Over at Teekay’s

When you register your residency in this lovely small town, they check the number of people in your household against the number of trash bins in the building. You are then handed a sheet (“Behälteranmeldung grauer Restabfallbehälter”) you need to fill in and send to the “Abfallwirtschaft und Stadtreinigung.” Just to make sure everything’s in order.

Registering was easy, but the trash killed me.

I think the same would apply to Germans as well, but the Swiss are a bit stranger, a bit more idiosyncratic, a bit less self-conscious — just plain weird, in fact — in everything they do.

At the Italian-Swiss border, before 5 am on Easter Monday. Swiss border guard enters bus to collect all passports and run them through a check. Unsmiling, not saying a word, not so much unfriendly as totally focused on his work.

Guy wears two earrings.

Two!!

Comment from my wife: they’re extremely correct, extremely focused on doing the right thing, conscientious about the job — but hey, they’re also real rebels.

Struck me as *exactly* right.