quality of life / living costs in switzerland vs uk ?

I'd never heard of either of those acclaimed Swiss orchestras before today. I live & learn.

AFAIK, Switzerland is famous for the very interesting, if not to say flamboyant industries associated with banking & watchmaking. They are also pretty good at pettifogging legislation. In summary, a well-ordered society of punctual commuters and bureaucrats.

Rather like Belgians, can we name any famous Swiss people?

 

Now, James, how can you of all people forget the pharma companies of Basel? And up our little valley live the world's second biggest provider of artificial joints and the world's second biggest second biggest provider of dental implants. You probably have little knowledge of the Swiss engineering industry, of which the watchmakers are the most visible manifestation. The chemical companies of Basel are among the world's heavyweights, and Nestlé is the world's largest food company by far. Not bad for a country of seven million people with difficult geography and no natural resources worth speaking of.

And how exactly does the existence or otherwise of famous Swiss people interact with your perception of Switzerland as a boring place? Do famous people frequent the night life of your preferred destinations?

I gather you don't like Belgium either!

 

So how harsh and prolonged are the cold snaps in a typical Swiss winter now a days compared to a typical British winter? Anything below about 10C is cold for me.

Ah, now there's something I've been meaning to pick you brains about for a while there Tones. Substitute the word Switzerland in the title of this thread to Oz (particularly Melbourne) and you've got the title of a future thread I intend to start up soon. Don't want to hi-jack this thread though so...

 

I forgot cheese with holes in, and that melted cheese dip stuff - fondue - popular here in the 1970s, and quite disgusting.

I don't know, having some famous people might indicate some imagination within the populace.

But I'm only having a bit of fun. I'm sure it's luvverly in Switzerland.

 

Difficult one to answer, Henry. However, it is still colder, down to -12°C overnight a couple of times a year, and you can have periods of several days where the temperature never staggers above 0°C . It's a very dry cold, and not as miserable as a British damp one (except for near-electrocution from the door knobs!), but not your scene.

Now, what you really want is Melbourne, as you foreshadowed. A very cold day in Melbourne is 8°C. It gets to 0°C about two or three times a year overnight and it snows in the Melbourne metropolitan area about once every thirty years. So, start your new thread and we'll talk...

 

Can I add that I find Switzerland's 'neutrality' during WW2 somewhat inexplicable. Or am I opening a can of worms here?

Insane murderous despot next door? That's OK with us, do please carry on, Herr Hitler.

 

James, "neutrality" means not taking sides. It doesn't mean that you like what's happening next door. In any case, in your list of cities to visit, you included Berlin (where said murderous despot presided over the murder of around 40 million people), Budapest (a staunch ally of said despot), Rome (ditto) and Vienna (where said despot learned his anti-Semitism in the first place). How do you square your finding these places desirable with your repugnance for countries on the basis of their past behaviour? This sounds like a shallow view fuelled by bias and a desire to pick holes in a place you don't like, nicht wahr?

Switzerland has been neutral since it was thrashed at Marignano by the French in 1500 and something, and it has deteminedly stuck to this. In addition, place yourself in Switzerland's position in the 1930s and 1940s. You're a small country of 5 million entirely surrounded by nasties and dependent on them for many things. Would you strike provocative, bellicose positions? Would you come out loudly for the Allies and attack all four bigger neighbours? I know I wouldn't. So, I'm afraid I don't find it at all inexplicable. There was no doubt as to whose side Switzerland was on, but it didn't wave it like a flag. Would you?

Had Switzerland been invaded, there's is no doubt it would have fought. The reminders are still around us today - the rows of dragons teeth still march across the fields not far from the border and the old pillboxes at Allschwil near the French border are still there (costs too much to remove them). However, Switzerland was more useful to Hitler the way it was - it was harmless so he could ignore it - why waste divisions needed on the Eastern Front attacking something clearly not going anywhere?

Swiss behaviour in WW2 leaves much to be desired - the daughter of my old boss at Sandoz is a historian and she participated in the commission that recently reviewed Swiss behaviour during the war. It's often not pretty. The German subsidiaries of many of the big Swiss engineering companies (Oerlikon, Brown-Boveri) used slave labour and worked for the German war effort. Of course, if they'd refused, they simply would have been taken over and work would have continued. The banks and insurance companies also lined their pockets, refusing to pay out on accounts and policies without a death certificate (hard when your loved one went up the chimney at Auschwitz).

However, it has to be remembered that most humans when placed in extreme situations often do not behave in a high moral fashion. Remember that most French collaborated with the Nazis - much of the Resistance was Communist or strongly left-wing, because they had nothing left to lose. And many willingly participated in the persecution of the Jews, and there were French Waffen SS divisions. One of them, "Charlemagne", was among the last defenders of Berlin when the Russians arrived. (But you still go to Paris). The French still agonise over this. Remember how the British press in the 1930s moaned about the "cry-baby" Jews trying to get out of Germany when the Nazis came to power and how "we" didn't want them here. Even the Americans were unhappy about a major exodus of German Jews.

What I'm saying is that you are expecting perfect, lofty moral positions in a situation in which you've never been, and in such a situation not many of us can deliver - are you so sure that you could? Speaking for myself, I'm not. Few of us are Paul Grüningers. Grüninger was a police captain in St. Gallen in NE Switzerland who forged entry papers for Jews to get into Switzerland, backdating them to a time before entry was forbidden. Grüninger was finally caught when the Gestapo complained to the St. Gallen authorities. He was stripped of his rank and pension, served time in prison and died in poverty, but still sure that he'd done the right thing. He saved several thousand Jews. It was a pleasure to hear him posthumously exonerated by the St. Gallen court just a couple of years ago. His daughter was there and many of the Jews he saved came from Israel to be there.

I'd like to think that, when the going got really tough and the result of doing the right thing was going to be bad and probably stay that way, my moral compass would be as strong as Capt. Grüninger's. But I'm not sure that it would be. Are you so sure about yours? Would you not tend to temporise just a little? If not, you're a better man than I, and I take my hat off to you.

 

Good post, I genuinely didn't know why they were neutral. Ireland was, too, I think.

 

Correct. The Irish Free State as it then was remained neutral. At one point, German Intelligence tried to establish contacts with the IRA to start a campaign in the North, but it came to nothing. Many people in the UK were enraged when Taoseach (Prime Minister) Eamon de Valera presented condolences to the German Ambassador in Dublin on the death of Führer Adolf Hitler. Of course, de Valera was being formally correct as the prime minister of a neutral country, but Eamon was also an old IRA fighter (the only commander of the 1916 Easter Rising not to be executed by the British (because of his American citizenship)), but I suspect that he was also getting in a dig at the old enemy.

On the other hand, the Irish did know on which side their bread was buttered and thousands served with distinction in the British forces in WW2. And on the night that Belfast was badly blitzed, the Dublin Fire Brigade came charging through the night to the rescue. Unfortunately, the hose fittings were different and the mains were badly cracked anyway, so it came to nothing.

 

Quality post, thanks Tones

 

P.S. On Swiss neutrality. It's deeply ingrained and really goes back to the beginning, to the Everlasting League of 1291, when the original three cantons, Uri, Unterwalden and Schwyz (which was to give the country its name and its flag) formed a Confederation "to last, if it please God, forever". The reason was the domination of the Habsburgs and the important trade routes across the Alps. The Confederates had no problems with the Habsburgs, but they had with the Vogts, the bailiffs imposed by the Hapsburgs. There was no greater insult to these proudly democratic and independent mountaineers than the imposition of an outsider. They refused to have them. The Habsburgs sought to impose their will by force and found to their horror that the mountaineers could fight. After four hidings, the Habsburgs decided that founding the Austro-Hungarian Empire was probably easier.

The discovery of their fighting qualities prompted the Swiss to sell themselves as mercenaries (more profitable than alpine farming) and briefly to try a bit of imperial expansion on their own account (the result was Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton). The imperial expansion came to an end at Marignano, but the mercenary tradition lingered on in the Swiss Guard of the French Kings (who died to the last man defending Louis XIV at the Tuileries during the revolution), and of course in the Pope's guard in Rome, the final remnant of Switzerland's first export industry. There's an old phrase in French to say that you can only have what you can pay for - "pas d'argent, pas de Suisses"!

 

You as a medical man have forgotten Henri Dunant?

And the success of Swiss industry would seem to suggest an adequate supply of imagination.

 

I had to Google Henri Dunant. O, the shame!

 

The famous one is, as previously mentioned, the Suisse Romande orchestra - although little heard of since Ansermet's days. Having heard the Zurich Tonhalle last year, they are good. Maybe more committed than technically excellent (more "musical" than "hi-fi"?), but no slouches. From what I've heard recently the BBC Scottish (who do seem to be excellent at present) are probably better though. Looking through the next year's program they have some big names there (Haitink, Perlman, Grimaud, FLott etc), although probably you'd take a year there to see what you'd see in London in a month.

And also, hearing Zurich Opera at the Festival Hall last night (flying from Zurich to do so ) - they're pretty good too. A couple of their regulars were outstanding (particularly Matti Salminen), but the big name guesting as Hans Sachs (Jose van Dam) is clearly well past his sell-by date.

There's also Luzern - particularly with Abbado now concentrating on being Music Director of the Festival, which probably now has a similar profile to Salzburg.

And Zurich was the location where some unknown revolutionary (on the run from plotting state overthrow in Dresden) penned a little ditty or two - the majority of Wagner's Ring.

 

I can't take Wagner seriously.

 

And Tones knows, cos he was there!

 

SSSSSHH! Don't spread it around, dummy!

 

Whilst shovelling yet another heap of remarkably cheap classical vinyl back home earlier in the week I discovered one album that I believe is by a Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger. The album is the 2nd and 3rd Symphonies played by the Czech Philharmonic / Serge Baudo, and damn good it is too. Very tonal and conventionally tuneful for mid 20th century works.

Tony.