Destination Switzerland

What giddy romance and glamour Zermatt, St Moritz, Davos and other glitterati-encrusted names evoke: from the intoxicated chink of multimillionaires in Verbier hobnobbing over Champagne cocktails poured in ice-carved flutes to the comforting jangle of the cows coming home to sgraffito-blazoned farmsteads in the Engadine, seduction is head-over-heels complete. Ride a little red train between peak and pine, soak in mountain spa water, snowshoe to your igloo, fall madly in love with painted bridges in Lucerne and know life in this snug, smug, truly ravishing enclave in Europe is good.

This is after all Sonderfall Schweiz (literally ‘special case Switzerland’) – a rare and refined breed, a privileged neutral country set apart from others, borne out by its 1874 constitution Click here and confirmed by the country’s neutrality during both world wars Click here. Despite moves towards greater international cooperation (such as finally ditching border controls for Schengen countries in December 2008) coupled with the gargantuan presence of global institutions in Geneva, much about modern-day Switzerland is idiosyncratic, insular, parochial and unique. Few countries promote ‘direct democracy’ through referenda and practise ‘armed neutrality’ with a trained militia that will never find itself face to face with an enemy (given its neutrality).

No paradise is invincible. The world financial crisis in late 2008 took victims in Switzerland in the shape of the country’s largest bank which would have gone belly up without state bailout Click here. Then there was the rumpus in August 2008 over the bid by the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) to ban building new minarets for Muslim calls of prayer. The same far-right political party published anti-immigrant posters featuring three white sheep kicking one black sheep off that striking white cross of the Swiss flag (p38 and Click here), and tried – and failed – to make it even harder for noncitizens to get a Swiss passport Click here. A violation of human rights and the Swiss constitution according to the government, the minaret matter, in true Swiss style, will be decided in a national referendum that is likely to take years to happen.

Reinventing the Alps is the hot topic at higher altitudes. With great success world-class architects are respectfully weaving futuristic apartments clad in larch-wood tiles (Sir Norman Foster in St Moritz) and spiralling hotel towers of ecological dimensions (Herzog & de Meuron in Davos) into Switzerland’s quintessential Heidi-postcard landscape of traditional wooden chalets and timeless church spires. But most pressing is not so much how to be green, how to be ecological, how to burn clean energy – Swiss eco-angels have that sorted. Rather, it is what must be done to keep ski resorts sustainable as the globe warms: experts say forget sure-thing snow below 1500m by 2050.

The answer for Andermatt in central Switzerland lies in a mammoth Sfr1.08 billion investment by Egyptian billionaire Samih Sawiris set to turn the sleepy village of 1350 inhabitants into a luxury megaresort of appeal year-round with its tropical pool, sandy beach and 18-hole golf course alongside traditional high-altitude skiing. A burning question is how much one of its 700-odd apartments will cost when it opens in 2014. As James Blunt, Sir Richard Branson and a rash of other celebrities, entrepreneurs and nouveaux-riches Russians already snap up the best properties on the market, Alpine real-estate prices are rocketing through the roof – and out of the reach of less glam pockets.

Bollywood tourists tottering up Titlis premonsoon Click here, Geneva scientists playing God with big-bang experiments Click here: this small, smart, secretive country is as eclectic as the extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity on which it rests.

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Destination Switzerland

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