It's a small, small world

We like things small here in French Switzerland (Suisse Romande): small cars, small restaurant portions, small bathing suits on both women and men (that's right - we're talkin' speedos on middle aged men as well as old geezers) , and really, really small washing machines. As in microwave sized. The first time you see one of these washer dryer combos you think "huh?"

You can wash, say, 3 pair of underwear and a couple pairs of socks at a time, or a sheet and a pillow case, or maybe two towels. Oh yeah, and the machine washes your laundry for about 4 hours at water temperatures of about 300 degrees, just to make sure your clothes get really, really clean since, because it's such an ordeal to wash them, you wear them until they can stand up in the corner by themselves and talk french back to you.

I haven't figured out the virtues of this aspect of Swiss life. Our Swiss friends gripe about the tiny washers and dryers, too. You have to wash laundry every day to keep on top of things or revert to clothes wearing strategies from your days of living in a college dorm - recycling the least offending articles available until finally strangers and even friends begin to look at you suspiciously and you have no option but to wash your laundry. This helps explain the certain robustness in clothing and body odor that one often notices over here.

On this same note regarding puzzling Swiss technology I have to mention a shopping expedition from a few days ago. I went out looking for mosquito preventatives the other day since we have mobs of mosquitoes in our rain soaked backyard which is bordered by our picturesque and slow flowing neigborhood stream. They try and come in and join us for meals and sleep any time the windows and doors are open.

Besides citronella candles and torches our neighborhood Jumbo (think Home Depot) offered a wide array of ultrasonic mosquito repellers. I asked the salesman if the ultrasonics were any good and his eyes darted all over the place as he explained it was a matter of personal preference what one used to keep mosquitoes away. Having never heard of such a thing I went home and researched this technology on the web. Numerous research articles concluded that ultrasonics are, at best, useless for repelling mosquitoes, and are more than likely to increase the frequency of their biting!

Just shows you even in super sophisticated Swiss Romande there are corporate marketing cons and lots of hapless consumer suckers. Somehow that feels reassuring to my American sensibility. We aren’t the only poor schmucks in the world who are at the mercy of consumer marketing.