What's the status of Switzerland's reputation?

[Lars-E]

Known for chocolates yes, but are they any good...

When I go to the USA the Americans go crazy over my Norwegian candy. Poor things grew up with the Hershey bar which supposedly is chocolate. Rip off.

Only good American candy I tasted was Watchmacallit. In sale anymore?

[mapfi]

best chocolate ever of course - Hershey bars, yuck

[chequita guevara]

They make good cheese.

[Datajack Franit]

How can you trust those evil yodelers!

[mactbone]

That EFTA seems like some sort of "loser's" club. They didn't want to join the EU, but they want to be in a club, so they made this one up. I mean, c'mon - Iceland? Lichtenstein? They aren't even really countries! Isn't Iceland devoid of anyone that isn't related fifty times over to everyone else? And Lichtenstein is a principality!

Anyways, the thing that sticks out in my mind is that the Swiss were hardcore mercenaries, and they are the only guards the Pope has. Which seems funny considering Switzerland isn't exactly know for being very religious.

[Ozz]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Ignore Ozz, it's a DL and has been already owned.

**** off, Paiktis22

You want to carry your loser attitude into every thread on the board, cause you try and defend a bunch of
murderin' a-holes and get your ass burnt by EVERY
poster on the thread.

I thought your were pathic, how i think your just stupid
and vengeful. The best thing you could do for greece is
stop posting their pathic propaganda, bad enough greece looks treacherous, you make it a look a fool.

Everyone else, sorry for the threadjack, but that had to be said . Nice board here, 10 days and I'm already telling
Paiktis to F off. I bet that is NOT a record.

[Bereta_Eder]

poor attempt owned DL, poor attempt.

Try to learn to lose. Your antihellenic bias exposes you everytime

[mapfi]

MacTBone, the EFTA actually started out as a large club - it was founded as a counter organisation to the former EU with the intent of only having economic agreements. The UK actually was a member of the EFTA before it joined the EU. What's left now is pretty bad - though the EFTA actually has trade agreements with countries that the EU does not have. I'm not sure, but I actually think one of them is Mexico or Canada but I'm guessing...

[MichaeltheGreat]

That's nice Ozz, now run along and play.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by mapfi
best chocolate ever of course - Hershey bars, yuck

hehe, but hershey was originally "hirschi" and has it's root somewhere in the "berner oberland" (highlands of berne, a very rural region with some nice skiing locations (prince charles and roger moore like it ))

[Gangerolf]

cuckoo clocks, neutrality, skiing and banks

[sabrewolf]

might sound like too much self praise, but because i'm not born swiss, i'll dare to say it:

switzerland is the only true democracy in the world.

why? look at germany: green and red have 50.2% of the votes, but they control 100% of the ministries. if a party has less than 5% they don't even get to enter the national council.

usa: republicans have slightly over 50% (in fact bush scored less than gore) but have 100% control over legislative (senate, the house), executive (president and ministers) and judicative (supreme court, etc.).

in switzerland everyone is always represented proportionally (although our far right wing party has just 1 instead of 2 seats in the legislative). sometimes the central parties vote lefter, sometimes righter, sometimes even green and right wing have an alliance. so there's never a totally predominant party.
and of course the people get to vote 4x a year on more or less important issues.

the disadvantage of this "real" democracy is the slower changes of rules and laws.

[sabrewolf]

btw: getting women to vote in 1971 is a shame. in some regions (appenzell, a very backward farming region) it took iirc 15 years longer. for voting, all men stood on the market place and held their swords (yes, swords... in die 80s!!!) up in the air to decide...

however, back to the womens voting: main reason why we were so late was that we weren't in the world wars. while GB, F, D, I, USA and other nations sent all their men to fight and women had to work in their positions, in switzerland most men went on doing their jobs and swiss women had to stay at home.

we might be slow sometimes and mostly too conservative in a young intelligent man's opinion, but we're catching up slowly. gradually closing up to europe, joining the UN, clearing up with our bad history (not many countries officially say they are sorry for cruelties and evil'ties they've done in the past)... give us some years