Switzerland
Everything costs double what you expect. Budget for it and enjoy it
Population
8.8m people
Currency
Swiss Franc
Main Language
German, French, Italian and Romansh
best time to visit
June – September for hiking, December – March for snow
Climate
Alpine, cold winters, mild summers, warmer in the south
Visa
Schengen area – 90 days visa free in any 180 day period for UK and most non-EU visitors
Country overview
Switzerland is expensive. There is no way around this and no clever hack that fixes it. A basic lunch costs what a decent dinner costs elsewhere in Europe. Once you accept that and stop converting every price in your head, it becomes one of the most rewarding countries on the continent to travel in.
What you are paying for is a system that works flawlessly. The trains are punctual to the minute and go to places that logically should not have trains, including up mountains. A rail pass genuinely pays for itself, and the scenery from a normal scheduled service beats most countries designated scenic routes.
Four national languages in a country smaller than Scotland means the culture shifts every couple of hours on that train. Geneva and Lausanne are French. Zurich and Bern are German, and the Swiss German is impenetrable even to Germans. Lugano is Italian and feels it. The constant is that everything is clean, everything is on time, and the mountains are always there being outrageous.
Annual events and festivals
- Fasnacht, Basel (Feb-Mar) — starts at 4am with the city lights switched off and thousands of lanterns lit. Three days, no sleep.
- Chalandamarz (1 Mar) — children ring cowbells through Engadine villages to drive out winter.
- Sechselauten, Zurich (Apr) — a snowman effigy is exploded to predict the summer. The faster it burns, the better the weather.
- Montreux Jazz Festival (Jul) — two weeks on Lake Geneva, and far broader than jazz these days.
- Swiss National Day (1 Aug) — bonfires on mountainsides and fireworks in every town.
- Locarno Film Festival (Aug) — open-air screenings in a piazza holding 8,000 people.
- Alpabzug (Sep-Oct) — the cattle descent, with flower-crowned cows paraded through villages.
- Onion Market, Bern (Nov) — a 600-year-old market that starts at 4am and involves confetti fights.
- L’Escalade, Geneva (Dec) — commemorates repelling a 1602 invasion, with a chocolate cauldron smashed at every table.
- Christmas markets (Nov-Dec) — Montreux does a large lakeside one, Basel the most traditional.