Confessions of a former expat

I lived for rather a long time in Switzerland. Having been bitten by the proverbial travel bug in my teens, it had always been something of a life’s goal of mine to live abroad. I’d finally given up on my quest when I was unexpectedly offered a job with a small UN agency in Bern, the country’s capital. I heard about the job through a former colleague and exchanged a couple of emails and my resume with the manager in charge. They hired me sight unseen without even bother to interview me. How could I possibly turn it down? Switzerland was never my favorite German-speaking country. But the job chose me, not the other way around, and a month or so later I found myself in Bern looking for a place to live. Soon thereafter I met my future ex and what was supposed to be a one year stay turned into ten years. I came back to Texas a few years ago without any regrets.

I once read that only about 2% of the world’s population ever lives outside their country of birth. This is a shame, really, because there’s nothing like living abroad to expand your horizons. You get a rare opportunity to see your country and culture as others see it, and this can be a humbling experience. As an American, it also made me appreciate certain things that I always took for granted. Things such as air conditioning, Mexican food, being able to shop on Sundays, comfortable dwellings with spacious rooms, Target, huge bookstores full of books in English--the list goes on.

In Switzerland, business hours are for the convenience of the merchants, not the customers. During the week, the stores - that’s grocery stores, pharmacies, bookstores, department stores, everything - close at 6:30. They’re open on Saturdays until 4:00 or occasionally 5:00 and not at all on Sundays. Many larger towns and most cities have late-night shopping once a week. In Bern it was Thursdays until 9:00. I seldom left work before the shops closed and I don’t miss having to plan an entire week’s shopping in advance and rushing to fight the crowds on Thursdays to try and get everything the spousal equivalent and I needed for the week.

On the other hand, there are quite a few things I miss about Europe. Trains and viable and convenient public transportation systems spring immediately to mind. But I think the thing I really miss most is the cities. I like being able to get from place to place on foot, and European cities have character and an often quirky charm that we don’t find much over here. It’s not that there aren’t chain stores and ugly big-box retailers in Europe. There are plenty of them, but they haven’t taken over like they have in the US.

Most European cities have preserved at least part of their old towns (Paris is a notable exception), which almost always originated in the middle ages or earlier; I can think of several off the bat that go back to Roman times. Bern is not the most bustling of metropolises. But its old town is nothing if not picturesque. In fact it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Most of the buildings in the old town--or their foundations anyway--date to the 1400’s, although the facades are mostly later, thanks to a “modernization” campaign some time in the 1700’s. Mozart would recognize Bern. He stayed there with his father in 1762, although that it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression on him.

Now that I’m back in the States I’ve noticed that a lot of new urban development seems to be trending toward the walkable cities model. I live about a five-minute walk from one of these. Of course, there’s no history behind it and it looks pretty much like any other urban development of its kind. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and it’s nice not to have to drive to get there. More on this subject later.

Random thoughts on Davy Jones

I’ve had “Daydream Believer” stuck in my head for the past couple of days. Faced as I am now with the reality that I will never get to have my way with Davy Jones, I have been in a particularly cranky mood this week. 

Davy was my first true love. As a child, I wished fervently that my name were Valleri. It didn’t matter to me that Davy was short--he was still taller than me, unsurprisingly, as I was still playing with Barbies. Davy was just so freakin’ cute! He might have had more of an influence on me than I ever consciously realized. Looking back, I wonder if maybe this earliest of infatuations didn’t have some bearing on my preference as an adult for guys with brown eyes and a foreign accent.  Eventually, I moved on to Mr. Chekov on Star Trek; my ex is a dark-haired, brown eyed Frenchman and somewhat short of stature. 

By the time I discovered them, "The Monkees" was in re-runs on Saturday morning as a kid’s show.  It was actually kind of a fun little show if a bit surreal at times. In this respect it was fairly typical--many 60’s TV shows were really quite campy. Think "Batman", "Bewitched" & "Gilligan’s Island". At least back then shows were creative. Now all we have is reality TV.

In retrospect the Monkees seem rather iconic, though being the made-for-TV band that they were, they were often referred to disparagingly as the Pre-Fab Four. I don’t care; I still like their music. Many of their biggest hits and catchiest tunes (the theme song, "Valleri", "Last Train to Clarksville") were written by Boyce & Hart, but my personal favorites were written by Mike or Mickey.  Unfortunately these weren’t particularly big hits and didn’t have much of an afterlife. “Daydream Believer” gets played regularly on oldies radio but if you want to hear “Listen to the Band” you probably have to look it up on YouTube. 

My favorite Monkees tune is not one on which Davy sings lead. It’s Mickey singing on “Randy Scouse Git”, a most under-appreciated song. The lyrics are worth listening to. By the way, I’ve often wondered if these guys don’t find it rather galling, particularly Mike Nesmith, that they’re still best remembered for something that they did 40 years ago. 

What a sad week this has been. Good-bye Davy, and thanks.

Why bookstores are an endangered species

The Dallas Theater Center recently staged a production of Giant. You might recall the movie from the 50’s starring Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. It was based on a novel by Edna Ferber, one of the most successful American authors of the 20th century. I had mixed feelings about the DTC’s musical, not the least of which being I hate musicals. Hate musicals, love opera. Don’t ask me why-that’s just how it is. It seems I’m one of the few people alive that has never actually seen the movie, neither have I read the book. Since everyone I know was a bit incredulous when I told them about it--the general consensus being that Giant is not the stuff of which musicals are made--I began to wonder how it the musical compares to the book.

Giant apparently doesn’t exist as an ebook, but I found myself in the northern ‘burbs the next day and I decided to pop in to the nearby Barnes & Noble. I figured that there was a better than average chance they’d have it, since the Theater Center’s production has been getting rave reviews. Nope. So I trekked back across the frozen tundra to Civilization, stopping at another Barnes & Noble on the way. Nope. I had to go to four bookstores before I finally found it.

One hopes that the reason a major novel by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author was so hard to find is that there was such a flurry of interest that it caught bookstore managers all over town by surprise. Somehow I doubt it. It is, however, beside the point. The fact is, if there’s a book you want to read and it’s not the latest “Twilight” novel, you’ll probably have to order it online. This suits me just fine, as the brick-and-mortar stores don’t carry my book anyway. (They’ll order it for you, though, if you ask.)

There used to be a Borders in my neighborhood before they went under. It was within walking distance, but the one and only time I went there they didn’t have the book I wanted. They offered to order it for me, but if I’m going to do this, why not just order it from Amazon? It’s not their fault--they have room for a finite number of books. I’m actually one of the small percentage of the population that still shops at bookstores. Or I would, if there were any close to me and they had the books I want to read. No matter how much I love books, it’s just so much easier and faster to download an ebook, and that’s what I usually do.

Any thoughts on the future of brick-and-mortar bookstores? Real books vs. ebooks? I’d love to hear your opinions.

The parrot formerly known as Jethro

I have a parrot, a yellow-collared macaw named Jethro. When I got her almost 16 years ago, she was just a homely little baby. Astute readers might wonder how a female parrot got a name like Jethro. There's a perfectly good reason.

When I first brought her home, I had to hand-feed her with a syringe. The care and feeding of a baby parrot is not a responsibility to be taken lightly, and for a while it seemed like I was constantly mixing up parrot baby food. One day I was reminded of an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, an old 60’s sitcom that was in re-runs at the time, in which the Clampett family are in England. A snooty English lady says to Jedd, “I assume Jethro went to Eaton?” And Jedd replies, “Yes ma’am. I reckon he went to eatin’ about the minute he was born.” It just seemed too perfect, so the name stuck.

In most parrot species it’s impossible to tell a bird’s gender without a DNA test. But for years, I assumed I’d made the correct guess for the logical reason that the bird had never laid an egg. Then one day about a year ago my mom, who was birdy-sitting for a few days, called to tell me she’d found an egg in Jethro’s cage. Imagine my shock. We let her sit on them for a few weeks then took them away. The bird didn’t seem to be any worse the wear for her ill-fated attempt at parenthood. The only one that seems to be having a hard time with the sudden switch of genders is my mom, in spite of the fact that she’s the one who found the eggs. She continues to refer to Jethro as “he” and says she can’t be female because she doesn’t act like a lady, although what exactly constitutes ladylike behavior in a parrot I’m not sure.

Facebook friends

I’ve noticed a lot of people I’m ‘friends’ with on Facebook seem to have lots and lots of friends. There’s a guy on my Facebook friends list that I don’t even personally know, but he’s from my hometown and I accepted his friend request because we have 45 mutual friends. I know someone else who seems to ‘friend’ pretty much everyone he’s ever met. One day I noticed that we have a surprisingly large number of mutual Facebook friends. We do have several mutual friends in real life, but only a couple of them are on Facebook. Upon further inspection I was astonished to find that almost all of the mutual Facebook ‘friends’ are my real-life friends that he’s met only once.

I can’t help but wonder what is the point of friending people you don’t even know. Facebook is a wonderful tool for getting reconnecting with old friends and keeping up with people it would be hard to keep in touch with otherwise. But if I send you a friend request, it’s because I know you. I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to sift through updates from dozens--or hundreds-- of people they don’t even know. Of course, you can always unsubscribe from people’s updates, but in that case, why have them as a Facebook friend in the first place? The only reason I can think of is to have lots of Facebook friends. But why would you do this? Is it an ego thing? Seems a bit sad, really.

Help me out with this--I’d really like to hear your thoughts. Do you get lots of friend requests from people you don’t know? Do you automatically accept friend requests? If not, what your policy on accepting friend requests?