The European Way of Life...

is different from the Australian way. The differences have come up in various conversations over the time I've been here, and what better day to discuss them than Sunday, when it's most striking.

Anybody who has been to a Swiss city on Sunday will tell you it's a ghost town. Nobody is around and almost nothing is open. I have no idea what Swiss people do on Sundays. I used to think that they hiked and skiied, and the mountains in winter are packed on the weekends, but that isn't the case in summer. I asked my previous Swiss housemate and he said he usually spends the day at home or at a friend's place.

Not only is nothing open on Sundays, but all shops close at 7pm on weekdays, except on Thursdays when they open until 9pm. Granted, this is the same at home, but when I say all shops, I also mean supermarkets and pharmacies. Oh, speaking of pharmacies, most of them in Geneva also close for lunch time, from 12pm to 2pm. The ones which stay open during lunch advertise this fact proudly on their windows.

Pharmacies aren't the only things which close over lunch time. The post office and banks are also closed over lunch time. As is most adminisation. I have no idea when people run all their errands over here without taking time off work.

Errands aren't the only thing which people need to take time off work for. The school hours in the canton also make it hard for both parents to work full time jobs. The children here in public schools also have two hours off for lunch everyday, and some of them don't allow the children to stay at school for this time. Which is fine for everybody who has a job in administration, but a pain for everybody else.

Oh, they also get Wednesday afternoons off school, at least in public school in the canton. An afternoon off a week! Even harder for a family with two working parents. Their school year is also set out differently, starting at the end of August, they get a week off in October, December, February and April, and then they finish at the end of June so get two months off for summer.

And if you think this is just a Geneva/Swiss thing, I've asked a couple of the European students in the group what their school hours growing up were. And it gets worse! Two of them only had school in the morning (in Italy and Germany)! And still got a few months off for summer! Granted, they both had heaps of homework to do every night and over summer, but still. So different!

Speaking of holidays, working people also get more annual leave. It's five weeks at the University of Geneva, which is only one more week than at home, but heaps more than over in America. Two weeks! How can anybody live with only two weeks off a year?

Anyway, this isn't going to turn into a differences between USA and Australia, I did that comparison a few years ago, and so will stop here. Maybe someday I'll write about all differences between here and home, not just the lifestyle ones.