty Free sales person looked down her nose at this poor broke foreigner and informed him "the prices are in line with the economic situation in each country, and here you are in Switzerland, not in Belgium". I felt she was about to add "please leave before I call the police to have you arrested for vagrancy" but fortunately the Belgian left without further fuss, having learnt his lesson and with his wallet intact. Not bad.

Anyway, I digress. Why is Swissair funny? Well, mostly, it's to do with the language or rather languages. The convention in Switzerland is to speak in the mother tongue of the person you're addressing rather than in your own (this is very different from the British attitude of speaking English all the time unless you speak another language extremely badly, in which case do not hesitate to torture your hosts with your truly awesome linguistic capabilities). This means
that you can have a lot of fun with the Swissair crew, by switching languages.

You walk on board, and they size you up (they're experts at this after all). "He looks British but he's come from Geneva and his clothes fit - perhaps he's French": "Bonjour, Monsieur" they attempt, "Bonjour" is the reply. Bulls-eye. Clear relief on their faces, another passenger sized up. But then everything goes wrong... "Vous voudriez un journal peut-être monsieur?". "Financial Times". This is not good. No self-respecting Frenchman reads the Financial Times. But his clothes fit - he definitely can't be "un anglais". Perhaps he's American? No, no... not possible. After all, he was not drinking Coke while boarding the aircraft. Need another attempt at finding out who he is. So they consult their on-board computer: "Lives in France, works in America, joined the Swissair club while in Germany; nationality unknown; preferred language unknown". It gets worse...

"Café?"
"Kaffee? Ja, bitte"
"Mit Zucher?"
"Pas de sucre, merci"
"Autre chose?"
"No, thanks"

They look pained as if all those Swiss Francs clinking into their Swiss Bank accounts were not enough. I once got to the point where the crew came as a delegation to me and demanded to know my nationality... I viewed this of course as the ultimate triumph.

And their response when I told them? "But your clothes fit!"