Switzerland Notes

My last stop was Switzerland. Traveling through the country, one can’t be faulted for imagining this to be paradise. Panoramic views, lakes that stretch for miles, looming mountains, cows with bells and a train network that is truly an engineering and management marvel can mesmerize anyone.

It was only in 1863, when Thomas Cook organized the first guided tour for a British group, that Switzerland became a tourist destination Until then, the Alpine country was out of bounds for the commoners of Europe. The tourism industry took off with it, the train network expanded to take thousands to every nook and corner and the hospitality industry boomed.

I hopped on a cruise from Lausanne to Vevey and the views made it clear why so many literary giants were drawn to Switzerland. Rousseau was born here. It was while living in Switzerland  that Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Joyce began Ulysses and Remarque wrote ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. Maugham and Le Carre set their iconic spy thrillers in Switzerland. Hemingway’s romantic tragedy ‘A Farewell to Arms’ culminated in a Swiss lake. Nabokov spent the last sixteen years of his life in the Royal Montreux Palace Hotel. Thomas Mann’s magnum opus ‘The Magic Mountain’ was set in a Swiss sanatorium and by using illness as a metaphor for Europe’s malaise in the Pre-War days, created a masterpiece. Chaplin, Graham Greene and Joyce are buried in the country. Fleming’s James Bond is half Swiss and was one of the earliest brand ambassadors of Swiss luxury – his Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner and Mont Blanc pen making the whole world crave for a piece of Swiss luxury. Borges, who spent his adolescence in Geneva, summed up the city seventy years later, thus:

Of all the cities on this planet, of all the diverse and intimate places which a man seeks out and merits in the course of his voyages, Geneva strikes me as the most propitious for happiness. Beginning in 1914, I owe it the revelation of French, of Latin, of German, of Expressionism, of Schopenhauer, of the doctrine of Buddha, of Taoism, of Conrad, of Lafcadio Hearn and of the nostalgia of Buenos Aires. Also: the revelation of love, of friendship, of humiliation and of the temptation to suicide

I couldn’t spot any World War memorial during my visit. But Switzerland’s role in WWII has always been controversial. Thanks to its neutrality, the country ended up receiving all the Nazi gold (a bulk of it belonging to the Jews). With most of the Jewish owners gassed, there were no claims on the gold and the fortunes of the banking industry and the country went up. In the late 1990s, when the World Jewish Congress sued them over their role, the Swiss constituted the Bergier Commission which conducted a thorough investigation over this dark period of their history. Credit to the Swiss for being thorough in everything they do. The Swiss, The Gold And The Dead, is in my TBR list and is probably a good place to know more of this period.

Chocolates, cow bells, cuckoo clocks and Victorinox Swiss Army Knives are still sold in every nook and corner. More than 6 million Swiss army knives are produced each year. To my horror, I even got to see a Pride line of these knives. The tentacles of DEI in the corporate world are a thing of marvel. (The knives owe their popularity to the American GIs who carried them back home after WWII).

The Protestant movement owes a lot to Switzerland. Calvin and Zwingli – two of the giants of the movement lived and died in Switzerland. It was Calvin who shaped the Church’s stance on usury which led to banking taking off in Switzerland. The other fun fact is that the same Calvin banned all forms of jewellery in Geneva. Now, when you can’t wear jewellery, the only option to display your wealth was to splurge on watches. And thus emerged the watchmaking industry in Geneva!

Two sights that will stay with me for a while are the Trümmelbach Falls – for their engineering marvel – and the Abbey of St Gall which is a UNESCO Heritage Site today, for understandable reasons.