Fondue American style..

Having lived in Switzerland for 16 years, I am quite versed on the art of eating fondue. The Swiss have perfected this to an art. There are various different cheese mixtures including tomato fondue which I had once- it tasted a bit like liquid Pizza.

Cheese fondue made Swiss style is prepared on the stove in a decorative crock pot. The pot is rubbed with garlic, you add wine, various cheese types, corn starch to thicken it and a bit of schnapps to the mix. Bring it to a boil on the stove while constantly stirring until it reaches a rich and creamy consistency. Then you light the sterno and transfer it to the table. The fondue pot is in the center of the table and everyone puts bread on their special long forks with only three prongs on it. You put it into the fondue stir it around a time or two and then pull it out with strings of cheese that follow the fork back up the mouth of the enjoyer.

The adult version is to dip your bread in schnapps and then stir it into the cheese. If you loose your bread in the pot you have to do a shot of schnapps…who knew the Swiss were into drinking games. Don’t tell the college kids because they will start eating more fondue.

Well, tonight we planned to make a fondue in America. We got home late so we didn’t have a lot of time. Maybe we didn’t even have enough time to eat fondue…”Pleeeease the kids pleaded” and they gave me those puppy dog eyes that I couldn’t say no to. So I looked at the container we bought (this mix was from Trader Joes, which I might add has excellent fondue mixes and I am a  true cheese connoisseur) and it came with microwave instructions. Really? At first I was skeptical. Leave it to the Americans to find a meal like fondue (in which the lengthy process is part of the enjoyment of eating it) and bring it down to an art of cooking it in 3 minutes so the meal can be finished in 10 minutes flat.

I know I am back into my American mindset as I accepted the short cut version and thought that is was perfectly acceptable to microwave it.  What can I say, I can’t disappoint my kids, can I?

Well, I found that I did have a little Swiss left in me as I did not eat it from the plastic container. I also didn’t want to rush the eating and scraping process (this is the best part– when the cheese has been cooking a while and has burned a little to the bottom of the pot and has to be scraped off. We all fight over that part). We put the hot cheese from the container in the decorative fondue pot with matching plates that I brought back from Switzerland and lit the sterno. We ate it the old fashioned way, just sped up the cooking process. That sounds like the best of both worlds doesn’t it?

Giving Advice

Can giving advice be cultural?

As I mentioned in my last post, my friends are here from Switzerland and have been sharing with me some of their experiences while they are here.

Here is a little story they told me they encountered on their way to NYC. They stopped at a gas station to get gasoline and they pulled up to the full service lane. The man told them to move to the second row where it was self-service. My friends did not understand the difference between full service and self-service because there is no full service in Switzerland.

The man told him proudly that he had just saved him 5 dollars.  Then as though knowing Thomas obviously didn’t know his way around the service pump, the man at the service station asked him what grade he wanted. My friend Thomas, shrugged and told the man it was a rental car. “Ohhh” the man said,”then you want the cheapest grade” and he pressed the relevant button for Thomas. Thomas found this whole interaction interesting because  in Switzerland people would not take the responsibility of telling you what you should select because you must know for yourself. If for some reason they did offer advice, it would be the most expensive option, because if they took that responsibility then they have to suggest something which wouldn’t cause them problems at a later date. And further Thomas told me , the Swiss are a into appearances so they don’t want to appear to take the cheapest option. He noticed the Americans are much more budget oriented and go first to the cheapest option. He appreciated this open and friendly advice.

I have noticed since I have been back in the US that many people are offering their opinion on what I should do in just about any situation I am discussing. Funny even when I didn’t ask for it and in some cases don’t want it. I know that I have adapted back into the culture because I found myself doing the same. Do you feel compelled to give your opinion or advice?

After Thomas’s story, I realized that this nature of giving advice IS cultural. Americans have grown up with a different sense of social responsibility. This is, of course, interpreted somewhat different among the American population but people feel a social responsibility to provide you with advice that they believe to be in your best interest. It is part of the culture to get involved and engage with others even if they are strangers.

What will be different now, when someone gives you advice that you didn’t ask for. Can you see it from another perspective and appreciate it is part of their deeper make up then just feedback on your situation.  It is their way to contribute and comes from a place of service and not of arrogance.  You could argue otherwise, but that is the way I like to look at it.

Share some of your thoughts and experiences in the comments. Anyone disagree? Lets here from you, too.

Mind Games

Berit (my Friend from Switzerland) and I went to the local pool and found a nice shady spot which was key on this scorching afternoon. I was so happy when I saw a free chair across the way so I went to collect it and carried it over to our shady corner.

We got lucky someone had just gotten up and there was a second chair so I went to collect it. You see chairs are hard to come by at this pool so this made me very happy.

I forgot to put a towel on the one I already put down in our corner and as I turned around there was a woman putting her things on MY chair. Berit just looked at me from the distance and shrugged. That was the universal body language for oh well too late.

The thing that struck me most interesting was as I approached, I wanted to say something to the woman about MY chair. You see if I were back in Switzerland, I may not have said anything because of the language difference. I was not as forceful or confident in a foreign language (that’s another story..). But here, I was on my home turf and wasnt going to sit by and lose my chair.

As I approached, in a split second, as though I were in slow motion or watching this in a movie, I saw myself start talking to the woman but I was talking in German. What was going on? because my friends were visiting from Switzerland, my brain was working on a different mode, German mode (after all I lived there for 16 years).

Although I was clearly here at my pool in the United States, being there with Berit made me start to think in German.

Because usually, when I was with  Berit it was always in Switzerland and around other German-speaking people.  In that split second, I had to stop myself and shift modes back to English. The woman had no idea what was going on in my head but I thought this was really interesting.

Like the picture which represents more than one perspective, isn’t it interesting how depending on what is happening around us is processed so quickly by our brain and dictates our reaction or what we see if we are not consciously aware of it. It is very powerful to become aware and have more choice in what perspective we see or what language (pun intended) we are using.

Habits are stored in our brains. Habits and reactions to emotional triggers, our language patterns and so much more. We can influence the way we think by breaking these patterns and creating new ones such as creating new emotional reactions.

What habits and patterns do you now recognize and want to change?

American Chit Chat

I have my old neighbors from Switzerland, Berit and Thomas, visiting me . I thought they would be bored to hang out in Devon, PA but they wanted to get the real life American perspective.  So I gave it to them. Our very American Experience consisted of hanging out in Devon, going to the Upper Main Line YMCA and a visit to Sea Isle City at the Jersey Shore.

We did some very ordinary things together to give them the impression of living in the United States. I took them along the daily routine. This evening, we went shopping at WholeFoods around the corner from my house. They took a long time as they marveled at the various choices and tastings in the store. They liked how things were presented differently and the variety of foods that they were not used to.

When we arrived at checkout, Berit insisted on paying so she stood there in front of the cashier waiting for the total. The woman asked my friend Berit “Did you find everything all right?” A simple statement to us fellow Americans who take this open chit chat as part of our daily lives.

Berit ignored the woman, not fully hearing what she was saying and probably assuming that the cashier wasn’t even talking to her. The woman at check out said it again in as friendly a voice as the first time (which doesn’t always happen the second time even in America). No answer. I looked at my friend and knew instantly that this “chit chat” was foreign to her.

I thought I better chime in and help out the situation. I told Berit that the woman was asking her if she found everything all right. Funny I felt like I had my elderly grandmother who was hard of hearing and repeating the cashiers words. Berit has this great laugh and  belted out a laugh and said “oh, was she talking to me?”. Being American and having missed this chit chat when I lived in Switzerland, I felt the need for further chit chat and filled in the woman at Cashier that my friend was not being rude, she is from another country and didn’t know you were talking to her. She understood the language but not the “American chit chat”.

In this case it was just a question about the store, but quite often when I am out and about in America I will have various types of conversations with complete strangers. Some of them even about some personal topics. Why is it that we Americans are happy to wear our heart out on our sleeves and share details of our lives in a random encounter.

When I first arrived in Switzerland, I tried to talk to someone in the tram and they gave me the same blank stare that Berit gave the cashier. When I tried a second time her eyes got wide and she looked around… are you talking to me? Needless to say, it was not welcomed.

Why are our boundaries so different?

Over the years, my behavior changed (after all I was there for 16 years) and I didn’t really interact with people in transit or elsewhere that much. I started to feel much more isolated and private. It felt cold and stuffy to me. I started to seek out groups of foreigners to interact with because it was confining a part of me that wanted to be freed.  It was funny, when I heard people speaking English I would launch into “chit chat” like a child devouring a piece of chocolate.

Have you ever thought about why do you like talking to random strangers? What need in us does it fulfill? What does it represent to you? Please comment below, I would enjoy to hear your feedback and experience.

Welcome!

Welcome to my Blog!

It wasnt until I left the United States to live somewhere else that i ever really thought much about our culture.

I have lived abroad twice. Once for 6 months taking a semester abroad in London and then my last and somewhat longer stay in Switzerland. What started out as a one year assignment turned into a 16 years.

I have just come back 1.5 years ago. I have always wanted to write a book . Really since I was in high school. I started a business book once and felt like I didnt have enough experience so I went out and got some more. I am ready to write that book.

The more I thought about it though, I wanted to create something more interactive, something fun but having purpose. The more I thought about culture the more I see how it ties into the coaching I do. It ties into what has shaped us and how did we create the beliefs that we have. Some of them are clearly cultural.

Culture also has a life of its own. A culture grows and changes. I got involved in coaching to help people take control of their lives and their emotions and live the quality of life they deserve. If we don’t take the reins, life will take us where ever. Culture works the same. We can let it take whatever shape and form it may take or we can guide it with purpose, knowing who we are, where we have been and more importantly where we want to go.

Maybe this can start as a fun movement to talk about funny stories about cultural differences and what is important to us about our culture. Help us to recognize and appreciate our culture for what it is and take responsibility in the future of our culture which might come in many forms, hopefully to be discussed in further detail in this blog.

I still have a great story but I will save it for now so we can create this together. Thanks for joining in on the discussion and sharing your stories!

 

Much love

Penny