Uncle Dan’s Notes: Fun Facts About Switzerland

Posted by Uncle Dan on June 21st, 2008 | Categorized as General Forum | 680 views and 6 Comments

In the spirit of gaijinsmash.net and Kristine’s funny post about Canada, I will therefore begin to speak about the funny-isms that make up Switzerland.

For those who don’t nkow, Switzerland is a country right in the middle of Europe with 7ish million people scattered across scenic mountains and lakes. They’re famous for clocks, cows, cheese, chocolate, and banks.

There are four national languages in Switzerland: German, French, Italian and Rumantsch (which is spoken by probably 30,000 people somewhere in the South-East where no one gives a damn). People probably think this means it’s really multilingual, and to some extent it IS. A few weeks ago my Russian friend came to visit me here in Zurich, and we went to get a beer. My German is better than my French, and her French is better than her German, so while I ordered in German, she ordered in French, and the waiter flipped between the two without a pause to think. That was pretty cool. One day, that will be me, if I ever get around to attaining true fluency in anything other than English.

Nevertheless, some things are hilarious. When taking the train from Zurich to Geneva, you will hear the announcement around halfway:

“Nächste Halt: Yverdon-les-bains
Prochain Arrete: Yverdon-les-bains
Next stop: Yverdon-les-bains”

I mean, I can understand when a city has different names in each language (like Visp/Viege, Geneve/Genf/Geneva and so on), but that there is just silly.

But the Swiss don’t really speak German. They speak Swiss-German. While German in general has more accents and dialects than English (which is quite something, I think), Swiss-German is pretty unique. And even there, it doesn’t stop. Each city/canton in Switzerland has its OWN variation of the tongue. The very worst (by experience and reputation) is Valais/Wallis, which is pretty indecipherable even to people familiar with the Zurich dialect.

Anyway, so Switzerland is a confederation, which means that each of the states has a lot of autonomy to decide whatever it wants. This explains the huge variety you get across the country. Plus, have you ever wondered who Switzerland’s president is? I bet you don’t know. Probably 80% of the people living here don’t know. I don’t even know her name. There’s a council which runs the country, and one person from it every year gets to get the title, but it doesn’t really mean anything. The title is just there to pick who gets to greet foreign officials from the plane and such. Apparently on this council they have to make sure that they have at *least* 3 French-speaking ministers, just to make sure they have representation.

So crossing across Switzerland can sometimes be like crossing against a few different countries.

In Zurich, the public transportation is unrivalled. You can get almost anywhere in the canton by bus, train, tram and a little walking, and a large part of it is electrically powered. The scheduling is almost perfect, with buses, trams and trains arriving to the minute of when they’re supposed to, and if not give pretty exact estimates of how much later they’ll be. Punctuality is king, and being late to work by even 5-10 minutes can get you in pretty deep manure. Likewise, they really respect your right to take holidays and so on. Zurich also has a laarge population of Eastern Europeans and Turks. In Zurich, people generally speak more English than French, and will be willing to help you out as a tourist asking stupid questions. Just don’t speak bad Swiss-German. It’s the equivalent of being a fresh tourist going to Harlem and talking gangsterspeak.

The problem there though, is that even if you ask them to speak in High German, or even English, they have so much Swiss accent that it sounds almost the same.

In Geneva, the public transport is pretty bleh by comparison. There’s no good map of where you need to go and the bus ticket system is pretty weird. It’s generally dirtier except around the nicer areas, like the U.N. building. I’ve had friends show up to work there drunk, or get drunk at work, and so on. The Francophone culture runs pretty strongly through it. There, you’ll find Africans, Arabs, Turks, Portuguese and Brazilians pretty common there. Here the Swiss-French share something with their neighbors in a certain pride in the French language and, quite often, will NOT speak English with you if you don’t speak some French, even if they actually do know English.

The Italian part isn’t that Italian, as they all learn German anyway. Probably they only speak Italian at home.

And no one gives a damn about the Rumantsch, though apparently it’s supposed to be the closest language in existence to original Latin, as the language developed from back in the Roman days. And they also all speak German anyway.

Switzerland is also typically European in the sense that they close almost everything on Sundays, and after hours. On Sunday, the only place to go shopping are the train stations or the airports, because after deliberation, it was decided that they HAVE to stay open. Most shops close by 6pm, too. I suppose the Swiss feel that on a Sunday, one should go to church, and then go hike up a mountain and enjoy the view all day. Not that many people actually do this, though.

Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc

Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.