OneHourAhead

After two years of Swiss life, I am leaving the land of cheese, chocolate and nazi-gold for pastures fresh so I thought I would give you all the benefit of wisdom in relation to this small alpine retreat and the things it is supposedly famous for…

Safe Streets

Although crime has increased in Switzerland in recent years, violent crime is still virtually unheard of, and generally takes place in the immigrant communities (one reason for the rise in xenophobia recently).  In this respect it is a very nice place to live.  The fear that pervades British society is absent here.  I have no problem with my girlfriend walking home alone late at night and when you find yourself suddenly in an area that looks dodgy you think ‘wait a minute, this is Switzerland’ and the worry dissipates.  The only time I have ever witnessed any crime is when someone tried to rob me in Geneva in what was possibly the worst attempt at pickpocketing in the history of the criminal fraternity, and I simply laughed at him.  I also once left the keys in my girlfriend’s scooter for two hours - it was still there when I came back.

There is a more annoying side to this law-abidingness though, probably best shown in this saying:

“Within every Swiss man there is a policeman sleeping. Within a Vaud man, he is awake.”

There can sometimes be a suffocating feeling in Switzerland, a feeling that you don’t really have true freedom.  I have heard stories of people having the police called on them because they put the rubbish in the wrong bin and people getting out of their cars to personally berate you for using a mobile phone in your car, when it was stationary.  A professor friend got a ticket for reading directions from a piece of paper while driving.  Technically, these things are illegal, but in all cases common sense has come a distant second to the letter of the law.

One thing that surprises me is the amount of graffiti around. And not the good banksy graffiti, really bad stuff.  It seems to be everywhere, far worse than back in the UK.  Maybe this is the only way for Swiss kids to express their dark side. Personally I think it is because Swiss civic architecture is so damnably awful.

Money, Money, Money

Switzerland is rich. However, it wasn’t always like this. Although the country made a mint from increasing industrialisation in the latter part of the 19th century the country took a tumble in the interwar period, and only made it back to the top of the wealth league with the help of some dubious manufacturing decisions during the second world war.

Salaries here are good, but living expenses are high, particularly in the big cities.  This could be due to the high level of protectionism within the country, particularly in the agricultural sector.  The country does sometimes seem to live in its own little shell, with shops selling products that are unique to Switzerland, and none of the choice you find in other countries.

This most immutable of economies has also been hit by the recent economic woes, with UBS cutting 5,500 jobs within the next year, and growth has slowed along with the rest of the western world.  I doubt it will go under, its seem far to sensible for that, but with the rife protection, for industries and workers, there is a sense that if a real economic blow came, it wouldn’t withstand it well.

Switzerland is also obviously a famous tax haven - Shumacher lives down the road, and Ingvar Kampard (Mr IKEA) lives up the hill.  Individuals can negotiate their own tax rates here, if they are rich enough.  For us mere mortals, tax is slightly lower than in the UK, but nothing to get wet-knickered about.

Mountains

There is not much to say about this apart from sometimes it is truly breathtaking.  I have written this post in two parts: during the first part I was sat on my balcony with a view over Lake Geneva to Evian and the alps beyond, with the Jura mountains behind me. Now I am sitting at my work desk from which I can (just about) see Mont Blanc.

*smug mode*

I will add a bit about places to visit to my ‘places to visit’ page in the near future

Trains

And if you want to go and visit the mountains then ‘the SBB train crew welcome you on board the …’.  I will miss the trains.  I think this is an area where the myth really is true - the trains are hardly ever late, never cancelled, go everywhere and are cheap*.  I think my favourite thing though is the simplicity of the pricing system - returns cost twice as much as singles, there is no peak times, and whether you get your ticket a week in advance or as you dash to catch the train, it costs the same.  I think this simplicity really makes the journey a lot less stressful. You always know how much it is going to cost.  Simplicity is the key to everything with money.

I think one of my abiding memories of living here will be getting up nicely at home, grabbing my snowboard and the catching the train into the mountains and being ready to fall down the slopes by mid-morning.

* if you have a half-price card, costs about 170CHF for the year (or free to federal employees like myself) and does exactly what is says on the tin - you get half price travel on all trains, as well as discounts on buses or boats across the lake, for a year

Direct Democracy

The politics of Switzerland are unique, being the only country in the world really to use direct democracy.  There is no doubt it engenders a sense of civic responsibility within citizens.  However, there are downsides.  Direct Democracy allows NIMBYism to thrive.  A example that affected me was that the university for which I worked was not allowed to enlarge its animal house because the local people didn’t want it.  This directly affected the work the university was able to do and would have damaged its ability to compete internationally.  A recent vote also shadowed BoJo’s ban on drinking on the tube - you now cannot buy alcohol at a train station after 10pm.  This is supposed to cut crime but the idea is laughable as Swiss trains and stations are amongst the most pleasant in the world.  However, I suppose, at least the people were allowed a vote on it, rather than being told by a mopped-haired twat.

Due to the rising crime amongst the immigrant population the right-wingers of Switzerland have seen their popularity rise.  But beyond the dodgy poster that was put up last year I haven’t really seen any cases of xenophobia, it is more that the Swiss are fiercely proud of their country and, in some respects, hold on to the Heidi myth, and see anything that might damage their idyll as dangerous.  What they don’t seem to take into account is that 1 in 5 of the workforce is foreign, and that the country really would grind to a halt if they all buggered off home.

Neutrality

Probably the most famous thing about Switzerland is its ability to stay out of any fight going.  Of course, they have their knives for stabbing people and opening bottles of chardonnay under enemy fire, but apart from that I always expected the Swiss military to comprise a handful of farmers with pitchforks and perhaps a camouflaged cow.

How wrong I was.  Switzerland is any military buff’s wet dream.  The armed forces here are a mixture of Dad’s Army recruitment and 007 cunning.  One of my favourite facts being that a number of bridges, tunnels and roads here in the country are rigged with explosives, ready to be detonated if any of their neighbours gets a bit antsy. Legend has it that this was only became known to the wider Swiss public in 2001 after the Gotthard tunnel fire - the Swiss army conveniently forgot to tell the firefighters tackling the blaze that the tunnel was packed with a few tonnes of TNT.  A few years later the residents of a small street in Lucerne got a letter telling them that underneath their houses was, again, a few tonnes of explosive.  It wasn’t deemed necessary for them to know until then.

And what if the cold war had gone hot and Russians had made their push through Austria to Switzerland?  Well apart the bridges, tunnels and roads disintegrating around them they would have to put up with the guerilla warfare that the Swiss army is trained in, where the soldiers have been told to abandon the plain and the cities and take to the mountains where specially designed fortresses were put in place to hide the troops and fight back.  there was a myth that even the Swiss air force flew from a runway enclosed in a mountain, thunderbird-style, but apparently it is just a myth - they only keep their planes in the mountain, the runway is outside!

And for the citizens, once the army has fled to the hills?  Well, building regulations say that every new house/apartment building has to have a nuclear bunker in the basement.  I have to go through five steel doors to get to the washing machine.  There should be a place for every Swiss in a nuclear bunker, and space for residents to.

One of the strangest sights of Switzerland is when, on taking a train back from the slopes on a Sunday evening, you have to sit next to a Sig 550 assault rifle.  The Swiss army is a conscript army, meaning that every male between the ages of 18-30ish has to go away for a few weekends every year and learn how to kill the ruskies. So this leads to the odd sight of spotty teenagers sitting in McDonalds eating a Big Mac with their rifle perched next to them.  This leads to the odd fact that such a peaceful country has on of the highest guns-per-capita ratios in the world.  However, they still have a low violent crime incidence - leading to the inevitable conclusion that guns don’t kill people, idiot Americans do.

So, what could Britain learn from Switzerland?

The ASI asked a few weeks ago if there was anything that Britain could learn from Switzerland.  I think the idea of civic responsibility is something that any country would gain from. Not necessarily in the direct democracy way of Switzerland, but allowing people in some way to feel that their community still belongs to them, rather than the designated department in Whitehall.   The Swiss also have a good, if expensive, healthcare system, which allows more choice for the individual.  I don’t think the Swiss model is exactly what Britain should be following but the idea is good

So that’s the end of my time here.  It has been mostly good, but the struggle against the bureaucracy of the place has been difficult.  As with most places, I would highly recommend a visit, but not perhaps as a place to live, unless you are super-rich.  But now I can add my name to the list of luminaries that have called Lausanne home: Voltaire, Mozart, Byron, Hugo, Dickens, Conan-Doyle (well, Dr. Watson), Simenon and Gibbons from the artistic world; Napoleon, Gandhi, Mussolini and Lenin from the world of politics (and Hemingway was here to report on Mussolini); Chaplin, Hepburn and Hayworth all had children here and coco chanel is buried in the graveyard I pass every day on my way to work.  Al Gore visited while I was here as well - the Nobel laureate in Peace, the champion of the green movement, the teller of an inconvenient truth didn’t use the famed Swiss train network - he flew in by helicopter escorted by two Swiss F-16s.