Thursday, November 25, 2004

No joke

I was able to come back a day early from Luxembourg, which was a nice treat. I didn't have any time to see the city, but I had been once before so no worries. It's really quite beautiful, but I get the sense it makes Basel seem wild and crazy by comparison.

Anyway, I read this in today's Financial Times: "The English like telling Irish jokes; the Italians German jokes; and everybody likes telling Swiss jokes." It got me to thinking, why don't I ever hear any Swiss jokes if everybody likes telling them? Is it because I live in Switzerland so it's taboo to tell Swiss jokes? (Here I think they prefer to tell jokes about the canton of Appenzell, which didn't give women the right to vote until the 1990s, and then only because the courts forced them to do so--I think it's sort of like the West Virginia of Switzerland.) Anyway, I've realised I need to ask my European colleagues what sort of jokes they tell...