Diccon Bewes > Quotes

“The Swiss are rich but like to hide it, reserved yet determined to introduce themselves to everyone, innovative but resistant to change, liberal enough to sanction gay partnerships but conservative enough to ban new minarets. And they invented a breakfast cereal that they eat for supper. Privacy is treasured but intrusive state control is tolerated; democracy is king, yet the majority don’t usually vote; honesty is a way of life but a difficult past is reluctantly talked about; and conformity is the norm, yet red shoes are bizarrely popular.

It is perhaps no surprise that the Swiss are contradictory, given how divided their country is. Since its earliest days Switzerland has faced geographic, linguistic, religious and political divisions that would have destroyed other countries at birth. Those divisions have been bridged, though not without bloodshed, but Switzerland remains as paradoxical as its people. While modern technology drives the economy, some fields are still harvested with scythes (all the hilly landscape’s fault); it’s a neutral nation yet it exports weapons to many other countries; it has no coastline but won sailing’s America’s Cup and has a merchant shipping fleet equal in size to Saudi Arabia’s. As for those national stereotypes, well, not all the cheese has holes, cuckoo clocks aren’t Swiss and the trains don’t always run exactly on time.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside Europe's Landlocked Island

“And in Bern there’s a physical reminder of his army’s presence: the street signs in the city centre are still in four different colours, a system used to help illiterate French troops find their quarters. In some streets signs are green on one side, yellow on the other; a little historical anomaly that modern tourists barely notice as they take photos.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“How odd it is that the Alpine republic has managed to make its products famous the world over but hasn’t produced many well-known citizens.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“Mercenary armies were abolished in the new Swiss federal constitution of 1848, although existing contracts were still honoured (how very correct) until the government banned all forms of fighting for money in 1859. The sole survivor of the bloody practice is the Pope’s Swiss Guard, which has been protecting his Holiness since 1506. To serve in Rome, the men must be under 30, over 1.74m tall, single and have completed their Swiss military service. Being both Swiss and Catholic are somewhat essential as well.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“A week at the Grand Hotel Bear in that first winter season cost £10 5s 0d (about £600 today), including second-class train travel from London, room (with lights, service and heating), full board and 56lb of luggage. Passengers could leave Charing Cross at 2.20pm and arrive in Grindelwald at 3.10pm the next day, having caught a boat, travelled through the night and changed trains four times. The same train journey today takes ten hours with three changes, in Paris, Basel and Interlaken.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“Contrast that with an exemplary piece of civic far-sightedness: the large open space that sits in the centre of town opposite the Victoria-Jungfrau. Known as the Höhematte, this was once on the edge of the village and had belonged to Canton Bern since the Reformation, but in 1863–64 the state was selling off its property. With Interlaken expanding, the plan was to parcel it up and sell it to developers cashing in on the hotel boom. That would have meant an end to the unspoilt views of the Jungfrau and made Interlaken a much more urban place, possibly ruining the very reason it was so popular. Luckily, that never happened. Not everyone saw development as the answer and, after much wrangling, the Bernese parliament eventually approved Plan B: the Höhematte was bought by a group of shareholders who vowed never to build on it. And they never have. It remains a green and pleasant patch of land, where it’s not unusual to see a farmer out harvesting his hay.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“The Glacier Express shows that for the Swiss the mountains are a challenge rather than a barrier, there to be tunnelled under and driven over. They are also a playground, to be walked up and skied down, as much as a defence against the outside world.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“Most Swiss people understate everything from their own wealth to the winter temperatures. If they say they only speak a little English, they’re probably nearly fluent;”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“Dress codes weren’t the only minefield; there was the etiquette of the evening dances: “Young people who had tobogganed together usually addressed each other not as Miss Smith or Mr. Brown but as Miss Mary or Mr. Bobby, which was considered to mark a real advance in intimacy. To dance more than twice with the same partner was faintly compromising.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“Railways ushered in an era of faster, cheaper mass transport – 25 million passengers in 1880, 240 million in 1910 – but for many Swiss it was still out of reach financially. What was affordable for British visitors was a luxury for locals. Transport history centre Via Storia reckons that most of those 240 million passengers were tourists and the small layer of Swiss society with money, but the middle classes could at least contemplate a trip for the first time; not often or far, but a possibility, although in third class most likely, as first class was double the price, and mountain trains were even more expensive. Someone from Zurich might manage a day trip once a year to Lake Lucerne or to another Swiss city, one that had probably been an economic rival until then.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“Here’s a typical British–Swiss chat about the weather: Brit, coming in from outside: ‘Brrr, it’s so cold out today.’ Swiss: ‘It’s winter.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“Of the historic fault lines in Swiss society, the religious one is the least obvious today, mainly because it's the least clear-cut. There are French-speaking Protestants and German-speaking Catholics, and vice versa. [...] For most Swiss people, where you live, how you vote and what you speak are all more important. Having helped create the Switzerland of today, Christianity has moved from conflict to consensus. A Catholic nun walking through Bern as the Protestant cathedral's bells ring would have once been unthinkable; today it's normal. [... It's] a moment to cherish [...] because it shows what a society can achieve if it tries.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside Europe's Landlocked Island

“Life in any country is all about the rhythm of the year. Not just its seasons, but its festivals and customs, holidays and traditions, all of which combine to make the year as individual to a country as its flag.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“Invitations almost never state a dress code because that would break two cardinal rules: you are implying that you don’t trust your guests to come dressed properly, and you are invading their privacy by telling them what to wear.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“There’s nothing like an external threat to keep internal divisions at bay.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“For many English speakers up is synonymous with north, and down with south; you go up to Scotland or Canada and down to Devon or Florida. For the Swiss it’s about gradient not direction, making up short for uphill or upstream, which is logical for a mountainous country. So the Bernese talk about going down (north) to Basel but up (south) to Interlaken.”
― Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

“Despite only having a population of around 5000, Interlaken has two stations, West and Ost, at opposite ends of the long main street. They are direct descendants of two Bödelibahn stations, relics of long-forgotten planning that survived because of another oddity: a railway that crosses the River Aare twice between the two stations for no geographical reason. The line could easily run along the south bank without any hindrance, but the planners were sneaky; they could envisage a time when the Aare might be widened in order to create a navigable canal between the two lakes. That would put the steamers in direct competition with their trains, and tourists could simply sail past Interlaken altogether. So they purposefully diverted the new line across the Aare and back again, a double crossing that stopped any such canal plans in their tracks.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“Tourists and travellers are two sides of the same coin living in a symbiotic relationship of mutual contempt but actually dependent on each other. Without the infrastructure of tourism, being a traveller would be much harder work and much more expensive; without the frontier spirit of travellers, tourists would be trapped in the same old places, not knowing where the next new destination is. In the end there’s no big difference. Tourist, traveller – many people are both, even on the same trip.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

“For example, in the mid-1960s there were direct flights from London to Interlaken (with British Eagle), and in the late 1980s Brits were still the most numerous hotel guests in Interlaken, outnumbering even the Swiss. However, in 2012 Britain only managed No. 8, overtaken by the likes of India, Korea, China and Japan. The British century (and a half) in Switzerland is over; the Asian one has just begun.”
― Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart