Cuckoo clocks and chocolate triangles

Some well observed facts to help us understand what we can expect from the organisers of AC2007, courtesy of the Xenophobes Guide to the Swiss

Know thy Swiss:

The following is extracted from the highly entertaining book the Xenophobes' Guide to the Swiss by Paul Bilton (ISBN 1-902825-45-4) - click here to order a copy:

'The Swiss are the only nation to make the Germans appear inefficient, the French undiplomatic and Texans poor.'

'The diversity of the Swiss is apparent in the degree to which they worry. The German-speakers do little else. The French-speaking Swiss are great visionaries and philosophers with noble thoughts and global dreams. They worry that their Swiss-German compatriots do not share these dreams. The Italian-speaking Swiss have a terrible tendency not to worry nearly enough.'

"Tourists demand cuckoo clocks to take home, so the Swiss are happy to accept Swiss francs for them, but in reality they are far too kitsch for Swiss taste and originate in southern Germany. It is true that the Swiss army is issued with knives; but not the tourist version complete with scissors, tweezers, toothpick, nailfile, corkscrew and horse-hoof stone extractor."

'Muesli, the invention of the Swiss, Dr Bircher-Benner, is not so much a breakfast cereal in its native land as a creamy fruit-filled stomach liner that is more often eaten at lunchtime.'

'The perceptions of the Swiss as being dull and boring, while at the same time displaying a talent for ruthless efficiency and a limitless capacity for hard work, are uncomfortably close to the truth. The cliched impressions of high mountains, watches, cheese (with and without holes), chocolate bars and gold bars are genuine. But ask anyone in Zurich where the gnomes are and you will earn blank looks. The same applies if you want to buy a Swiss roll - no Swiss has heard of it.'

'The Swiss Catholic and Protestant churches are mainly financed through income taxes. Tax declaration ask for one's religious persausion and a levy of approximately 6% per Catholic and 5% per Protestant is added to tax bills. Thus everyone is happy: Swiss atheists can benefit in the here and now by avoiding church taxes, while those paying can look on it as a form of after-life insurance'

'The Swiss have invested heavily in communial incinerators that not only burn domestic rubbish cleanly thanks to sophisticated filter systems, but also supply hot water through heavily insulated pipes for centrally heated blocks of flats. The only major drawback to this environimentalist's dream is that the Swiss have been unable to produce enough rubbish to burn in the incinerators and have had to import rubbish by the truck load from Germany and Italy, at great expense, not to say environmental damage.'

"There is no head of state or prime minister, but a ceremonial position of an annually rotating presidency - after all, someone has to entertain visiting foreign dignitaries."

'In [Switzerland] you have an economy with a higher gross national product per capita than any other country on earth, without the trade surplus or economic problems of Japan.

'Swiss business has experienced 40 years of almost unbroken boom. For most of this period the Swiss were unaware that 'zero unemployment' as understood by Keynsian economics means around 2% of the working population...It is now tumbling in the direction of the pre '90s when the Swiss ran their unemployment rate at 0.4% - or less than 18,000 people. They probably knew them all by name.'



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