Articles tagged with "Switzerland"
Switzerland suits an older traveler better than almost any mountain country, for one reason: the railways, cable cars and lake boats do the climbing. The trade offs are altitude, which affects everybody, historic paving, and the fact that a cheap shoulder-season trip is cheap because the mountain…
Switzerland has real strengths for travelers with mobility, hearing or visual needs: modern rolling stock, an integrated network with assistance, and a national tourist board that publishes information for visitors in wheelchairs or with impaired mobility. It is also a mountain country, and…
Swiss ancestry research runs through one idea that has no equivalent in most countries: the commune of origin, the place a family legally belongs to whether or not anybody has lived there for generations. Find that, and the records follow. This guide covers where to look, what the emigration waves…
Swiss celebration is local. The national day is 1 August and does not move; almost everything else is a canton, a commune or a valley doing its own thing on its own schedule. The most characteristic event in the country is the autumn cattle descent, and nobody can give you a date for it, because it…
Switzerland is a federation of twenty six cantons with four national languages, and both of those facts have practical consequences for a visitor. Rules genuinely differ between cantons, including one law that can fine you. Punctuality, quiet and privacy are real expectations rather than national…
Swiss food is not one cuisine. The German-speaking north, the French-speaking west, Italian-speaking Ticino and Romansh Graubünden each eat differently, and the mountain food that everyone knows is only part of it. The most interesting thing on the Swiss table is a wine landscape that UNESCO…
Switzerland has a low rate of serious crime and a milder terrorism assessment than neighboring Germany has. What the advisory spends its length on instead is the mountains, and it is specific: eight alpine hazards that exist throughout the year, an insurance requirement with three named components,…
Swiss public transport is the reason most of our Swiss itineraries hire no car. Trains, postbuses, lake boats, cog railways and cable cars are timetabled as one system, they reach villages a car cannot park in, and one of the lines is itself inscribed on the World Heritage List. What a car adds is…
Swiss packing is decided by vertical distance. A day that starts in a warm valley and ends on a glacier viewpoint needs both wardrobes, and the advisory is specific about what to carry outside towns. There is also a document check and an insurance clause that belong on a packing list because both…
Switzerland uses the Swiss franc and is not in the European Union, so it sits outside the euro and outside EU customs rules. This guide covers what that changes, the proof of funds figure on the entry page, and why we publish almost no prices for one of Europe's most expensive countries.