Switzerland was about as neutral in those days as had been Mongolia under Genghis Khan... They were so chillingly belligerent that even if they were destroyed in battle they had been known in the same moment to win a war. One afternoon in mid-Renaissance, a few hundred Swiss who were outnumbered fifteen to one elected not to run away but to wade across a river and break into the center of their opposition, where all of them died, but not before they had slaughtered three thousand of their French enemies. The French Army was so unnerved that it struck its tents and fled.The Swiss are wont to say, "Switzerland does not have an army. Switzerland is an army," John McPhee tells us in La Place de la Concorde Suisse. The country intermingles two cultures: the Suisse-romand are thoroughly French or Italian; while Suisse-allemand are German. Yet each partakes of the others to create that indefinable Swiss character. Perhaps, McPhee suggests, it is the defining background of each Swiss man's life, the required military service.
The knife every soldier is issued today is jacketed with quilted gray aluminum, has one blade, a can opener, a bottle opener, a hole-punch, two screwdrivers and a corkscrew. On one side is a small red shield bearing a white cross... Officers included, everyone in the Swiss Army carries a Swiss Army knife.Women may volunteer for the Swiss Army; if they do, they serve fifteen years doing "housewife work." They drive trucks, for example, or operate radios. But men who refuse to serve (there are a small number each year) go to jail. Failure to be accepted into service is also considered shameful, and like serving time for conscientious objection, closes professional and financial doors to the disgraced party.
There is now a petition in circulation that calls for an initiative to abolish the army altogether. An initiative to abolish chocolate would stand an equal chance.There are remarkably few graffiti in the country (although there is a famous one, Lord Byron's name in his own hand, in a dungeon where he was prisoner), and electric sensors watch parking lots, urinals and hotel mattresses; signaling availability, flushing as needed, and turning out the lights when you go to bed. "In Switzerland, everything works."
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Article comments
1 - The Proprietor
I'd have to disagree about the graffiti, as we saw quite a bit of it from a train we took from Innsbruck to Zurich (admittedly this was about 15 years ago). Some of it was quite nasty stuff - I especially remember a large screed on a wall in Sargans glorifying Himmler.
2 - DrPat
McPhee notes that graffiti is much more common near the urban centers (Zurich, Geneva, Basel), and that a surprising number of those that do appear are in English.
The non-English ones he cites specifically are the circled-A (universal anarchy symbol) and CH=SS (Helvetian Confederation = Third Reich).