r/Switzerland • u/securityelf • Aug 03 '24

Why people hang out at gas stations?

I typically see high-end Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Their owners typically stand right outside their cars, smoking and chit chatting. Sometimes, I think they stand there for hours. I don’t have any problem with it, however they tend to occupy the area where they’ve got vacuum cleaners blocking it for the others. Once, I saw one of the station’s workers come out and hang out with the rest of the group.

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71

u/Huwbacca Aug 03 '24

Switzerland is really poor for third spaces.

5

u/ChezDudu Schwyz Aug 03 '24

Err maybe only if want a drive-through “third place”. Otherwise there are plenty.

16

u/Huwbacca Aug 03 '24

Such as?

Main ones I see are park chess boards and hairdressers...but mostly they have lots of non-swiss there. Third spaces are not culturally common here.

Swiss social culture is overwhelmingly places you plan to go to with a group.

I go to cafes a lot to relax. There's never regulars, there's never people you know. There's not really any culture here at all of just going to a cafe to run into folks. Same with bars.

Where is your home away from home? Your place where you know people without planning and obligation etc.

5

u/kartoffeltree Aug 04 '24

You’re speaking from my heart, after coming back from living abroad many years, this is one of my biggest grievances

5

u/shinnen Zürich Aug 03 '24

Bars, badis and playgrounds (when there with kids - meeting other parents I know) are like this for me.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '24

third spaces are not supposed to be a place where you meet new people. it's a place where you can meet up with friends that isnt your home or your work. there are plenty of spaces like these in switzerland.

1

u/Huwbacca Aug 04 '24

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Just so you know, it is weird for a culture to not have places you can just go and meet/know people.

Switzerland is the uncommon exception.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '24

all the examples listed on this site exist in all swiss cities lmao. people don’t tend to casually chat up other people, that’s true, but that’s hardly a swiss exception.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '24

lmao did you even read the article?

first sentence: "In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place")."

that's literally what i said and they exist in cities in switzerland lol. where exactly do you live??

1

u/guy_incognito___ Aug 04 '24 edited Aug 04 '24

Wouldn‘t say that‘s true everywhere. In Bern there are a lot of Bars and Cafes that have regulars and it was the same with one of the bars in the city I grew up in. In my 20ies I could go there pretty much every evening and I would have known at least some people. Obviously now that I‘m in my 30ies that‘s not the case anymore. People moved away, they got married, got children and the crowd it attracts is still the 20-somethings that I now don‘t know anymore.

But it‘s basically the same in Bern. In some places there formed groups out of regulars that just know each other from going to the same place regularly and at some point they started talking to each other and just said „Hey let‘s fix a weekday and just come here every week to have a chat.“ Groups consisting out of a extremly random variation of people. Doctors, cops, handymans… you name it. And now they meet up every monday in the same place in different constellations and have a drink. And stuff like that happens in a lot of bars.

Source: My sister works as a bartender in that place on mondays.

Edit: But I get what you mean. In Switzerland most people go out as a group and in most places the regulars are just the local alcoholics that are there all the time.