Rules of the game

One of the things that expats here seem to have the most difficult time dealing with is the plethora of rules, written and unwritten, that govern life here. As much as we joke about the sometimes anal rules of Swiss life, the reality is we're pretty lucky--our landlords don't care if we vacuum or do laundry on Sundays, for example, and the neighbors we've met have all been pretty nice. Many of my colleagues, however, have stories of neighbors calling the police because they closed doors too loudly or cooked food that smelled funny, asking them to turn their lights off after 11:00pm because they're too bright, and perhaps worst of all, slipping fliers under the door asking them not to pee standing up. (Needless to say, adjustment to life can be especially difficult for folks from places like Italy and Spain that are, shall we say, a little less orderly.) That's a long way of saying that we both got a laugh out of this post from ms. mac (especially the note), since we have friends who have been in the same situation...