I was playing American football with my Swiss baseball teammates and three or four Americans, a pick-up game at the big Zürich sportsplatz where we played baseball, and the Americans were gathering the huddles and calling plays that degenerated into chaos the moment the ball was snapped, lots of mayhem that was never allowed in soccer, so that everyone having a blast, except suddenly all the Swiss quit the game and started walking off the field. When asked what was up, they explained that it was six P.M. and the sportsplatz closed at six, every day, even in the summer when the sun was still halfway up the sky. We Americans were amazed at this, and suggested we continue to play anyway, as it was a stupid rule and there was no one there to close the park, or even notice it was being used. But this was inconceivable to the Swiss guys, they just shook their heads and kept on walking, until one particularly rowdy American named Richard started shouting,”What? What? What is this? What kind of Nazi shit is this?” I thought the Swiss guys might get angry at that, but they only gave him the same cold look that I was getting now from the guys in the cars zooming by, a look immensely distant, as if from a world no non-Swiss could ever understand.

As I trudged up the road I recalled a Swiss friend trying to explain that world to us, one night after dinner. Every year on the night before Christmas, she told us, Sami Claus came to the door of every home in Switzerland, accompanied by his sidekick the Bццgen, a tall creature draped in a big black bag and carrying another black bag in his hands. Sami Claus would then consult with the parents about their children’s behavior in the previous year, and the parents would produce an account book they had supposedly been keeping to record their kids’ behavior. If the children were reported as being good, then they would get a gift from Sami Claus; if they had been bad, the Bццgen would snatch them into his bag and take them off never to be seen again. The children were brought to the door to witness all this, and the youngest ones believed it was real. “And that,” our Swiss friend concluded, “is why I hate Switzerland forever.”