Going to a Swiss International School, Part 2

 

[“Going to a Swiss International School, Part 2,” the continuation of my memoir of being an international schoolboy in Switzerland in 1963-1965, picks up where I left of in Part 1: describing some of my schoolmates.  I’ve also been providing a definition of what an international school is, and some of what will come up shortly in Part 2 won’t make much sense if you haven’t read Part 1.  If you haven’t started at the beginning, I recommend going back to 29 April and catching up with the first installment of the memoir before moving on.

[I’ll be following through with this series at three-day intervals between each installment.  There will be six parts to “Going to a Swiss International School” and Part 3 will be posted on 5 May.]

Some of my schoolmates were from prominent political families from around the world, including heads of state (not always democratic).  I had a classmate from the People’s Republic of China at Ecolint, the daughter of a high official (I don’t recall his post) who was allowed to study abroad as long as her parents remained in China.  She was closely watched—she had minders nearby at all times—so she was pretty much isolated, even on campus.  I never got to know her at all.

Another schoolmate with a then-famous family name was the son of Sékou Touré (1922-84), perpetual president (read: dictator) of Guinea from independence in 1958 until his death.  His name, as I recall, was Ibrahima Touré, but we weren’t friends—Guinea was a former French colony so Touré took classes on the côté français and he wasn’t a boarder, either—so I don’t know what became of him.

Then there was Ali al-Sabah, a nephew of the Emir of Kuwait.  He may or may not have been the same Ali al-Sabah who was oil minister in the '80s and '90s—a lot of Arabs were named Ali and the Emir of Kuwait had a lot of nephews because he had lots of brothers who had lots of wives!—but this Ali al-Sabah fell a little in love . . . with my mother!  It was kinda sweet and cute, like a young teenager with a crush—except he was around 18 at the time and could probably buy and sell my whole family.  Believe it or not, he and I were friends in those days.

These were only some of the kids with prominent names—there were others who stood out for other reasons, such as unusual national combinations: Japanese-Austrian; Japanese-Swedish.  The Japanese- Austrian students were a pair of American sisters at Ecolint and the older one was a senior like me. 

She was also the prettiest girl in the school; in fact, she was the most beautiful teenage girl I’ve ever met—and I had a terrible crush on her that lasted for years after we left school.  As if that weren’t enough, she was probably one of the two or three smartest students in my class.  All I know of what happened to her after we graduated is that she went to Pembroke College in Providence, Rhode Island, then the women’s college of Brown University.

The Japanese-Swedish boy was an American as well, but his family had also spent some years in Mexico when he was younger and I was assured by fellow students who knew him, as well as one or two faculty members, that he spoke beautiful Spanish, as well as English and some Swedish.  (I don’t remember if he also spoke Japanese at all.)  He was also a terrifically nice guy.

There were also other language distinctions among my schoolmates.  One of my friends at Ecolint, another American, had been living in Paris—I no longer remember why, but he wasn’t a Foreign Service brat like me—for so many years that he was completely bilingual.  He used to regale us with his early attempts to speak French when he was still a little boy in a French school.  (I recounted one of his stories in “Franglais” [referenced in Part 1].)

Another delight of this friend was teaching my roommate, Mark, and me the more colorful French colloquialisms—um, dirty words—because he not only spoke French like a Frenchman, but like a French teenaged boy!  I still remember a lot of what he taught us, sitting in our dorm room on my roomie’s bed, as we howled with laughter.  Because he didn’t just tell us the naughty words, but ad-libbed a truly hilarious illustrated lecture on the subject that he called les leçons des quéquette-couilles—the cock-and-balls lessons.  He had no shame whatsoever!

The flipside of this classmate was a French kid who spoke English like a native-born American.  The thing was, he also dressed like an American teen.  When I first met him, I was sure he was one of us—or at least half American.  He wasn’t, though—100% français; he took his classes on the French side.  He just hung around with us a lot.  I forget now how he came to learn to speak—and dress—like an American, or what brought him to Ecolint.

Another of my American classmates at Ecolint could pick up languages really fast—far faster than I ever could.  He spent a few months in Sweden before school started and arrived in Geneva speaking passable Swedish!

I had learned German fast my first summer after coming to live in Koblenz—well enough to get placed in the third-year class at CDL, even though I’d never had a German class before—but I had a tutor every day for an hour and then I went out on the streets of the city.  (I relate this experience in “An American Teen,” referenced in Part 1.)

On the other hand, my Indian classmate. whose name, however incongruously, was David, had lived abroad so much of his life that he didn't speak Hindi or any Indian language, just English and French.  (David was studying Russian on his own—like me at the time—and had a Russian pen-pal, a university student whom he, Mark, and I managed to meet in Kiev on that trip to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR].)

Another schoolmate was native-born Japanese, but he, too, had gone to school abroad so much (including several years at Ecolint) that when he tried to go to school back home, his Japanese wasn't good enough for him to learn in the language and he came back to Geneva.  

He was also an excellent skier—a real speed-demon on the slopes.  Something of a daredevil as well.  On one of the school-sponsored weekend ski trips, I tried to keep up with him and quickly gave it up as a lost cause!

I suppose I should explain why I haven't named some of my schoolmates in these accounts.  It’s simply because I don’t remember their names, I’m afraid.  It’s been too long.  I can see their faces and I remember them, but I don’t remember all their names. 

I don’t have anything to serve as an aide-mémoire like a yearbook for these classes, with photos and names.  European schools don't do any of those year-end traditions that are common here: no proms, no year-books, no big graduation ceremonies. 

Some have what the Brits call a “leaving ceremony," but there are no caps-and-gowns or handing out fancy diplomas with speeches and valedictorians and awards.  I have a simple little certificate from Ecolint, which did have a small convocation for the benefit of the American students—and their parents.  

(Incidentally, in the British tradition, I’m not an alumnus of Ecolint—I’m an “old boy.”  In French, I’m an “ancien élève”—an ‘ancient student.’  I don’t know if alumnae are dubbed “old girls”; somehow it sounds demeaning.)

Let me back-track a bit with respect to my schoolmates.  In addition to his tales and illustrated “cock-and-balls” lessons, my American-from-Paris classmate had another peculiarity.  He printed everything!  I’m sure he knew cursive, but for whatever reason, he always block-printed all his class notes and letters and everything else.  He claimed he could write that way as fast or faster than cursive.  I couldn’t swear the contrary.

I tell this little anecdote in order to talk about writing utensils.  That’s right: pens and pencils.  Everyone probably knows that Montblanc pens are German and very expensive—and top-flight writing instruments.  Not many students, even at Ecolint, had one of those.  

Many people know that the throw-away ballpoint pens—stylo in French, Kugelschreiber in German—from Bic are French.  These we used all the time; they were ubiquitous at both CDL and Ecolint.  There was a smattering of other writing instruments at the schools, but one was not only common, but the source of a little amusement for me.

Back in the States, we had pencils from Ticonderoga and Eberhard Faber.  Personally, I was always partial to Scripto mechanical pencils.  In Switzerland, however, almost everyone used pencils by Caran d’Ache.  That’s a Swiss company that makes writing instruments and also art materials.

The gag is that there are no such words in French as Caran d’Ache.  The name doesn’t mean anything.  (It’s a reference to a 19th-century French satiric political cartoonist who took it as a nom de plume.)  In Russian, however, karandash (карандаш) means ‘pencil.’  (The French for pencil is crayon.)  

Now, a lot of people, including some of my schoolmates and teachers—who all used some kind of Caran d’Ache product—may have known this—but I spotted it myself (as I said earlier, I had been studying Russian on my own for a while) and I never heard anyone else say anything.  I treated it as my little private joke; it still makes me smile.

I guess it’s fair to say that among international schools, there are good ones and bad ones.  In the U.S., schools are accredited by some presumably independent organization, sometimes several.  The Swiss international schools weren’t until after I was a student there.

CDL received its first accreditation as a bilingual school from the European Council of International Schools (ECIS) and from the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools in 1978, 14 years after I left.  It was accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in 1998.  (Francis Clivaz and the heads of several other European schools founded the ECIS in 1965 at CDL.  Their schools were therefore being evaluated by an organization of their own creation.)

As I’ve said, I spent my junior year at CDL; that was September 1963 to June 1964.  My brother, Douglas, and I had moved to Koblenz, Germany, to join our parents in the summer of 1963, after the previous school year ended in the States; I turned 17 in December.  Doug, who would turn 15 in January of ’64, was due to start 9th grade (after having completed 8th at a Pennsylvania boarding school), but he was bumped up to 10th at CDL.

CDL was a small school then, only in its third or fourth year of operation.  It only had high school and middle school students then, but offered both French and English instruction for boys and girls.  There were also both boarding students like Doug and me and day students who either commuted from Geneva—Versoix had a train station and the ride from Geneva was only 15 minutes, plus a 15-minute (⅘-mile) walk from town—or came from the surrounding countryside (including the nearby Canton of Vaud). 

Boarding students like Doug, my roomies, and I were called internes, which we just anglicized to ‘interns,’ and day students were externes, or ‘externs.’

The female students lived in a separate building not far from the main campus (we passed by it on the walk into town), but the boys’ dorm was the upper floors of the administration building, which also housed the dining hall and kitchen as well as the sports changing room in the basement and the infirmary on the third floor.  

The teenagers occupied rooms, mostly doubles, on the second floor of the building, with the seniors having a sort of enclave at the end of the floor, and the younger boys were roomed on the third floor, the former attic of what had obviously originally been a large home.

It all looked pretty good—we even had housekeeping service in the dorm rooms while we were at morning classes—and I’m sure my parents had thought so when they selected CDL for our new school.  The faculty and staff even seemed somewhat excited to have Doug and me in the new classes; it seemed that on paper, we were exceptional applicants. 

Doug had skipped a grade and, as I said before, I got placed in third-year German without ever having taken a German class in school before.  When I took the practice SAT’s later that year, Clivaz made a general announcement of my results as if they were spectacular.  I don’t actually remember what I scored, but it wasn’t 1600.  I suppose all this should have been a clue that all was not what it seemed.

The first odd (to Doug and me, and the other American kids) signs were small ones—oddities, you might say.  There was a public address system from the admin offices on the first floor to the dorm on the second and third.  Clivaz or someone on his staff like Herr Peter would make frequent announcements (in French and English, of course), always preceded by a crackling or humming sound when the PA was turned on.

The announcements weren’t themselves disturbing—some general meeting, information of some upcoming event, a student called to the office for administrative (and sometimes disciplinary) purposes—but the recurring disembodied voice began to be creepy.  (This is often when we’d break into our little ditty about “Cee-ell-eye / Vee-ay-zee.”) 

Soon, we conceived the half-joking notion that the PA was a two-way system and that Clivaz or Peter or maybe even Al were listening in on us in the dorm.  It wasn’t true, of course—not that anyone was ever able to prove, anyway.  The joke never stopped us from saying whatever we felt like. 

As I said earlier, my room, which was on a corner of the floor, was a four-person room, the largest in the dorm.  (Across from us was the bathroom, though the showers were the ones in the basement changing room.)  It became intern-central as everyone—except most of the seniors who mostly stayed in their enclave at the other end of the hall—gathered there after dinner or on free weekends to chatter, shoot the shit, complain, or gossip. 

My roomies were Stan Thom (the “Hawaiian Prince”), Gridley Strong (until his ignominious—and surreptitious—exile to Siberia), and John Dubin.  (John and Stan were the two with whom I went to Interlaken for that three-day break the following May; see Part 1.)

Other “oddities” included some things about dining room procedures.  We ate at round tables for six or eight set with table cloths and restaurant-style stainless flatware.  We had waiters as well—for some reason, several of them Greek. 

(We sat at the same seats all the time, but whether that was because the places were assigned or it was established by habit, I no longer recall.  In any case, we had the same waiter at every meal, so we sort of got to know him.  Ours was one of the Greek young men, probably late teens or early twenties, whose name I no longer remember; it was something like Demetrios or some other familiar Greek name, and he taught us some Greek, especially the words for the food we were eating.  All remember now is the Greek word for water is nero.)

All interns, who ate all three meals (plus an after-class snack—and wait till you hear about this) in the dining hall—externs only had lunch—had our own linen napkin!  We had to fold it just so and keep it in a special envelope that we stashed in a wall of little cubby holes.  We kept the same napkin for a week—no matter how stained or dirty it got from use—and we’d collect the envelop as we filed into the dining room before we went to our tables.

The napkins went on our laps, of course; they were never left on the table.  If anyone did that, one of the school staff would stop by the table and admonish her or him and watch until the offending student had fixed the error.

Okay, that’s not so creepy—but other practices were a little.  We were not supposed to use our knives and forks in the conventional American way.  Americans commonly pick up the knife in the right hand and the fork in the left, hold the fork with the tines pointing down at the plate, cut the food with the knife in the right hand, put the knife down, and switch the fork from the left hand to the right, tines now facing up, and bring the food to the mouth.  If more cutting is necessary, the diner switches the fork again to the left hand, picks up the knife in the right, and repeats the routine.

That’s how we’re trained; we don’t even think about it.  (I even had classes in elementary school in proper table—and table-setting—etiquette!)  But that was a no-no at CDL.  We had to follow the European custom, which is to keep the knife in the right hand and the fork in the left, cut the food and bring it to the mouth with the left hand holding the fork with the tines pointing down.  No switching hands with the fork or putting the knife down between bites and no turning the fork over so the tines point up.  If one of the American students did this—out of habit or to flout the CDL protocol, the ever-watchful staffer would appear at the offender’s table and scold him or her.  I kid you not!

Arguably the creepiest practice had to do with the placement of the idle left hand (or right hand for lefties) while we were eating.  Again, this was a contest between the American custom and the European—and we had to follow the latter. 

In America, we’re taught (here’s that grade-school class in table manners again) that when we’re eating with only one hand—not cutting food with a knife and fork together—we lay our idle hand in our laps.  Europeans habitually rest the unused hand on the table, the wrist perched on the edge.  That was how we were supposed to do it at CDL—or suffer the admonition of that vigilant staff member.  (You might wonder how they themselves ate as they kept such watch on all our behavior around the room!)

It’s probably needless to say that this last bit of weirdness got us kids wondering.  What did the staff all think we were doing with our hands out of sight?  Of course, we all supposed they suspected us of playing with ourselves under the table.  (Everyone knows that Americans are all sex-crazed, especially the teens, right?)  I mean, this was an insane joke, wasn’t it?

There were other CDL customs that seemed designed mostly to put us out and exert authority over even small matters of behavior.  For example, we weren’t supposed to wear shoes in either the admin/dorm building or the classroom building.  We had to change into slippers before entering the building proper. 

In the residence building, we had to enter through the stairway and door to the basement changing room where there was another set of cubby holes that stored our slippers when we went out and our shoes when we came in.  (For the school building, we brought our slippers with us in the morning and back again at lunch, then back to the school building for afternoon classes.  Externs had to bring slippers with them or leave a pair at CDL.)

Wearing slippers outside was, of course, a no-no; it was as bad as wearing regular shoes indoors.  In any case, we weren’t allowed to enter the residence/admin building through the front door—even if we brought a pair of slippers with us; we had to go down into the basement and come up that way anyway. 

This was no joke, however petty it seems in the telling.  (I didn’t know the movie The Caine Mutiny at that time, but looking back, Clivaz was acting like a Captain Queeg.)  In the end, this proscription tripped me up.

I don’t know if this was an established procedure at CDL—if anything can be called “established” in a barely four-year-old institution—but I was appointed a Prefect, either the only junior to be named or one of only a couple; the rest were all seniors.  The panel of Prefects were a sort of combination hall monitor-appointed student government,  (CDL had no elected student government—no class presidents or student-body president, and so on.  It’s not a practice in European schools.) 

Prefects had a few privileges—we could go into town on Friday evenings and Saturdays (when there wasn’t a school-organized trip somewhere)—and we held meetings to talk about school matters—or at least we were supposed to.  I saw it as a chance to represent my schoolmates, even if they hadn’t elected me, and try to sort some things out with the administration.  I thought I could at least open up a line of communication.

I soon saw that no one else viewed the panel that way at all and it was really an excuse to get some personal freedoms the rest of the school didn’t have.  After a few months of accomplishing nothing, I resigned.  Clivaz had a conniption.  No one ever turned down a sinecure like that.  It was like turning down a knighthood or something—one just didn’t do it. 

It had begun to be obvious, at least to me, that the school, meaning Clivaz, had some kind of animosity toward Americans.  He never said anything, but he seemed to resent us for a streak of independence—not rebelliousness or resistance—that he took as a personal challenge. 

To me, and many others among the interns, Clivaz behaved like an autocrat, and he particularly directed his stringency at us Americans.  I felt he was trying to break us like a horse trainer breaks a bronco.  (I guess that made me a sort of Lieutenant Maryk, the Caine’s Exec.)

It didn’t escape my notice that Gridley Strong, one of my roommates and the only CDL student so far that year who’d been sent to Siberia for being “a bad influence,” was a fellow American.  (He turned out to have been the only one.  I might have been the second—and only other—CDL students sent into exile—except that I wouldn’t have gone.)

There were also issues with the teachers at CDL—at least on the English side.  One was our math teacher, whose name I no longer recall.  Because of his appearance—he was short and dumpy with a bald head except for a fringe of wispy gray hair around his temples and a little tuft right on top—so we called him “Bozo.”  (The French kids, whom he obviously didn’t teach, called him “Tintin,” a popular Belgian comic-book figure whom the teacher also resembled except that the cartoon’s young and blond.)

“Bozo” wasn’t so much a bad teacher as an ineffectual one.  He was a non-entity in the classroom.  I retain no impression of him or his class except for his appearance.

Another lackluster performer was our physics teacher.  He was a Scot, so his teaching style was what I gather was that of the British public (that it, private preparatory) school.  He spoke with a thick burr and lectured with his back to the students as he wrote on the board through the whole class.  I got virtually nothing from my high school physics class and remember nothing (though I recall a smattering of facts from biology and chemistry, the science courses I took in my freshman and sophomore years back in the States). 

I forget this teacher’s name, too, but he was unpopular with the students and the other teachers as well.  One of his colleagues, when I got myself in some trouble, once said of him: “That man would rather eat dog shit than stand up to Clivaz.”

The most problematical teacher was our English instructor.  She was American, as was the usual practice for international-school English teachers for American students.  I have no idea what her background or credentials were, but it’s hard to believe that she had much of a record.  She was relatively young—several years shy, I’d say, of middle age.  

We began to suspect she was on drugs—whether prescribed or illicit, we couldn’t guess—because she seemed to fall asleep in class.  She give us some kind of in-class assignment, put her head down on her desk, and appear to doze off. 

Her class wasn’t entirely incoherent, but it was haphazardly organized, as if she were making up the lesson plan on the spot.  (Hence, I’d guess, the in-class assignments.)  This happened often, more often as the year progressed.  Her behavior was also sometimes bizarre.  

One day, for instance, this teacher called me to the front of the class to do some exercise at the blackboard.  This wasn’t unusual or strange, but what happened next was.  After I finished the task and turned around to face the class, the teacher asked me, “Do you dye your hair?”  (I may not remember people’s names, but I remember that line.  Those were her exact words.)

Now, in my younger days, I had sort of brick-red hair—not a carrot-top or a true brunette, I was a redhead with hair that was a unique shade.  (I used to say that its color was the only thing I liked about my hair.  It was very wavy, thin, and fly-away.  But its natural color was mine alone.) 

I was stunned at first.  No one had ever thought that—and certainly no teacher had ever asked me such a question in front of a class.  I recall that my classmates were, as the Brits might say, gobsmacked. 

Now, I’m not adept at witty ripostes.  I’m an inveterate “What I shoulda said was . . .” guy.  I regained my senses in a few seconds, though, and you know what I replied?  I said, in an insinuating tone, “Only my hairdresser knows for sure”! 

If you’re old enough (like me), you’ll recognize that as a paraphrase of the tagline of the 1956 TV commercial for Miss Clairol hair dye.  Now and then, though rarely, I’m clever.  The class cracked up.

Partway through the year, Clivaz instituted a policy allowing all juniors and seniors to go into Versoix on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons and evenings (if the school wasn’t organizing a group outing somewhere).  

Versoix had a little movie house and there were a couple of small bars and restaurants or bistros where we could sit and drink—soft or hard; remember, the Continent didn’t have a minimum drinking age for alcohol. 

It wasn’t exciting, but it was a break—and we were on our own, away from teachers, school staff, and the little ones.  (My brother wasn’t a “little one,” but he was only a sophomore, so he didn’t have the freedom to go into Versoix I did, so I was away from him for a while, too.)

One such Friday evening was 22 November, so we walked into town to hang out.  It was probably about 6 or 6:30 and we headed for a small local restaurant for a beer or soda or whatever.  The TV was on and the sound must have been off because we didn’t know what anyone was saying, but Vice President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) was on the screen. 

In case you don’t recognize the date, this was the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917-63), which must have just happened.  (JFK was shot in Dallas at 12:30 p.m., which was 6:30 in Geneva.  The president died about an hour later, but the news might have taken a little time to reach Europeans.) 

I saw LBJ and quipped, “Wouldn’t it be weird if something happened to Kennedy and Johnson became president and then he was impeached?”  (I was thinking of the parallels that were frequently pointed out between Kennedy’s times and Lincoln’s a century before.)  Everyone just shrugged.

An hour or two later, we walked back to school and were met at the door by Herr Peter.  He sent all the non-American boys up to the dorm and held the rest of us to meet with the headmaster in his office.  I just gasped and said, “My God!  The president’s been killed!”

Everyone just looked at me.  As if to confirm my thought, Peter led us inside by the front door—without making us change our shoes.

Peter brought us inside and into Clivaz’s office where the headmaster told us what had happened in Dallas.  Kennedy had probably just been declared dead by that time. 

That’s the closest I’ve ever came to a premonition.

I guess it’s obvious that we were devastated by the news.  I imagine that most of my American schoolmates were also shaken.  The new, young president had caught the imaginations of America’s youth, and maybe me a little more strongly. 

I was very caught up by Kennedy’s campaign and election in 1960.  My parents were also engaged, particularly my dad—who was ultimately moved to give up his private-sector job and join the Foreign Service after listening to the president’s “Ask not” entreaty in his inaugural address.  (The speech was on 20 January 1961 and Dad applied on 2 May.)  That’s how we ended up living in Germany in 1963.

I was in 8th grade at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington in 1960 and two of my schoolmates were the daughters of Vice President Richard Nixon (1913-94), Kennedy’s Republican opponent.  Julie was a year behind me and Tricia, a year ahead.  I didn’t really know them—just to recognize them in the hallways—but I was not a fan of Tricky Dick even at going-on-14.  Losing a president I somehow thought of as my own so tragically after a scant three years impacted me strongly.

A few of the other students took this opportunity to say unpleasant things about JFK and the U.S.—mostly a couple of the Turks and the one Persian teen (that’s what he liked to be called) who liked to portray themselves as tough guys.  But most of my schoolmates shared condolences and were very solicitous.  JFK was immensely popular abroad, especially in Europe.  Both the French and the Germans adored him.

Six days after President Kennedy’s death, Thursday, 28 November, was Thanksgiving Day.  Possibly as a balm for us Americans’ wounded souls, Clivaz arranged for dinner at a Geneva restaurant with turkey and all the traditional trimmings—or as close as a Swiss chef could come.  (I did wonder where they got a turkey, which isn’t a common European poultry.) 

I don’t know if the Swiss staff of CDL didn’t know the difference, but the few Canadians among the students were included in the dinner even though Canadian Thanksgiving had been the previous Monday, 14 October. 

(It must have been around this time that I first read the column in the Paris Herald Tribune by Art Buchwald [1925-2007] explaining Thanksgiving to the French.  I wrote about this annual occurrence in “Franglais”—because the comic essay is written in that macaronic tongue [consisting of a mix of words of two or more languages].)

We had little occasion to dress up at CDL—there were no dances or parties and dress for the dining room was the same as for class—so we were all puttin’ on the Ritz for dinner out in Geneva.  We were also acting like typical teenagers, goofing around and being hyperactive.  Remember that all four of us in the room were Americans, so we were all dressing to go out at the same time in the same space. 

I was putting on a green suit and I used a belt that didn’t have the common frame-and-prong buckle, but a frame with a small hook clasp fixed to it.  While we were fooling around, I snapped one of my roomies with the belt and he grabbed it and pulled it out of my hand.  The small hook caught on the underside of my right thumb and tore a deep, jagged gash in it from below the first joint to the tip. 

Someone on the staff rushed me off to a doctor nearby and he stapled the tear together and bandaged my thumb—and pronounced me good to go . . . to the restaurant!  I joined my American (and Canadian) schoolmates and celebrated the Great American Day of Overeating, as my father usually called it.  

I don’t remember experiencing any pain—maybe the doc doped me up—but I do have the remains of an ugly scar on my right thumb to this day, almost 58 years later.

Not everything at CDL was unpleasant or painful.  Every afternoon on a school day, the interns all gathered after classes behind the dorm/admin building, where the dining hall and kitchen were located, and the kitchen staff passed out a small French roll and a hunk of semi-sweet chocolate. 

As everyone probably knows, Switzerland’s main products are money, watches, cuckoo clocks, and chocolate, and Veroix was home to two chocolatiers: Cartier Chocolate Factory (founded and established in Versoix in 1858) and the Favarger Chocolate Factory (founded in 1826 and established in Versoix in 1875). 

CDL got quantities of the candy from one or the other of the factories wholesale—I think they sold the school broken chunks that couldn’t be retailed—and this was our after-school snack.  “Bread and chocolate” (pain au chocolat) is a traditional kid’s snack in the French-speaking world. 

As a newly arrived American expat, it seemed a strange combination at first, but it turned out to be delicious.  I guess the French would know, after all.  We dug a hole in the roll with a finger and shoved the hunk of chocolate into it . . . and munched away with delight. 

[I’ll be posting “Going to a Swiss International School, Part 3” on 5 May (and the subsequent three installments at three-day intervals after that through 14 May).  Each section picks up where the previous one ended (the account of my years at CDL and Ecolint wasn’t written in chapters—it’s one continuous narrative); I hope you’ll return for each one as it’s published.  (Comments are heartily welcomed, by the way.)]