{"id":7185,"date":"2020-01-14T14:00:35","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.zhaw.ch\/languagematters\/?p=7185"},"modified":"2024-09-13T11:10:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T09:10:24","slug":"how-the-kindness-of-scots-is-connected-to-the-scottish-weather-a-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.zhaw.ch\/languagematters\/2020\/01\/14\/how-the-kindness-of-scots-is-connected-to-the-scottish-weather-a-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"How the kindness of Scots is connected to the Scottish weather \u2013 a theory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The weather in Scotland is funny (and by funny I don\u2019t mean \u201cfunny haha\u201d, I mean \u201cfunny peculiar\u201d). The climate on the British Isles, especially this far north, is not really a reason to laugh. Don\u2019t count your chickens before they\u2019re hatched if the sun is out after six days of overcast weather, because within the next 30 minutes it will start to rain again, I promise you. But this time it won\u2019t be a soft drizzle as it was before. No, water will fall from the sky and it won\u2019t follow the laws of gravity, because a strong wind will pick up, so that it will rain straight into your face. Na\u00efve as I was, I brought an umbrella to Scotland \u2013 I had to learn the hard way that they are useless.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Karin Locher, BA in Applied Languages<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scottish people, of course, are immune to\nthis type of weather \u2013 \u201cdreich\u201d as they call it, which means something like miserable\nweather (I\u2019m sure that is an understatement). Even on the coldest winter days,\nwhen I would to go outside so wrapped up you could only see my eyes peeking out\nunder layers of scarves, you would see Scots walking through Princes Street\nGardens only wearing a t-shirt (and trousers). And evidently they were not\ncold! They were enjoying themselves as if it was a lovely sunny spring day\n(which, for the record, it wasn\u2019t).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During the four months I spent in Edinburgh\nbecause of my exchange semester in 2018, I was overwhelmed by the kindness of\nrandom Scottish strangers. I, who was used to the constant grumpiness of people\nin the streets of Zurich, was more than confused when a woman offered out of\nthe blue to take a picture of us when she saw we were struggling to take a\nselfie, or when the cashier asked me how I was and was genuinely interested in\nmy state of mind. People on the street were smiling, even though it was raining\ncats and dogs. This confused me as well, because rain would be a welcome topic\nfor Swiss people to complain about, or rather a reason to complain more than\nthey already do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To my mind, the explanation for Swiss\npeople being very reserved and not exactly cheerful (I\u2019m obviously\ngeneralising) was the weather. It\u2019s quite challenging, I thought, to be in a\ngood mood if the sky is grey, it\u2019s raining and you spend two weeks without\nseeing the sun. Thankfully, my stay in Scotland proved me wrong. People there\nare happy DESPITE the weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So my theory purports that Scotland\u2019s weather and the mood of its people are in in reverse proportion to each other (but I must confess this theory doesn\u2019t work out very well, because it doesn\u2019t mean that Scots are annoyed when the sun is shining. No, Scottish people are almost ALWAYS happy). To cut a long story short, what I\u2019m trying to say is that I admire the Scottish attitude very much indeed. It\u2019s a characteristic that I\u2019m trying to carry over and make popular in Switzerland. Obviously, the weather influences our mood and we are automatically happier when the sun is shining, but at the same time, the weather isn\u2019t something we can influence; we just have to accept it as it is. So I am pleading that we should always try to make the best out of it, based on the model of the Scots. Just because it\u2019s raining, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a bad day. I\u2019ll give you an inside tip: call rain \u201cliquid sunshine\u201d, as the Scots do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read more blog posts about the semester abroad<\/h2>\n\n\n\n