A game of telephone, Swiss-style

I think many expats will agree that well after they've become proficient in the language of their new home, using it on the phone gives them the willies. Or maybe nobody will agree with this and it's just me, but I have to tell you that even after six years in Switzerland the phone remains my nemesis. Some of it has to do with the language but a lot of it has to do with Swiss phone etiquette.

Nothing brings home to me how much I continue to rely on context, facial expression and body language in my German-language interactions so much as receiving an unexpected phone call in the middle of the day. I'm yanked out of my English world - if I'm at home with the Small Boy I babble constantly with him in English, and if I'm lucky enough to be home alone I am probably reading or writing in English or listening to NPR, or all of the above simultaneously - and thrown into Dialektland. If I'm lucky it's a telemarketer and I just flat out lie and say I don't speak German; if I'm unlucky it's actually somebody who needs to speak with me or, worse, R and I have to take a message.

And nothing brings home to me how much I'm a foreigner as my inability - and to an extent my unwillingness - to get the Swiss phone etiquette right. In Switzerland you answer the phone with your last name. Period. At work or at home, when the phone rings you pick it up (but not on the first ring, please) and say your last name. I cannot do this. I just can't. I have reached the compromise of "Hello this is First Name" but this is not really an acceptable compromise because the caller still has to confirm if I'm Frau Lastname. Strike one. The person calling you will say "Good morning Frau Lastname (assuming you were socially adept enough to provide your last name upon answering the phone, which I'm not)." Then right away the caller says their last name. To the uninitiated it sounds something like this: "GütenmorgenFrauLastnamReallylongunpronouncableSwisssoudningname." To which you are expected to reply "Good morning Herr Lastname." The thing is, inevitably I fail to understand the last name, so I am forced to omit it, which is considered terribly rude. Strike two. Then at some point I will probably ask them to speak Hochdeutsch because although my understanding of Dialekt is growing by leaps and bounds my comprehension seems to consider the telephone a no-go zone. Strike three. If it's for R I will have to take a message which means asking them to repeat their name which they've already given me at the beginning of the conversation but I failed to understand it or forgot it instantly. Strike four (do I get four strikes?) If it's for me I bungle my way through the conversation somehow.

Then there is the making of phone calls in which the above script is reversed. This isn't a problem if I'm calling somebody I know, the in-laws or friends who answer the phone in proper Swiss fasion, because I know who I'm calling after all. But if I'm calling a business. Well, they will answer the phone "Güten morgen Name of Business Last Name." When I call Dr L's office it goes something like "Güten morgen Praxis Dr L Frau S." Now Dr L's office is easy because it's always Frau S who answers the phone so I can follow my end of the script and say "Good morning Frau S here is Frau Me" But Dr. Fantabulous, my OB/GYN who will do our ultrasound? Any one of four different women might answer the phone on any given day - I actually called up his website to double check all their names so that my ear would be primed to catch the right one. If I'm calling someplace random, a language school or a new doctor or a car repairman it is simply hopeless. Hopeless. Because without fail they will pick up the phone and I will hear: "GütenmorgenGeschäftReallylongunpronouncableSwisssoundingname" and I will have no choice but to start my conversation with this person without having addressed them by name, which is terribly rude.

It's enough to make me avoid placing a phone call for days on end, which is how I've managed to wait until today - a whole week after our positive beta - to call Dr. Fantabulous for an ultrasound. And of course the Praxis is closed for the Easter holidays and I have to call back Tuesday.

As they say in German, selberschuld. (Roughly translatable as it's my own stupid fault.)