Switzerland Discovery Guide

Switzerland packs the highest concentration of dramatic mountain scenery in Europe into a country you can cross in four hours, and then makes it absurdly easy to reach. Trains, boats, cable cars and postbuses run to a published timetable that they keep, and one ticket covers all of them.

The Alps take up about sixty per cent of the land: the Matterhorn above Zermatt, the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau above Grindelwald, the glaciers of the Aletsch, and valleys where the only access is a cog railway. Below them sit lakes of a colour that photographs poorly and a string of well-kept cities.

The other draw is the mix. Four national languages, a German-speaking east and a French-speaking west that feel like different countries, and an Italian-speaking south with palm trees on the lakeshore. Add museums funded by a century of banking, chocolate and cheese taken seriously as industries, and a level of public order that is either reassuring or unnerving depending on your temperament.

If you have a week

Two nights in the Bernese Oberland — Interlaken, Lauterbrunnen or Wengen — two in Zermatt or the Valais, and two in Lucerne or Ticino, with the train journeys between them treated as part of the trip rather than as transit.

If you want the famous train journeys

The Glacier Express from Zermatt to St Moritz takes eight hours and calls itself the slowest express in the world. The Bernina Express crosses to Italy over the highest rail pass in Europe without a rack, and its line is UNESCO-listed. The GoldenPass links Lucerne to Montreux. All need seat reservations.

If you want to walk

Sixty-five thousand kilometres of signposted paths, with yellow signs giving walking times rather than distances, and huts or a village at the end of most days. The Haute Route, the Via Alpina and the Tour du Mont Blanc’s Swiss section are the long ones; almost every valley has a good day walk.

If you want cities

Zurich for art and nightlife, Bern for a medieval centre that is a UNESCO site, Basel for museums and its position on three borders, Geneva for the lake and the international organisations, Lugano for Italy without leaving.

Switzerland works by not being one thing. Four languages, two religions, twenty-six cantons with real power, and a political system built to stop any of them dominating the others.

Direct democracy

Citizens vote several times a year on specific questions — tax rates, fighter jets, animal welfare, holiday entitlement — and a hundred thousand signatures puts a constitutional amendment to the whole country. This is not ceremonial; it decides policy, and it is the main reason change here is slow and durable.

The cantons come first

Education, policing, tax and health are largely cantonal, and the differences are real. Two cantons, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, still decide matters by open-air assembly, with voters raising their hands in a square.

Privacy and reserve

The Swiss are formal with strangers and warm once you are not one. Punctuality is not a stereotype but a genuine expectation, noise rules are enforced, and Sunday is quiet by law in many places — no mowing, no drilling, in some buildings no laundry.

The militia principle

Military service is compulsory for men, politicians at federal level are part-time by design, and a great deal of public life is run by people doing it alongside another job. It shapes how the country thinks about obligation.

• Basel
• Central Switzerland
• Graubünden
• Jura Mountains
• Lake Geneva
• Schweizer Mittelland (Swiss Plateau)
• Valais
• Zurich Region

Switzerland is expensive, which does most of the crowd management by itself, but a handful of places — the Jungfraujoch, Lucerne, the Matterhorn viewpoints, Lauterbrunnen — are genuinely overwhelmed in July and August. Going in June or September, or choosing a neighbouring valley, solves it.

Use the trains. The network is electrified and largely hydro-powered, a Swiss Travel Pass or a half-fare card makes it affordable, and driving into mountain valleys such as Zermatt and Wengen is not possible anyway — both are car-free.

Stay on marked paths. Alpine meadows are farmed, and the flowers you are walking through are next winter’s hay. Close gates, keep dogs leashed around livestock, and give cattle with calves a wide berth — herd protection dogs are used on some alps and take their job seriously.

Mountain huts run by the Swiss Alpine Club are a better and cheaper way to spend a night high up than any hotel, and the money supports the trail network.

June to September is the summer season: mountain railways and cable cars all running, high passes open, wildflowers in June and hiking at its best in July and August. September is the quiet favourite — stable weather, fewer people, and the cattle coming down from the high pastures in decorated processions.

December to March is the ski season, with reliable snow above about fifteen hundred metres and Christmas and February half-term the busiest and most expensive weeks of the year.

April, May and November are the in-between months. Many mountain lifts, hotels and restaurants close entirely, high passes are shut, and the weather is unsettled — but the cities are cheap and empty, and spring in the lowlands is lovely.

Note that the high mountains have their own weather in any month: snow in July above three thousand metres is unremarkable, and an afternoon thunderstorm in summer is normal.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Switzerland is among the most expensive countries in the world. The two decisions that change a budget most are buying the right rail pass and eating from supermarkets at lunchtime.