I am starting to get used to the school system here now. Every week the timetable is the same, and on that day I take that bus or tram on that hour to go there. And this day I meet those people, work on that assignment, and this and that day that assignment is to be handed in. At ETH you need to do a specific percentage of the weekly assignments to qualify for the exam, and since I am taking a bunch of courses there is quite a lot to do every week. Falling behind schedule is unthinkable.
Before this year, all my university examinations have been in writing. But here at ETH oral examinations are almost as common as written ones. This semester, the my oral examinations are going to be those in Algebra, Thermodynamics and Parallel Programming. I really wonder how the oral examination in programming will be like. Will I have to say C++ code out loud?
In the course in Thermodynamics I am starting to understand the ideas and approaches needed to complete the exercises. Since I missed the first three weeks in that course I had to get some help from a coursemate. For some time now we have done the assignments together, but since he now has left for his compulsory yearly (!) military service that all conscripted Swiss men undertake I now am on my own.
Another difference between Switzerland and Sweden is that people here are very impressed when you say you are a physics student at ETH. Physics seems to have an aura around it here and people seem to consider it very difficult. I don’t find it that difficult, but then I am a strange person.
I don’t know if Sweden or Switzerland is the oddball in the following respect, but it’s easy to become a bit confused when the assistants give back your corrected assignments. Back from where I am, a “check mark” means “wrong” and an uppercase R means “Rätt”, or “correct”. Here at ETH a check-mark is “correct”, and a lowercase “f” means “Falsch” or “wrong”. The first time I saw one of my corrected assignments my heart sank because I had got it all wrong. Is ETH to difficult for me? Am I so bad at this? Red check-marks all over the place.
A moment later I blinked as I realized that it was the other way around…
I am, as I said, on my to learning Swiss German again. As you probably know, German is the mother tongue for over 60% of the Swiss population (French, Italian and Romansch being the other three official languages of Switzerland). But the German spoken in Switzerland differs quite a lot from the Hochdeutsch (as the Swiss call it) spoken in Germany and Austria.
The difference between the languages can easily be heard as the most radical difference is in the pronunciation, and most Germans would have a hard time following a Swiss conversation. Swiss German is, with a few exceptions, only a spoken language and not used in formal occasions. In school, all students learn to speak and write “high” German, and classes are exclusively in this language. During the breaks, everybody (including the teacher) switches to the Swiss language, and when class starts it is all high German again.
The same thing happens here at ETH. All German-speaking courses are held in High German, but everybody falls back to their mother tongue when the class is over.
Since we moved from Switzerland back to Sweden fifteen years ago I have had “mother tongue lessons” in German about once a week. Since only “standard” German was offered I gradually lost my Swiss language until it was almost completely forgotten, and so I have to learn it again now. The problem with learning a spoken language is that you only learn it by speaking, and since all Swiss German people are fluent in High German they switch to the latter as soon as you start speaking to them. There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
The key is to spend a lot of time with locals. Since I started going to the ICF church here I’ve got to know many Swiss people, and I’ve made it clear to all of them that I only want to hear Swiss German when they talk to me. By now, I can understand almost everything they say and I slowly start to remember the words and expressions I learned as a child. One thing at a time I start using Swiss pronunciations and words, so I am making good progress here.
Zürich is a melting pot of cultures and languages. On the morning tram and in the street you hear a multitude of spoken languages. In addition to the previously mentioned national languages, people have migrated to this place from all over the world.
The same applies to the student hostel I live in, the people who live are all exchange students and come from the east and west, from far and near. Naturally, we’re also many Swedes here, and last week some of us Swedes (and Swedish-speaking Finns!) we made dinner for 25 people. Four big pots of Bondsoppa was just enough, but I must say I think that we Scandinavians were slightly more enthusiastic about this dish than the others…
At least Robin seemed to appreciate the food:
On another note, I found this interesting burger in a restaurant the other day. The combination of American hamburger and Swiss Rösti wasn’t actually that bad!
