7 Swiss Habits I Picked Up

hey guys welcome back to how to Switzerland Sarah here with you today and in today's video I'm going to be sharing with you 7 Swiss habits I picked up since moving to Switzerland so quick disclaimer Gahan's as always this is just my personal experience these seven things that I perceive as switch you may not think are Swiss at all and that's perfectly fine this is just things that I have noticed number one since living here I consistently take my shoes off when entering my house or anybody's house so I know that it seems most people do this here whenever I've gone to anybody's house in Switzerland you always take off your shoes and sometimes they'll even give you like slippers to put on some people will have like baskets at their door with slippers in them so you take off your shoes and put those on or just have no shoes at all obviously so I've kind of gotten in this habit and now even when I come home I take my shoes off right away which I did not do growing up now I know a lot of American households do do this they do consistently take off the shoes but I grew up in a household that it was kind of like you can Trek in and your shoes nobody's gonna say anything it's no big deal of course not in the winter but you know what I mean it just wasn't such a big deal that enter a room take off the shoes but since living here I'm always taking them off second thing I've picked up since living in Switzerland is paying with cash so as most of you know I first moved to Switzerland in 2009 and I noticed that almost nobody was paying anything with cards not just credit cards a lot of people weren't even using debit cards and I kind of took to that habit which I'm very grateful for that I got habit of paying cash because Americans tend to use credit cards heavily compared to Swiss people and I actually just saw that the SNB the Swiss National Bank said that 70% of purchases of transactions conducted in Switzerland are done in cash so Switzerland is a very cash loving country cash is king type of country this is definitely not true all over Europe I was recently in Sweden for an example and in Sweden they love paying everything cashless so this is definitely not something you see all over Europe but in Switzerland they definitely love cash which is really great third choice habit that I now do all the time is making sure that I am early to have her on going so growing up in the United States it was quite common to show up to things five to ten minutes late definitely if you're meeting a friend at a coffee shop or at a restaurant being 5 to 10 minutes late is kind of expected very very socially acceptable even some of my first jobs when I was really young 15 16 and had a job most people turned up 5 to 10 minutes late and it was kind of expected whereas in Switzerland I mean of course there's exceptions to that right you should be on time it's more respectful to be on time but it doesn't always happen whereas in Switzerland I find that it pretty much always happens people are punctual it's the kind of place if you're meeting somebody and you're two minutes past you said you're gonna meet at 6 and now it's 602 603 people might be wondering are they coming and the Swiss person might even text you if they're gonna be three four minutes late and say hey I might be late just a heads up it's a very I mean you've probably heard this before about Switzerland right it's the the watchmaking country and they take punctuality very seriously so since moving here I'm always 5 to 10 minutes early not even on time dare I even say this might not be true but on time is even pushing it I think it's pretty expected that you show up five minutes early to wherever you're meeting if this is friends especially work or things like that just on time preferably early fourth Suisse habit is recycling so once again growing up in the United States recycling was not such a big thing we had I grew up in a house so we had a driveway and at the end of the driveway you would do recycling in one bin which was like kind of new I remember when whoever controls the garbage came around and like gave everybody recycle bins and you would put recycling on one side and garbage on the other and that was it as far as I remember there was no real rhyme or reason for you know recycling and what goes in there and I feel like most people didn't really know should I put like newspapers in their bottles recycling was very kind of iffy and the United States as a whole does not have a very high recycling rate whereas the Swiss take recycling super super seriously I think I read somewhere that 80% of plastic bottles are recycled in Switzerland which is extremely extremely high and unlike other countries Swiss people are not getting paid or people who live in Switzerland you're not getting paid when you return those bottles back but everybody still returns them because the garbage bags are more expensive right at least that's more than likely the reason why people are recycling so heavily is because the garbage bags our government issued and they're super expensive so people try to recycle as much as they can because recycling is free whereas making garbage here is very expensive so Swiss have high recycling rates and I've definitely learned to make that a habit I am sorting absolutely everything cans glass plastic bottles paper cardboard everything is fair game we make very little garbage here compared to when we lived in the United States fix ways habit is general cleanliness and orderliness so in Switzerland people tend to be very clean very orderly of course not absolutely everybody but if you've ever been here if you live here you can see it in the streets cities are clean public bathrooms are generally clean things are very orderly things are clean here and they just work so I've definitely kind of this habit and brought it into my household and I think really living here has I don't know encouraged me has supported me to become a very clean human being and I like to keep my house extremely clean extremely orderly extremely decluttered and I think I've picked up a lot of that just by living in Switzerland where people tend to be very clean and orderly and I've taken that into my house 6 which habit is I don't even know how to call this I'm gonna call it double-checking so I don't know if this is a Swiss thing but I have never seen this before until I moved to Switzerland so the scenario is kind of like this you're on the train the train stops it arrives in the station people get up to leave the train almost every single person on the train will turn around look at their seat and just have that second glance where they make sure that they didn't leave anything behind like a cellphone a wallet a bag or anything and when I first moved here I noticed that it was so how do you say like consistent amongst almost everybody everybody would get off the train and just like that really quick glance back double check before they would leave and I was like wow that is a really healthy habit you're probably gonna lose a lot less things if every time you leave a train or a restaurant or a cafe you have the habit of just quickly glancing back and making sure you didn't leave anything behind so since I witnessed everybody around me doing this before they left anywhere I started doing this and it's super super helpful I I haven't left anything on a train or in a restaurant so that's great last habit that I want to talk about is letting people off of public transportation so let me explain what this means I guess you could say it's waiting your turn and this is a habit so in Switzerland when the train comes into the station or a bus or a tram absolutely everybody this is kind of the social or I shouldn't say everybody but it is the social standard kind of social norm is that when you want to get into a train bus tram and it stops obviously the doors are gonna open and people are gonna want to get out so as the person who's trying to get on you step to the side of the door and you wait until absolutely everybody is off you don't kind of go in and out at the same time so I'm at the Train it opens I'm waiting on the side everybody gets off wait a second okay everybody's off and then everybody gets in and I have never seen of course this is done in other countries in America too as well I'm sure but not so consistently really it's crazy even at the airport if you've ever flown into the Zurich Airport they have these trains that connect different terminals and it's marked on the ground because obviously in the airport you have a lot of tourists and people that are not aware of this social norm in Switzerland so it's written on the ground that if you are waiting you should stand on this line so you're not blocking the door and it says like let the people off first because of course in other countries it might be more like hey let me just sneak my way and I know in the United States you would definitely do this like it opens and you're like I can just sneak my way in around them but you don't want to do it here and if you do people possibly might say something and you'll definitely get some mean glares so I definitely picked up the habit of just being a little bit more patient and stepping to the side let everybody off and then get in alright you guys that is it for today's video I really hope you enjoyed it if you liked hearing about these Swiss habits I've picked up leave this video a thumbs up so I know to make more videos like this thanks so much for watching and I'll talk to you guys very soon bye [Music] okay is it rolling yeah like a spot on my shirt can you see that on the camera yes you can okay [Music] you

Channel: How To Switzerland

Views: 64,227

Rating: 4.9060001 out of 5

Keywords: switzerland, swiss, how to, life in switzerland, move to switzerland, moving to switzerland, sarah nourse, sarah nurse, sara nourse, swiss life

Id: Oe1pVrErY_s

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 02 2019