Although Germany and Switzerland don’t create the immediate impression of being two completely different cultures, don’t ever make the mistake to lump the two countries together. You would not only annoy every Swiss person in the world by that, no, you would also do Switzerland wrong (or Germany, depending on the point of view), and you wouldn’t want neither the one nor the other. There are many small but significant differences concerning almost all parts of life. Language, food, history, landscape, work, communication, daily life, politics, just to name a few of them. So every now and then when I stumble across them, I will try to write down some differences.

Regarding the one today, stumbling can almost be taken literally: once a month on a Saturday the used paper is being collected by the garbage disposal. So once a month, you will find meticulously piled and tied paper packs in front of the buildings. I am always in awe regarding the tidiness of these piles and I haven’t figured out how it can be done with such a precision. Always feeling slightly bad when I add mine, I used to put the paper outside when it was dark… By now, I developed a trick how to make my pile look a bit more neat, but with a trained eye you might still be able to tell which one is ours.