You can’t quite remember when it started. One day you ring someone five minutes late and you feel bad – not because of the delay itself, but because you hadn’t let them know beforehand. Another day, you’re on holiday in Spain and you go into a shop that says it opens at 10; it’s past 10 and they’re still opening up, and it makes you feel uncomfortable in a way you simply didn’t before. That didn’t exist in you a few years ago.
Then there’s the matter of prices. You’ve been doing your sums in francs for so long that when you see something in Spain that seems cheap, the first thing you do is convert it in your head to see if it’s ‘really’ cheap. Or the other way round: at the supermarket in your village, you see the total on your trolley and think that in Switzerland that would easily have been 80 francs, and you’re pleased, even though deep down you’re not quite sure why. And when you sit down at an outdoor café and the coffee costs 1.50, you still can’t quite believe it.
There are smaller things. You no longer make a noise after 10 pm without thinking twice about it. On the train, you keep quiet even if the carriage is full and you recognise someone. When there’s a queue, you get to the back and wait. And when you go back to Spain to visit and people ask, ‘So when are you coming back?’, it takes you a second to reply, because you’re no longer entirely sure whether ‘come back’ is the right verb to use.
Nobody taught you these things. Switzerland slipped them to you, bit by bit, over time, and you accepted them without realising it. Let everyone draw their own conclusions.