If you’ve been living in Germany for any length of time, Germanisms will have surely crept into your mannerisms, speech and even the way you cook your pasta. Find out how German you've become.
This week’s Local List will help you discover how Germanized you are.
Punctuality, straight-talking and hand-shaking are German ways we are all familiar with, but it doesn’t end there.
The Local List reveals all the German things you are probably doing without realizing.
CLICK HERE for The Local's List
"Why do the Swiss have such great sex?" That's the title of a new book by Swiss/American author Ashley Curtis which reveals a Switzerland you never knew existed. The Local spoke to him recently to find out more.
Covering everything from cow suicides to free heroin for addicts and the real story of William Tell, Curtis's book is a humorous yet serious take on a country that often finds itself reduced to a handful of stereotypes.
“I wanted to answer the questions about Switzerland no one would ever think of asking,” the author told The Local, speaking of the inspiration behind the book.
The writer has had plenty of time to dwell on the mysteries of Switzerland. He attended primary school here, visited regularly in the years that followed, and then worked for over 20 years at the independent Ecole d’Humanité school in the canton of Bern, where he taught maths and physics in the morning and climbing and ski touring in the afternoon.
Curtis’s scientific bent is clear in “Why do the Swiss have great sex?”. Some of the most inspired sections delve deep into statistics (How much would it cost to buy Switzerland? Nine trillion Swiss francs, for the bits that are available. Could the whole world sleep in Switzerland? Yes. Although they wouldn’t have space to do much else.).
Read also: Six authors who found inspiration in Switzerland
A lot of the pleasure in the book, though, comes from sheer surprise.
“The most fun sections to write were those where I had an inkling of the answer and then all the facts would fall into place.” he says.
“Then it was like a moment of breathlessness. As my girlfriend said, it's like these questions are trap doors to a whole other Switzerland.”
The section about what happens to Switzerland’s nuclear waste was one of these experiences. With nuclear power responsible for just over a third of the country’s electricity generation, Curtis wanted to know what happened to all that toxic waste.
“As I was looking into this, I learned it was shipped out of the country in huge steel containers and tested by a German government agency called BAM. You couldn't make it up,” Curtis says with delight.
Another section on energy generation also saw the Californian-born author encountering one of the rare obstacles to his research.
Operators at the Grande Dixence hydropower plant in Valais didn’t take kindly to his questions regarding the cleanliness of their power production after he noted they were actually using electricity from potentially dirty sources to pump water back up to their reservoir.
In fact, the book doesn’t shy away from the tough issues, with money-laundering dictators, the high number of foreign prisoners in Switzerland’s jails, and its poor record on homophobia all coming in for analysis.
“My goal was to dig up those outrageous things that startle you,” he explains.
So what still surprises Curtis about Switzerland?
“It’s the combination of conservatism and being completely open. On the one hand you have this unbelievable rigidity about the smallest things and then you have this acceptability of ideas that would be unthinkable in the US like legalized prostitution, free heroin for addicts and assisted suicide.”
And why do the Swiss have such great sex (at least according to a 2013 YouGov survey)?
To answer the question, Curtis takes readers on a historical tour of spa culture, seventeenth century dating rituals in canton Bern and modern-day sex education in Zurich kindergartens, which includes the use of wooden penises and plush vaginas (backed by the Supreme Court no less).
He also dives once more into the world of statistics but concludes with an answer no one can really argue with.
“Nations don’t have sex. People do.”
“Why Do The Swiss Have Such Great Sex: Extraordinary Answers to 66 Improbable Questions about Switzerland” is published by Bergli Books. It can be purchased here.
Please whitelist us to continue reading.
So this website can function correctly please whitelist The Local with your adblocker, antivirus software or browser add on.
Please visit the help centre for more information
Member comments