Living Among the Swiss

by Michael Wells Glueck

This is an account of the eight years that I spent living and working in Switzerland, with a satiric slant plus comments on investment activities that are illegal in the United States. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595241719
• ISBN13: 9780595241712
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Edition #5

I have added photographs and updated this edition of October 17, 2009 to reflect my continuing experiences during each of the past eleven years, when I have lived in Switzerland nearly half of the time. A corresponding new Kindle edition dated one day earlier is also available on this website, and it can be accessed by clicking on "Show more formats" on the left side of this page a bit below the top and choosing appropriately among the five available versions. I wish you most pleasant reading!

Definitely not a whitewash

Are you considering a job offer in Switzerland? This work provides fair warning about the obstacles that you and your spouse will face as an immigrant: a chauvinistic, closed society of incomprehensible, dialect-speaking burghers obsessed with money and reluctant to trust foreigners even after years of acquaintanceship; high rents and prices for inferior food -- especially beef and chicken -- clothing, and automobiles; undisguised resentment that you are denying a job opportunity to a Swiss citizen; discrimination in career advancement and promotion. Most expatriates leave after a year in order to preserve their marriages. Take these caveats to heart before succumbing to the temptations of Alpine skiing and clean, fresh-water swimming. And read this book before deciding whether to accept the job offer.

Jobs A Good 'Un!

Ideal for anyone who is planning an extended, low profile trip to Switzerland.

An honest, unsparing, accurate assessment of the Swiss

This work touches a sensitive nerve for Swiss readers like myself, because it captures the natives' xenophobia, chauvinism, insularity, fear of assimilation by their German neighbors to the north, and general feelings of inferiority and prejudice. The Swiss are not known for great works of art or music or for educational accomplishments outside the fields of medicine and biochemistry/pharmacology or for feminism or even sensitivity to women, and so a book by an American author that pokes fun at these deficiencies serves only to aggravate its subjects' phobias. This is reflected in the negative, often imperfectly literate comments below, which should therefore be not only discounted but also taken as testimonies to this volume's trenchant effectiveness.

A jewel of a memoir that captures Swiss beauty and peace

A gem of a memoir that captures the beauty and peacefulness of Switzerland as well as the glacial stolidity of many of its inhabitants. Discusses everything Swiss from age and sex discrimination to xenophobia. Combines a travel guide to the cantons of Zurich, the Bernese Alps, Central Switzerland, Wallis or Valais, and Graubunden or Grisons - with emphasis on skiing, hiking, and fine dining - with an analysis of questionable Swiss banking and investment practices, some of which could be construed as illegal in the U.S. Provides a primer for those seeking actually or vicariously to adapt to Swiss society and culture. Written in a spirit of satire with wit, humor, and a tincture of scholarship by a highly educated American, whose factual impressions of a foreign way of life are far more entertaining than many recently introduced works of fiction.