Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known

Life in Switzerland. The not-made-for-TV version. In 2006 American Chantal Panozzo moved to a spa town near Zurich ready for a glamorous life as an expatriate. She would eat chocolate. She would climb mountains. And she would order cheese in four languages. Instead she lived a life more in tune with reality than fantasy. Contrary to popular American belief Switzerland isnt just a setting in a storybook called Heidi. Its a real place where someone with a masters degree in communications cant make a phone call where you can be hired in one language and fired in another and where small talk doesnt exist-but phrases like Aufenthaltskategorien von Drittstaatsangehörigen do. Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish Id Known is a collection of both published (The Christian Science Monitor National Geographic Glimpse Chicken Soup for the Soul Books and Brain Child) and new essays in which Chantal discovers that no matter how hard she wills her geraniums to cascade properly she will never be a glamorous American expatriate-or Swiss.