Inside Outlandish

by Susan Tuttle, Anna

Playful and light-hearted on the surface, these 25 essays focus on the stages of feeling at home in Switzerland. Susan Tuttle's writing is spontaneous, from the heart and has a deeper, universal message that anyone who has ever had to adapt to a new language or community will enjoy. She tells how she learned some important Du's and Don'ts, how she copes with differing attitudes about being a mother, a friend, a neighbor or a shopper. She writes as if she were writing to a friend, sometimes explaining the Swiss to the Americans, sometimes the Americans to the Swiss. She gets to know several Santas, makes friends (and enemies) with the help of a dog or a washing machine. She finds a Heidi on a Harley and tries to justify the pleasure of findi ng free furniture for the price of a bashed fender. She gets stuck and unstuck in the process of adapting and preserving her identity. Anna Regula Hartmann, well-known as ANNA, whose caricatures and drawings regularly appear in numerous Swiss and German publications, has illustrated Inside Outlandish.

106 pages, Hardcover

First published February 22, 1997

About the author

From my birth up until I turned 23 I thought I was just an American girl from New Jersey. But then things changed: in 1981 I moved to Switzerland and ever since then I've been trying to figure out where I fit. The stories in Inside Outlandish chronicle some of the amusing challenges I've experienced as an ex-pat in the land of Heidi.
In the meantime I've raised a family, had a variety of jobs (inlcuding gluing lables on schnapps bottles, writing advertising copy, helping the lost and confused at the airport, translating, teaching, catering) and have still to find the answer to my national-identity dilemma. But that hasn't stopped me from getting appointed to our community's Commission for Citizenship - a group of good Swiss folk who interview foreign nationals who would like nothing more than to become owners of a Swiss red passport. Maybe I can pick up some clues from the candidates as to what it all means to really be Swiss. Or maybe not.

In the meantime my answer is YES to: Do I ski? Do I eat cheese? Do we have flush toilets? and NO to: Do I yodel? Do I have a secret bank account? Do I live on an alp? Any other questions?

Reviews

[Susan Tuttle · Rating 5 out of 5]

You could read this book, really!