For anyone familiar with the UK these days, you'll know what I'm talking about. For everyone else, http://www.chavscum.co.uk/
I was walking down the road to the Bahnhof at the weekend and what should I spy but a bunch of youths with beer cans in hand, talking to their mate in his chavved-up car. That's getting more normal in less salubrious parts of Zuerich these days but this time, one of the delinquent kids was sporting a Burberry baseball cap. The official seal of chavdom! I would have taken a picture with my mobile but I didn't want to risk that they might actually go the whole chav hog and mug me for it
Not only that but as I continued towards the station a couple of liquored-up young slappers staggered past me, alcopops in hand. Who said Switzerland was decades behind the times
hey, Gav, you must come up to the wilds of the Oschtschwiitz, we have chavs aplenty up here
In fact, today I saw a young male person, teenager, thing, on a bike dressed in sweatshirt, jeans and trainers and wondered why I was about to grab him as a prospective furture son in law...after a few minutes careful contemplation I realised that it was because he looked like a normal person Not like the chavved up kids we normal see...hey, voll krass, man!
looking at what the average young person wears round here, I would guess that there is a market for any old hideous tat you can get your hands on...."bling", not "tat"...>slaps wrist<
There are great bevvies of Chavs here. Burberry is the mark of a British chav, however I think Chavness is a state of mind, an attitude. Zurich has a lot of Chavs, but the best place I have found for boneheaded-Swiss Chav-spotting is Basel.
Well of course there have been f**kwitted juveniles in baggy clothing, jewelery and baseball caps knocking around here for years. And there's never been a shortage of wankermobiles with tacky add-on body kits crusing the streets.
However, it was the Burberry that said to me "Full chavdom has arrived on this soil".
Not being a fan "designer" or "prestige" overpriced products, the knock Burberry has taken due to Chavs degrading their brand does amuse me. Funniest part is that the Chavs are buying the cheap fake products at markets....
Well maybe I'm just totally ignorant of popular culture, but I have found this thread baffling. I had no idea what a chav was, and attempted to educate myself at the link that gav (rhymes with chav?) provided. Unfortunately it was no use to me and seemed to assume that everyone knows what a chav was.
But no problem, wikipedia to the rescue once again:
Ok, the term has only been around since 2004, I don't feel so bad now.
When I first read this thread I thought "of course we have these people in Switzerland", but now I realise that people whom I previously thought of as idiots/morons/f.wits(and in many parts of Switzerland, or any other country, they are not in short supply!) may not fit the definition of chav, since it seems to have something to do with clothing.
When I first came to Switzerland I was given a lot of excellent advice by a friend of mine who also happens to have a super-hero symbol for an avatar. He told me that one of the nice things about Switzerland was that there were very few idiots, because of the fact that it was difficult to get in, it helped to keep the idiots out. At first I took the statement at face value, but very quickly realised that they have plenty of home-grown morons here.
The absolute biggest curse when in the company of these idiots is being able to understand Swiss-German. For those of you who can't - count your blessings - ignorance is bliss.
At the rist of offending someone's sensibilities with my vulgar opinion, I suggest that the Swiss chav-wannabes have nothing on the original Brits. It is sooo much more than the clothing...the attitude ("WOT? U THK U R 2 GD 4 CHAVS??? WNKR.") and culture of unemployment, booz and violence...society's flotsam. Yuck.
Hopefully the kids here are just imitating the clothing and not the culture. (Like all the little Swiss 'rapper' kids.)
Have a look at Viva-TV (the music channel) - they often display text messages sent in by the kids... Not much better i'm afraid I guess the one positive point in all this is that Switzerland doesn't seem to have the same alcohol-culture as in the UK.
Maybe we should start snapping examples from our camera phones and posting them up here?