Fondue Switzerland

I'm really fond of Switzerland, for all so many reasons, we went on vacation in July, it being our second visit. We booked cheap flights to Basel for €64 return and there the budget ends. Switzerland, by no means, could be called a cheap country for vacation, but that is also one of it's hidden charms. Because it is an 'expensive' place, a certain type of holiday traveler is seen there. "Only the best, don't you know". But seriously, the fact that it is not geared towards any 'group' of generic European traveler, means it is not spoiled with taccy chip shops or rip-off venders.

Typically the average tourist is over sixty, retired and not short of a good pension fund. You see a few Italians, french, and eastern Europeans (no discrimination intended, but I can never tell the difference between their accents), always a few English of course who consider themselves too intelligent and cultured to even think of holidaying in Spain!

The end result is a feeling of being a guest in this towering land rather than a mere bringer of foreign currency. And, more importantly, you are treated as a guest. The Swiss could teach us all a lesson or two. Here is a nation of three languages and cultures, with a federal 'Canton' or distict form of government which actually works quite well and which most people are happy with.

It is a land of the Have's, the 'Have a lots' and the 'Have so much it's unbelievable'! Ironically this happy and prosperous land with high wages and low taxes produces loads of heroine junkies, to be seen jacking-up on every street corner in its major cities. Nice junkies though, very civil and friendly. Indeed perfection is always the most flawed of things.

But for me I go for the friendly people who are not derailed by the fact that you speak a 'different' language upon encounter, a people who are happy that you've come to see their majestic land with a rucksack on your back. The mountain water, the village squares with gushing clear spouts of crystal cool, cool, water. The cheese, my God the cheese! The lakes, the belled cows, the buses and trains that come on time...to the second, the villages that always have a bank, a small supermarket, a tourist information center and a clean toilet. But best of all when you tire of hotels you just pull out your sleeping bag and sleep in a farmers field...now that's a holiday.