My nine years in a socialist country

I miss Switzerland….

I spent one of my four college years in Fribourg, Switzerland. It held a place in my heart after I returned to Canterbury, finished my undergrad degree and moved to London to begin my working career. I only lasted a year and a half in London. I got a call from my computer science professor in Fribourg, who had defected from academia to work for a shipping company that was expanding. I was being recruited. And I accepted.

The following eight years, plus the one overseas study year, hold many of my most magical memories, and I sometimes regret having left Switzerland for USA. I came here to join the dreamers in Silicon Valley. What I left behind was not immediately clear to me, though it gets clearer with every passing year, and with America’s irrational fear of Euro-socialism that has created such a brutal country for everyone but the wealthiest 5%.

Switzerland is not perfect. Social customs are a bit slow, people don’t make friends quickly and they certainly don’t make spontaneous plans to do interesting things off-script. The young people go out much less than their counterparts in American and other European countries. They couple-up at a young age and many are less ambitious than you might expect, happier in steady jobs that have nice vacation policies, than slogging it in ard-charging…