Anaglyph, the tag you were looking for is
[ quote = person you’re quoting ] [ / quote ]
without the spaces. Reported your post so a mod can fix it.
I’ve never been there, but my co-worker went and she said the cows in the pastures actually wear beautiful cowbells. That image is stuck in my brain.
That’s all I got.
That’s not all Switzerland’s fault. The fact that the U.S. happens to be selling itself out for cheap Walmart crap and imported oil exerts downward pressure on our currency.
My impression of Switzerland is pretty much what everyone here has said. Extroardinarily scenic with clean, pretty cities. Compared with its neighbors it seemed to me to lack the awesome historical and cultural resources of, say, Italy, Austria, and Germany, but then in some ways its beginnings are like those of America–form a republic and throw out the lords–and for that reason it might have seemed less exotic to this American. Without all those dukes and counts to amass enormous collections of priceless art, maybe the resulting museums of today aren’t on quite the same level of quality.
If you do speak German I find that everyone’s really good about not unleashing Swiss German at you; they know you won’t be able to understand it as even most Northern Germans cannot.
All in all, I quite liked Zurich. I’d consider living there given the opportunity.
Whenever TV programmes in Swiss German are shown in Germany they have to include sub-titles to make them intelligible.