Switzerland is one of the Western European countries that is relatively well known to the public. I studied in UZH (Universität Zürich) in Switzerland as an exchange student during the spring semester, and to be honest, I didn’t even expect to visit Switzerland. I’ve never thought about going there before and had no idea what this country looks like. Like other students, I just wanted to go to Germany or France and the only reason why I chose Switzerland was simply due to the scholarship. However, this country was not worse than those two countries that I mentioned, and it was even better than other countries. After spending almost 6 months there, I can now recommend this country to other people as a perfect spot for their exchange programs with confidence.

‘Switzerland: more than cheese and chocolate’, I named this article after one of the classes that I took in Switzerland. What usually comes up in your mind when you think of Switzerland? It would probably be cheese and chocolate; sometimes could be fancy Swiss watches, but I want to say that Switzerland has more than just those. For example, drivers usually wait for pedestrians to fully walk across the road and people must wait until passengers get out of the train, tram or bus. From here on out, I will elaborate on what kinds of attractive points Switzerland has.

1. Schwiizerdütsch (Swiss German)

If you don’t know about Switzerland well, then assuming Swiss people speak Swiss language is not a groundless hypothesis. Actually, Switzerland is divided in mostly 3 parts: one is German speaking (Bern, Zürich, Luzern, etc.), one is French speaking (Geneve), and the other is Italian speaking (Ticino, Lugano, etc.). If you go to a big supermarket like Migros or Coop, you could find a product description in 3 languages. I was staying in Zürich during the semester, so I expected to learn some German, not Swiss German. As my German friends says, “It is even hard for native standard German speakers to understand it,” which means even though I study German with my effort, I can’t always understand what Swiss people say.

Let me introduce simple examples of Swiss German. The most representative Swiss German phrase would be ‘Grüezi, Mittenand‘, which literally means ‘Hi, everyone’ ,or if you just want to say hi, you can get rid of Mittenand and say Grüezi. In addition, ‘How are you?’ in German is ‘Wie geht es dir?’ and in Swiss German is ‘Wie gaht’s dir?’. ‘I love you’ in German is ‘Ich habe dich lieb’ and in Swiss German is ‘Han dich lieb’. You may see the little differences between them, but these would get intense as you go into a deeper conversation. For people who want to visit there someday, the important point is you don’t need to panic. First, since most of the advertisements, notifications or some signs on the street are written in standard German, you can manage to live with it if you get acquainted. Secondly, most of Swiss can speak English on an advanced level and also speak standard German, so they will either talk to you in English or standard German. If you want to experience cute Swiss German, I sincerely recommend you to go to Switzerland and learn German.

2. Nature

Switzerland is also well known for its majestic landscape, like the Alps, but nature is well protected even in urban or suburban areas. In Zürich city, a large lake, called ZürichSee, is located in the middle of the city center. There are lots of cars, restaurants, bars and people because it is a city center of course, but there is a public swimming pool right in the middle. Lots of people want to spend their time swimming and sunbathing there with their families or friends. Swiss people do care about nature. They respect nature and want to protect it and live with it, therefore you can see lots of birds like ducks and swans mingling with humans in the city, which is a really rare scene in Korea.

I lived in Meierwiesenstrasse 62 which has a really beautiful river called Flussbad Au-Höngg behind it. It has crystal clear water and has a refreshing coldness even though it is located next to housings and roads. Just like ZürichSee, people want to preserve nature as much as possible, so you can also see lots of ducks and swans there. Floating on the fresh cold river feels much better than just lying down under an air-conditioner’s cold air. If you go to Switzerland, you should swim in the lake or river at least once! You will want to go back and do it again and again.

3. Life style and behavior

Asking about hobbies is a great method to break the wall between each other. Since I didn’t have any friends in the student dorm at first, I really needed to make friends to survive. I approached them, did a little icebreaking, and asked them, ‘What do you do when you are free?’ and they replied with unexpected answers. Most of the residents in my dorm were from Switzerland and Europe, so their hobbies were also a bit Europeanlike for me. For instance, hiking, climbing, camping, surfing, etc. As those things soundead extremely unfamiliar to me as a hobby, when they asked me to go hiking or camping together, I always rejected because I was a bit scared and didn’t want to do an adventure. They seemed surprised by my answer and worried about me. A number of Swiss and Europeans do sports and live healthy lives than you would can expect. At first time, I was afraid of doing outdoor things, but once I get used to it, I fully enjoyed it. If you are going to visit Switzerland, you should try outdoor sports at least once because it has wonderful mountains, rivers and lakes to do so.

The most noticeable difference about people that I could feel when I first came back to Korea is people’s behavior. The biggest difference is Swiss people don’t really care about strangers. For instance, they don’t really care whether you wear clothes that shows off your skin a bit. Also, women have freedom of choice to wear bra, so I’ve seen multiple women not wearing bras in public, but of course, no one cared. Once I asked about this thing to my guy friend, and he responded, “No one cares and it is a really common thing to do in here. They won’t care if you just wear your underwear and go around if you are in the forest or near the river, even naked!”. It doesn’t mean that I want to go there again to be naked, but still it felt a bit weird that this issue is controversial in Korean and people even think of it as a sexual thing.

Switzerland was bit scary at first because of its high market price and conservative atmosphere, as I heard, but if you go to Switzerland, you could feel that it is really an opened country and you can save money easily if you are willing to be frugal. Get away from the busy and crowded urban life and go visit the outstanding and peaceful city of Switzerland, where you can take your time and relax a bit. It might sound a little flunkeyism, but it will definitely help you widen your eyes to the world, and be more confident and independent person! Uf wiederluege!