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I just got an email with some pictures that were taken this morning in Baden, Switzerland, where I lived for about 5 years.

That small town is really cute and charming and my eyes got full of tears seeing it again after 1 year. On October 19th, it was the 1st anniversary of my moving out.

I didn't miss the life I had there whatsoever! It was my poorest life quality ever!
Just to illustrate it:
-I paid a very expensive health insurance there but I never could use it since no clinic or physician accepted me as patient. As soon as I opened my mouth to ask for an appointment they shouted they were full booked. If I asked to be booked for 2 or 3 months ahead they asked me to call later and always the same answer was given to me.
-I love go to to cinema, shows and theater but I never went in Switzerland as expensive as it was. I can't see myself spending almost 100 US$ for one unique ticket and far away from the stage. I never saw any propaganda of free shows as it's common in Brasil or France for example.
-To cut my hair I needed to drive about 100Km to France because even the coiffeurs with a "walking in" appointment denied to cut my hair!
-I tried to get an membership at the local gym and full booked. A friend from France had no problem at all! The same day, the same time he got his membership!

I look at those pictures and I looked at the many pictures I took myself and I can't believe how a beautiful and charming country as Switzerland can treat people so badly! By the way, I talk about myself and in behave of people from other countries who don't have a very fair skin and don't look European.

Anyway, complains apart... I miss walking under the 1st snow of the year, especially at night. I miss the feeling of the snow falling in my face slowly...

It's unbelievable how alone I was in this town. I never spent too much time with myself as I did in Switzerland and in the end I could understand that it was very nice because I could improve the relationship with the inner me. I get along with myself much better now than before.

Brasil, United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Taiwan...Wondering which country will be the next place I will call...home!
As they say... home is where your story begins!

Switzerland on my nerves!

I thought I knew what bureaucracy was, after all I was born in Brasil!!
Oh poor and saint innocence!! What a “happy illusion”!!

Come to Switzerland and you will be introduced to the real land of bureaucracy my friends!!

I imagined that my list of problems would increase having only 19 days, thank God, for living Switzerland for good, but not that much for sure!
Can you believe that even my drive license, a personal document, they want to retrain!?
It’s my drive license for God sake!! Mine!! I need it to drive wherever I'm in, people?!?!

I'm coming home once again

Oh god, I’m exhaust of being sick!! The question hammering my mind is how an inexistent thyroid can put myself in such a trouble? How can a human being feel so much pain?? I have pain all over my joins and muscles and as soon as I get out of the bed in the morning, I can’t hold anything. My hands are so swollen that I need to do a massage on them and wait at least 15 minutes to try to put them to work.

I have so much to do. So much…and I’m doing it on turtle steps but I’m doing it!!
I’m getting everything organized on time, following my schedule/plan to pack all my stuff before October 15^th when the shipping company will come to get it all.
Another very important thing I did was contracting a cleaning company! I did it because I don’t want to have any headache with the real state office.

I was told and proved and double proved that when they come to check on the apartment, they use white gloves to do so if the housemaid, myself, was the one who did the cleaning and of course they never approve it and they charge good for every single spot they think they find.

So, I own 2 apartments in Brasil and I need to paint the entire places every single time I have a new tenant. Here it doesn’t work like that. My building is 10 years old and it was painted only when it was constructed and never more, inside and outside!
I do remember my shock when I opened the door of the flat and I saw dirty walls, dirty floor. I wrote every single stain down; I complained for the dirtiness and I just got a look like…these 3^rd world people…I do remember it!!

Anyway… I really don’t want another headache on Swiss matters in my life whatsoever!!
I can’t believe I’m getting out of here…

I’m not in Brasil yet but I started having a life, a normal life already! I got appointments with my doctors, I booked a 2 days in a spa, I have at least 8 invitations for dinners with old buddies, I’ll visit a dear friend in her hometown, I’ll stay few days with my dear cousin Silvana and I just announced the day I’ll arrive today! So, it’s just the beginning!!!

I’m sooooooo happy!!! I’m coming baby!!!

Anyhow…I’ll arrive in Brasil on October 19th, technically as “homeless”, what doesn’t bother me at all!
I love the feeling of getting at home or the feeling of having a home to call mine!! I feel secure, I feel save and I also have a feeling of belonging to somewhere…I use to say that I live in my home and for mere chance my home is in Switzerland.

I’m a kind of woman who considers a home the most important thing ever.

I’m coming to my big home, what a blessing! Thank you God!! Thank you!

The Power of Cheese

Yesterday I went to the Emmeltaler region here in Switzerland, where the famous emmental cheese is produced! It was beautiful as usual and I was wondering how such beautiful country could treat so badly the foreign people who lived here…it doesn’t match!!

So, I’m a cheese girl for sure! I love cheese, I was born in a state that the entire Brasil knows by its cheese, and I found out that I eat at least 25 kg of fresh mozzarella per year! I do have a very good calcium intake for sure!!

Is it heaven?? I really guess so!!

Sursee's lake

Anyway…living in Switzerland for 4 years and 7 month and have never visiting a cheese farmer is almost a sacrilege!! Yeah, I do treat cheese in this level of importance!!

The day was beautiful, sunny and bright, 22 degrees, and before it was gone I drove to the mountains and the smell of the grass amazed me. I have allergy with grass and its smell but in this region there is a native melisse and mint that makes the grass smells wonderfully!! I never had felt such an odor!
I know that what the cows eat have a direct impact in a flavor and taste of the milk and consequently in dairy products! So, it explains the wonderful flavor and aroma of the Emmental cheese!

Saturday was the first day of fall, but I felt it as the first day of summer because of the lack of sunny days this past season.

Goodbye Switzerland!

I'll never forget the smell of this grass...it sounds crazy I know!

Bucolic view

Well, I had an agreeable day!
In 4 weeks I'll be flying to Brasil and all my things already shipped! For the first time I'll have no answer when someone asks me where I'm living...

I started saying goodbye of Switzerland already!

Time goes...

My bedroom's window, from outside, today!

I’m completely lost about time…I know that fall is knocking on my window but for me summer didn’t arrive yet!
It seems yesterday that the ivies that covers my walls were green. Now they have this astonish carmine color, but the leaves are falling down prematurely!

I was told that a Swiss couple I have met is very happy with the arriving of the cold days that are coming fast! Truthfully...this couple...they were born in the right place!!!

My bedroom's window, from inside, today!

Thank you Mr. Andreas Glarner

This post is to thank Mr. Andreas Glarner, who is a national candidate by the SVP - Swiss People's Party also known as the Democratic Union of the Center or Schweizerische VolksPartei - for helping the world to get to know for real what Switzerland is!

I'm talking about his his “brilliant” campaign that is reveling the true Swiss thoughts and principles to the whole world! I'm sure his party is very proud of him and it'll make make him a national celebrity very soon!!

This pic was taken at Mellinger street, in Baden, by me!
Note a heart drawn on a left billboard

Both Mr. Glarner and his party are encouraging xenophobia in an era where people from all nations and cultures are working harder than ever to try to diminish racism, preconceptions and all those feelings and actions that this Swiss man is proudly patronizing through panels around the canton of Aargau with questions as “Baden or Baghdad?” or “Aarau or Ankara?” as you can see in those pics I took today!!!

The biggest and most popular political party of Switzerland, SVP, has propagating itself with the explicit and intolerant "black sheep" ad and according to a survey I saw at FR2 channel yesterday, the majority of the Swiss population approves it!
Party and candidate joining forces to proclaim racist, discrimination, injustice, inequity in the 21st century, in Switzerland!

This pic was probably taken in a street of a village in the canton
of Aargau, Switzerland!I got it from here!

I do need to be thankful for this politician’s campaign! No, really!
Since Mr. Glarner decided to show the world the genuine thoughts of the country that unfortunately holds United Nations and Red Cross main office, my “job” here became a lot easier!

It became easier because almost every time I opened my mouth to tell people how is life in this fantasy island, people doubt me with some argumentation based in years and years of very masked lies and good propaganda of a fair country.

So, now I just need to show some very strong images and very powerful words without much effort and "let" that Mr. Glarner himself spreads around!
Now, it isn’t just my point of view or my impressions anymore!! Now it’s an official position of a party, SVP, and his official candidate!!

Those 2 pics were taken from Mr. Glarner website
Translation...*So that we feel well in the future

You and you political party Sir, are providing a huge service to humankind taking the mask of your country down! A country that has a real social apartheid, a country that gets money from all the corruption politicians and business men around the world without any question to support a very high standard of living as it were not just another type of corruption as well, a country that proclaims itself neutral only for monetary reasons!

Thank you Mr. Andreas Glarner and thank you SVP for showing the face of the real Switzerland and for spreading the word officially!

Clear Appeal

"Foreigners, don't leave us alone with the Swiss"

We, Simone and I, took this pic at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich last Thursday and I must confess that I really loved it!!
Foreigners, don't leave us alone with the Swiss is a scream for help in a death nation! It was an indignation of people who are literally and visibly mistreated in this country, that has a very good reputation in being fair!

How come United Nations doesn't do anything about this segregation and social apartheid? How come Switzerland is the home of United Nations in Europe?
The situation here is ugly and it's getting worse daily! I have lost the exactly number of e-mails and faxes I have sent to the United Nations in those 4 years telling the absurds that occur here but then I realized that a very good amount of UN's employees in Genève is from another countries as well and that means they know exactly what I'm talking about!
Action in this field is really equal to zero at the rich salons of this organization!

By the way, the United Nations doesn't recognize the concept of illegal immigration...on paper i guess!

Well, seeing this clear appell stamped on a window of a very busy street in Zurich wasn't an amusement...at all!

Swiss People's Party

Image from Swiss People's Party's website

An image that is worth
more than a thousand words!!

Tower of Babel

"The Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563

Yesterday I spent around 2 hours in a mall and during this time I needed to remind myself where I was because I thought I was in the middle of Tower of Babel as the profuseness of culture and languages I got myself exposed to! It was like a long and pretty good trip around the world and I really enjoyed it!

Just listening to the many different sounds I could go to South and North Africa, to Brasil and South America, to the USA and Caribbean, to Portugal, France, Italy and Germany, Middle East, India and China! All that in just 2 hours! What a trip!!!

Drinking my coffee and eating a delicious damask tart as I usually do in the mall, I like to observe people walking around and something called my attention as never before in these 4 years I’m here! I noticed not just immigrant couples but also a prominent increase in a number of interracial marriages that intrigued me for a long time!

I’m kind of curious for scientific researches in anthropology and sociology fields and I have searched a lot already and I never found any research or study about how this plurality of cultures can affect Swiss way of life in the next 100 or 300 years!
I have thought about that because of the amount of old Swiss men and young as well, but in lower number, married to a young woman from developing countries here in Aargau region! Unfortunately it can have another connotation as well!

Anyway, those Swiss men are having kids with those women and this is a change that cannot pass unnoticed to anyone because even if the kids didn’t have the opportunity to grow up close to the culture of their mothers, they will know for sure that they belong to other places as well. For sure they will eat their mother’s food, they will have relatives in another country, they will listen to songs and stories from the mothers’ nation and this nobody can’t run away from! All this is the purest manifestation of what we are and where we come from, our genuine culture.

Culture is something very strong and in some way we carry it in our DNA, liking it or not!

Looking at some couples, I remember when I took German class at a local school…I had a classmate from Thailand that was married to a man from the town. She didn’t speak other language than her mother tongue and neither her husband didn’t speak her language! I never understood how it worked out…

So, with mimics, drawing and very pitiable German we got along very well. Poor thing, she didn’t know even the Latin alphabet! We were 11 girls, a very nice group and we used to go to a coffee shop after class. One day she told us that she had 3 kids and they were in Thailand with her mother and that she was feeling very sad and alone here because her husband’s work was over there. Besides, she was here for about 4 months, living with her in-laws and they had never tried to make a conversation with their new daughter-in-law!

As soon as she spoke out about it, 3 girls from the group complained about the same situation! They were from Peru, Tibet and Philippines!
Now, Baden has around 16.000 inhabitant, we were 11 in German class and 4 girls shared this odd stories! It is something to think about for sure. It isn’t an isolate case or intrigue from the opposition, myself.

Going back to my original thought… I’m just wondering about the behavior of the Swiss in a near future. For sure it will have some alteration and cultures as colorful, bright, alive and joyful as the cultures of those foreign women who are now living here and generate the future generation will for sure interfere in a way of life of Switzerland, the country where you cannot make any noise on Sundays, where you cannot flush the toilet after 10pm, and where a man cannot pee standing up after 10 PM as well, or where you (I’m talking about Swiss citizen) must be married officially to register your own son/daughter or the baby goes to adoption, the country where women were granted right to vote only in 1971, or where it’s illegal to run up and down stairs, or even leave shoes outside the house is a contravention!

Well, it was just an example of a very inflexible nation that is walking for a huge renovation and I don’t know if they are seeing this or if they are paying attention to all transformations that a melting pot can perform in a “well established” culture as Switzerland! It affects the entire country!

As I said in the beginning, I have looked at all Swiss universities and search for books and I didn’t see any study regard to it! Well maybe having a study for everything is Brazilian mania after all!

Wise nature

"Royalty" by me

I went out yesterday and in a course I usually spend about 10 minutes to do it, took me endless 45 minutes because of a very full traffic jam. During those approximately 45 minutes I kept listening to the same song over and over and I could notice a tear coming from my eye.
It was a typical Swiss day…gray sky, less than 10 degrees Celsius…

All my attention was only at the traffic jam and I was very anxious to get to my destination…between one tear and other, I looked around and I noticed that every single tree along the way was trying hard to get out of the winter that insists in live here! All those many trees dressing up to a spring party, and winter holding them back…not fair

Not fair, but it came to me as a huge metaphor. I looked at those trees and they seemed to me as huge survivors, fighting hard to their reborn. Those very little sprouts were struggle for life and they were throwing this on my face, they were screaming life to my face for sure in that gray and cold Swiss day!

It was a very weird sensation, but it was exactly like that that I felt… nature teaching a lesson once again.

"Waiting" by me

I cannot believe!!!

Almost 6:30AM, and I was thinking about going to Zurich in a few hours, on a Saturday morning, just to stroll at Bahnhofstrasse and laugh a little with the super-high-astronomical prices they have over there, since it’s the 6th most expensive street in the world.
Anyway….I decided to check at yahoo weather to make sure the sun would shine and for my surprise it was showing 1C°and snowing as you can see below.

In an action of extreme surprise, I walked to the window, looking at my monitor thinking how crazy yahoo weather was…1 C° plus snow? Yeah, right, make me laugh!!

How come it could be happening if today was a beautiful sunshine day with a blue sky? How come??
So, I opened the curtains and my eyes didn’t believe on what they were seeing…

It's snowing!! Again!!

Oh God, have merci!!!

Spring? Really?

First day of spring in Switzerland!

First Snow

The First Snow

The first snow of the season!!

It’s snowing right now and it’s very cold, -9! As I’m still awake I decided to go to out to a walk. I'm from the tropics and I'm not pro coldness whatsoever, but I like the feeling of first snow dropping on my face. it falls softly as it were cherishing me!!

Well, I came back with me most beautiful and visible images I could ever take!!!

The proudness of being who I am!

I got back from Stuttgart last night after being humiliated again by the Swiss Army at Schaffhausen Germany-Switzerland border crossing. This time I didn’t have any guns around me, but I was privileged enough of having a policeman just for me. I love my life in this fair and free country called Switzerland, where everybody is treated equally no matter your nationality, or skin color!!

This time the policemen were so educated as everybody else here that and I felt deeply that he didn’t want to upset me saying why he was taking out my car seats and looking all over it with a spotlight in his hand, under a lamppost with a very power lamp on.

The polices kept me there for about 45 minutes, standing up in a room while my handbag was being completely empty and turned on its reversed, having its sewing line being stretched. Maybe they were checking the quality of a Beneton’s bags. Also this polite policeman opened my nécessaire, and each one of my creams jars! Even my mascara was checked. I’m so happy to have somebody so preoccupied with the quality of the beauty products I use in my skin.

Then I felt sorry for him! I think that he got jealous, poor thing. He got my sunglass leather case, opened it and asked in a very instigating way: “Why you have a original Ray Ban sunglasses?” I looked at him and I felt pity on my heart and I replied him saying that I wasn’t answer that question. Well, who knows, maybe he had some passion or love disillusion with this brand and I didn’t want to upset him more.

Also he asked me why I was in Frankfurt and then in Stuttgart! See, how nice he was? He was really upset with my well being/stay in Germany. He got so into my trip that he even asked me to show him the airport parking ticket! My heart got so happy this time that I almost gave him a “thank you kiss” for watching my steps in other country like that. I guess he found out that all my family is abroad and I was missing some maternal preoccupation, don’t you think?

After that he was questioning me why I didn’t have any luggage! I just smiled at him… he was amazed for sure, thinking how come a woman travel without any luggage!!
But what really impressed me was his ability to disassemble my car in about 45 minutes. He took the plastic container-protection of the internal lamps so easily. I guess he was checking my cleaning skills, since he passed his Swiss finger all over it and looked at it so closed with his spotlight. Thank God it was clean enough to have the pleasure of living in this spotless country!

Then he saw a H&M plastic bag and he took all out. I got in Stuttgart 2 black underwear, a béret and a pajama. That part I didn’t understand since H&M is a Sweden store. Well, he took my things out and asked me why I got them in Germany and not here in his beloved country. I think he got upset with the new Swiss banks police, that started returning some of money from third country’s corruption that were safe here. The Swiss banks got upset with their reputation and now they decided to return those billions euros to the countries where it belongs by right. So, I think he asked me that just to try to help the economy here moving and alive. Fair enough, hun!
Wow, I almost forgot the most interesting part. This policeman checked my reserved tire as well and every single corner of its place in the back of my car. If I knew that my car would pass for that capricious security inspection, I had missed the official car revision that is very expensive!! I do think that the policeman made a much better job than the body shop here in Baden!
How come those Swiss people could be so efficient in their jobs!!! It’s amazing!

So, after all those polite actions with me, the policeman gave my passport with my resident permit and asked me to live, wishing me a very good night. I looked at him and I said that I was having a very good night until he started searching all over my car. He gave a fake smile and said thanks as he had done a good job! I replied saying that fortunately he wasn’t welcome and I started driving!

I needed to be ironic here! All those pre-judgments I have being on in a country that United Nations is settle just make me feel stronger and stronger. I never felt preconception like this evident before in my life and I’m thinking seriously about enter with a formal accusation against Switzerland at United Nations, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rights of Migrants!
I have lost and my faith at United Nations for many reasons , but I must take some actions and there is no other place to go, besides UN!

Oh God! Until when the world will keep believe that Switzerland is a dream place to live? Until when this mask will cover faces like this policeman? Where did this policeman find any right to treat me as a drug criminal?

I felt a very strange and powerful feeling in my heart when I figured out what was going on in that border! I was being treated as I were a criminal or even a nothing person, but I felt a very powerful energy in my heart. I felt strongly what I already knew for sure: I’m very proud of being a South-American/Brazilian woman, I’m very proud for having yellow skin that I inherited from the Kadiweu indigenous nations, which my great grandma belonged to, I’m very proud of being from what people used to call third world country as well.

This faith I have in my past and in my history say to me that there is no policeman in the world who will turn me down whatsoever!
Arbitrary attitudes like this one I was victim last night just increase my proudness of being who I am and from where I am, Brasil!

Wanted

How a very nice day can be transformed in a nightmare!
On Thursday, I had fun all day and then I decided to come back home(♥). I was in France and when I crossed the Suisse-France border a very bizarre thing started happen to me.

I have passed this border about 3 times a month and for a long time I haven’t been asked to stop. Thursday, a border's officer stopped(♪) me and asked if I had something to declare and I said that I didn’t buy anything. I did not buy even a bottle of wine this time. He was not satisfied, so he asked for my passport. 15 minutes later he was back and he asked for my drive license. More 15 minutes and he asked for my car papers. I gave to him everything he asked for and I waited inside my car for like half hour more.
He came back once more and asked me to move my car to other place. I did and he insisted that I had brought something. I asked him to open the back of my car and check himself. He did and then he made ethnical-xenophobic-racist jokes about foreign buying meat abroad.

After that, he said that my name was in his computer saying that I was trying to hide from Zurich police. What???? I’m hiding? I’m hiding from Zurich police? Why? I was so mad, however I don’t know how I managed myself into a long and deep inhale to try to calm down. I know what those people can do when they have a little power in their hands and/or in their minds.

Anyway, I asked him to be clearer and he asked me if I got a ticket there. I replied saying that in November 2003, I got a ticket and I proved to the authorities competent that it was not my fault and the "DMV" Swiss put me on probation for 2 years and it will end in 2 months. (I forgot how many times I explained to him what probation meant).

To make this long and terrified story shorter!
My nightmare started here. The organized and correct Swiss people did not send my papers from the canton I live which is Aargau to the Zurich’s canton where I got the fine. It was 2003!!!
As it wasn't enough, somebody from some office just inverted the order of my name and that clever officer spent more than 30 minutes trying to get myself in huge trouble saying that my name was wrong in my passport, in my Swiss drive license, in my USA driving license and in my Brazilian driving license! How came??? Oh yeah!! They don’t make a mistake. Stupid me!!

Resuming… I’m huge trouble right now. My name is on WANTED list!!
I just have one address since I moved to this wonderful country. The police said that they sent me many letters and all of them returned. Also they said that they went to my house and they did not find me either! They did not find me since November 2003!
What a competence??! Now I need to pay a huge fine + other fines + process costs + probation or go to jail!
Do I have any choice?? I swear that they will have no trouble at all finding my correct address to send me the bill. Oh boy! They really know how to find you in cases like this.

Now I’m a domiciliary prison. That’s right! I cannot go outside Switzerland. This country is so claustrophobic and it is driving me crazy!
Ah, I just remembered other thing? Do you know how I found out that I hat got a fine in Zurich? Because Zurich’s police sent me a letter!! This letter arrived in my only and unique house here in November 2003. Funny, hum???

I’m so piss off with Switzerland and its people. I’m tired of getting looks, as I’m not good as they are.
Oh, please give me a break!! Switzerland is one of the countries in Europe with the lowest rate of people with college degree; they are so politically correct that they don’t care about the origin of the huge amount of money that full their ass out and is kept in the safe deposit box of many Swiss banks; they don’t care about the artworks from Jews people that is hiding in some bank basement since the holocaust.

They just don’t care! They are used to a very old speech that they are above of the good and of the bad. Why they will care anyhow? UN, Human Rights all those institutions have their main offices where? Here, in Switzerland!!! Why here? Neutral country! I do hate neutral positions. I do prefer a position against my thoughts than a neutral one.

Do you know, I’m so tired of the incompetence, ignorance, snobbish, arrogance, stupidly, haughtiness, and presumption of this people! I’m really mad.
3 years ago when I moved to here, I was content and pleased! Really, I was! As everything here is the best, they also did the best job on me. We got here on Sunday, March 3rd. On Monday 4th, we were presented to the Swiss life-style. So, since that I have been exposed to many, many beautiful things.
What happened to me last Thursday was just the last drop on a full glass.

As you can see, I’m having fun here!

♥ Home: An environment offering security and happiness. b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.

♪Did you know that all foreign people who live here and have brought a car here, has a car’s license plate with higher numbers than Swiss was-born-here-citizen? I mean, when you look at some car’s license plate you know if the car belongs to a foreign or to a Swiss. For me there is no difference at all from that to what was done to the Jewish in 1933, when their shops were marked with the yellow Star of David.