Even though my brain was already filled to bursting from cramming for exams and it hardly had room to take in the news from the papers, one story didn't escape my notice: Blocher and the ambivalence of his position as a member of the Swiss Federal Council. As a government minister he was forced to laud and praise the new Asylum Law without letting on just how against the grain this went with him. Apparently, his dissembling attempts to hide his personal opinion didn't succeed–otherwise the issue would hardly have penetrated my swotting frenzy.

One can't help wondering what it is about asylum seekers that Councillor Blocher fears, or where, come to that, his fear of anything "strange" or "other" stems from? Where does otherness begin? Isn't it just another of the innumerable, arbitrary definitions that our society chooses to use? I want to tell you about three personal experiences I had over the past ten weeks.

Shortly after the end of the term I laid down papers and notes, packed my rucksack and drove with a friend to Interlaken. We wanted to go a-wandering along the lower regions of the Bernese Alps, fill our tired lungs with fresh mountain air and perhaps, too, seek out a kind of patriotism, which we suspected had disappeared–even though the latter isn't really my sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned the 1st of August could be sent to the dark side of the moon–and take all its accompanying firework displays with it. A national celebration that makes one almost believe that war has broken out, I can well do without. At least at the end of the evening we would "only" have had to pass the contents of the lake through an over-size coffee filter to liberate it from all the burnt-out rocket-ends and debris from exploded fireworks and not–like the French, who had to entirely resurface the Champs-Elysées after just such a display–have to re-plaster the Bahnhofstrasse. Be that as is may ...

Michelle Flückiger, chemistry student, "ETH Life" columnist and ex-Living-experiment-participant.

It probably wasn't the best idea to choose Interlaken, because as Swiss surrounded by Switzerland we felt a bit like redundant appendages to a five-star menu. Notices and signs on cinemas and shops were written in Japanese, Mandarin and Korean and in the kitchen of the youth hostel there were at least three cooking saucepans filled with glass noodles, tea water and sticky rice nearly filling the cooker. The fact that the fourth and last plate of the cooker was still free wasn't much consolation to our grumbling stomachs because all the pots were either taken or had not been washed up. We tried to paste over communication difficulties with a friendly smile but–apart from the Thais–this too seemed to be misunderstood. As the evening progressed, the more we felt shut out. Our bunks? A Swiss enclave in the middle of the Asian sleeping quarters. We only wanted one thing: to get back home to our own sort.

Our relief on arriving back in Zurich didn't last long. At eight o'clock in the morning when I entered the library to look for a station to work at, what did I see?

First of all, the library was filled to bursting, and secondly, who was sitting at the monitors? Not just ETH students, no, but law students, economics students and all sorts of strangers had had the cheek to push their way into "our" library. Damning the new competition to the dark side of the moon, I roamed for a time between the bookcases, but fled in the end, leaving the field to the "enemy".

A similar picture lunchtime: the physics' mensa looked at though it was about to split its seams. Because, apart from the "foreign" students, there were lots of young mums walking their progeny around, red-socked birds of passage on their way to or from a walking tour, and tiny-boned grannies, all of whom also thought that this would be a good place to eat a well-balanced menu and enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee afterwards.

"What are they all doing here?", was my instinctive reaction and straight away, I thought of Blocher. The politician tried so hard to stand behind the consensus-based opinion of his colleague councillors but just didn't manage to bite back his own opposing views. And me? I'm not a smidgen better. Calling myself xenophile, roundly, and everything else that that implies. Because now I'm standing here and damning my own–just because they don't fit into what I wrongly believed to be my territory.

Otherness begins at home–and nowhere else.