Jan Geerk; Swiss Tourism
With just 8.5 million inhabitants and 11 million annual tourists, Switzerland has plenty of room for everyone, which means that one never feels anything like the crush and traffic of Rome, Paris, Madrid or Athens in Swiss cities.
There are no long, snaking lines to get into Swiss museums, as there are at the Vatican, the Louvre, the Prado or the Pantheon. No need to book restaurants weeks in advance. And, while all the international fashion brands have stores in the big cities, it’s better to seek out the less expensive, more distinctive Swiss designer shops on the smaller streets.
Switzerland Tourism: Martin Maegli
It’s also easy enough to blend in with the local citizenry of Zurich, Lucerne, Lausanne, Vevey, Basel, Lugano and Geneva. The ski slopes of St. Moritz, Zermatt and Gstaad get very busy in winter, and in spring, summer and fall the lakes and mountains may be dotted with hikers, climbers and boaters, but the number of dots will be small within the vastness of the territory. Snow-capped mountains loom over every lake, and their cloud-reflected blue waters are clear to remarkable depths. You might not want to but you could actually drink it.
Switzerland Tourism: Andrea Badrutt
A recent ten-day trip to Switzerland—nine with perfect weather—showed both its cities and the countryside in ideal relief, and the word “frantic” never entered my mind. My usual New York stride slowed to a Swiss stroll, and, since everything runs on time, I never had to rush anywhere. No one would ever make an idle bet against the on-time performance of a bus, a tram, a subway or a train, because they always depart and arrive on the second. If you have a train leaving Zurich at, say, 9 a.m., and the tram from your hotel takes exactly four minutes, you could leave your hotel at 8:50 and have time to spare to grab a coffee before getting on the train. Over those ten days I never once used a taxi or Uber, because the transportation system is so efficient everywhere.
The best way to travel around the country is to buy a Swiss Travel Pass, an all-in-one ticket that gives access to trains, buses and boats on 3, 4, 8 or 15 consecutive days, plus admission to 500 museums (out of 1,000). With the Swiss Travel Pass Youth, people under 26 years of age benefit from a 15 % discount off the regular fare. (For info and prices go to: https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-us/swiss-travel-pass.html).
Galina Dargery
The problem with clichés is that they become outdated and fatuous, like calling Paris the City of Lights, Las Vegas Sin City or New York the Big Apple. But so many of the clichés about Switzerland remain delightfully true, not least that on-time performance. Indeed, there’s a very funny book entitled How to Be Swissby Diccon Bewes and cartoonist Michael Meister that sends up enduring Swiss habits that include “Thou shalt eat chocolate daily”; “Kiss strangers three times on the cheek”; “Address your boss as ‛Mister’ until one of you dies”; “Feel lost when you travel an hour across country and can’t understand anyone”; and “Feel superior.” (More on this last later.)
The German, French and Italian cantons are, certainly, very protective of their respective cultures, but all pride themselves on being open to new ideas via polite direct democracy. To bring an idea to a vote, one need only gather 100,000 signatures, as one fellow did when he tried to pass a law that would prohibit the cutting of goats’ horns, a traditional process that keeps them from injury, pain and saves space; the measure failed.
Galina Dargery
I will happily add that Swiss cheeses—Emmentaler, Gruyère, Berner Alpkäse, L’Etivaz, Schabziger, Raclette, Sbrinz, Tête de Moine, and many others—and breads are among the best in the world. First-rate Swiss wines are wholly underappreciated because no more than two percent of the production ever leaves the country. Swiss restaurants, from casual eateries serving raclette and fondue to haute cuisine dining salons, are excellent.
As for the Swiss air of superiority, I believe it is more true about the last generation than the current one. I recall some fifteen years ago my wife, who speaks fluent French, endured a dinner table conversation among middle-aged locals, in Swiss French, who gloated about how unsophisticated Americans were. At meal’s end, my wife stood up, smiled and said, in perfect Parisian French, “We are leaving now and hope never to meet any of you pompous snobs again.”
But on more recent trips I found the Swiss wonderfully cordial and eager to help in any way they can. And the fact that just about everyone, at least in the cities, under the age of forty now speaks English makes an American tourist feel very comfortable at every turn. And the streets are astoundingly clean.
It is certainly true that Switzerland is an expensive place to live and visit. Eurostat ranks Switzerland’s consumer prices as the most expensive in Europe overall and 61% higher than the EU average, with food and non-alcoholic drinks 73% higher, hotels and restaurants 67% and clothing 43%. I certainly found prices in the cities I visited high, though they won’t come as much of a shock to anyone who visits London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York or San Francisco. Still, many Swiss cross over to France to go shopping to save money.
Galina Dargery
We found there were plenty of hotels—this was in early spring—under $150 a night (the US dollar is now just about at parity with the Swiss franc, which makes calculating easy), and the most deluxe restaurants, while pricey, cost somewhat less than comparable restaurants in Paris or London. And always remember: A 35 franc main course in Switzerland includes VAT and service charges, whereas in the U.S. a comparable main course might cost $28, but with tax and tip comes out to about the same. (Tipping is not expected in Switzerland.)
I shall be writing a series of articles about the individual cities I visited on my trip, but let me mention one more thing about Switzerland: Nowhere—not on the street, in the train station and airport, on the metro, in restaurants of any stripe—was there anything like the cacophony of noise one experiences in similar places in American cities. A full dining room in Switzerland will have a happy ebullience about it, but no one is screaming to be heard—unless it is packed with foreign visitors. Perhaps to be Swiss means never to guffaw.
Source link : https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmariani/2019/04/30/in-a-dysfunctional-europe-switzerland-goes-its-own-civilized-way/
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Publish date : 2019-05-01 07:00:00
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