What's the status of Switzerland's reputation?

[mapfi]

Just wondering how the world see us nowadays. What comes to your mind first? Any prejudices?

on a sidenote, there are like 3 or 4 active Swiss posters around here - do you fellows have any idea on why not more?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I confess my impression of the Swiss was that they were pleansant and largely harmless -- until the Nazi gold and art scandals a few years back. After that (and the denials and obfuscation that followed), you guys started seming like a nation of amoral greedheads. Though that's not a strong impression, nothing's really happened to change it.

Waiting until 1971 to give women the vote isn't really that impressive, either.

My other impression of the Swiss is garnered from The Third Man:

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Now I've never really thought that was fair. After all, you also gave the world fondue.

[mapfi]

you forgot the müesli... and Einstein!

As for the women's right to vote - I can make it even more a shame by telling you that the male population of one of Switzerland's smallest cantons refused to do so till the nineties when finally our supreme court ordered them...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

But you wrote a very nice answer to my question about first- and second-class train service, so my impressions of the Swiss have just improved dramatically. Thanks!

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by mapfi
you forgot the müesli... and Einstein!

He only lived in Switzerland for 15 years...

But they included his annus mirabilis of 1905, so I suppose you get half-credit. Germany takes the other half.

[KrazyHorse]

My opinion of Switzerland?

Small, european, odd and mostly harmless.

[Boris Godunov]

Kinda cute.

[Stefu]

Switzerland doesn't exist. No-one knows anyone from Switzerland. (In case someone does know someone from Switzerland, he/she's a German actor.) No-one knows what happens in Switzerland - or has happened, apart from few things (cuckoo clocks, Nazi gold). Even the name sounds like something Americans think European countries are named.

Switzerland is a conspiracy.

[Giovanni Wine]

I know a lot of people from Switzerland

Let me think, I know 3 guys from Geneve (French Switzerland)
And 6, maybe more as I probably forgot someone from around Lugano and in Locarno (Italian Switzerland)

Although nobody from German Switzerland

They all are nice people.

Saluti

[KrazyHorse]

Damn German.

[mapfi]

Einstein was
German from birth 1879-1896,
no citizen because he denounced German citizenship from 1896-1901,
Swiss from 1901-1914,
Swiss and German from 1914-1933,
Swiss from 1933-1940,
Swiss and American from 1940 until death 1955,
so most of the time Swiss.
He finished highschool here and studied at the same uni as I do now. He also taught at the uni for 3 years before leaving for Germany again. But I wasn't too serious when giving Switzerland credit for Einstein...

[Clear Skies]

I've met Swiss people and they seemed like a nice bunch...but in general, it is things like the Nazi gold scandals which stick in the memory. Like many places, individually the people are nice...collectively they can be less so.

Although it's always amusing to see a sea of yellow on maps of the EU with this one lil brown spot right in the middle...

[KrazyHorse]

He only lived in Switzerland for 15 years. Doesn't matter how long he held citizenship there. Most of the period of 1896-1914 was spent in Switzerland. After that it was Germany and then the US.

[mapfi]

Originally posted by Clear Skies
Although it's always amusing to see a sea of yellow on maps of the EU with this one lil brown spot right in the middle...

and I think that'll probably stay that way for quite another while...

and frogger, for that matter he lived in the US only a few years more than 15, but as I said I wasn't too serious!

[KrazyHorse]

I also think the Swiss are braggarts and blowhards, so eager to protect their status that they stoop to obfuscation and self-aggrandizement.