The thing I hate most about Switzerland

Now you might think this is obvious. The impression that the place is rather boring. What about the obsessive rules. Maybe it is the lack of decent pubs or the fact that nothing is open on Sundays. Or perhaps Orson Welles best summed it up in the Third man when he said "in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock".

But no. The place isn't boring (ok a little quiet perhaps). Yes, there are lots of rules, but lots of people don't follow them. It is actually possible to find a nice pint and maybe one day a week without obsessive shopping isn't such a bad thing. And what is wrong with the cuckoo clock?

No, the thing I hate most are…the traffic lights. I just can't deal with them. Really. Red lights but the man stays red. And everyone just waits. And waits. And waits some more. The cars wait. The motorcycles wait. The pedestrians wait. Even the cyclists wait for heaven’s sake. We all just stand or sit waiting for something, anything, to happen. And the worst thing is that I wait as well. No more London style rushing across dual carriageways-like-roads without a care in the world. No sir. I stand. And I wait for that magic little green man to appear. The adopted Londoner within me shouts and screams to break free, but its no use. He’s been beaten. By the bloody cuckoo clock.