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Switzerland in eight easy-going questions about the essentials. Young or old, everyone can join in and maybe learn something new along the way.
Alpine newcomer 0–3 · Happy hiker 4–6 · Swiss through and through 7–8
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Switzerland's flag is unusual because it is square instead of rectangular, and Vatican City is the only other country with a square national flag. On ships and boats, the Swiss fly a longer, rectangular version of it instead.
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Cheesemakers call the holes 'eyes', and they come from bubbles of gas made by tiny bacteria. This century, scientists found that specks of hay dust in the milk help those bubbles start. Because modern milking machines keep the milk so clean, Swiss Emmental now has fewer and smaller holes than it used to.
Photo: Manuel2, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 de.
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Swiss watchmaking is centred in the Jura mountains, where the towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle were rebuilt after big fires with long, straight streets of homes and workshops for watchmakers. Together the two towns became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009.
Photo: MadGeographer, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Heidi, by the Swiss author Johanna Spyri, came out in two parts in 1880 and 1881 and tells of a little girl who goes to live with her grandfather in a hut high in the Alps. It is one of the best-selling books ever written, and a Japanese cartoon series about her from 1974 became famous in many countries.
Photo: Original artist is unknown/uncredited. (Signed "W C 84"), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Switzerland does not use the euro but has its own money, the Swiss franc, which tiny Liechtenstein uses too. Its short code is CHF, from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland, chosen because the country has several languages.
Photo: Allain22, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner served it to the patients of his clinic in Zurich, and 'Müesli' simply means 'little mush' in Swiss German. His original recipe had far more fruit than oats: two or three small apples, skin and core included, with just one spoonful of soaked oats.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Daniel Peter, a chocolate maker in Vevey on Lake Geneva, mixed cocoa with condensed milk made by his neighbour. It took him years more to get the recipe just right, and his first milk chocolate bar for eating went on sale in 1887. Today milk chocolate is the most eaten kind of chocolate in the world.
Photo: Chocosuisse (unknown photographer), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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The hospice on the Great St Bernard Pass got its first dogs between 1660 and 1670, at first as guard dogs, and the monks later used them to find travellers lost in snow and fog. The most famous one, Barry, is said to have saved more than 40 lives, and one of the hospice's dogs is always named Barry in his honour.
Photo: Blanky, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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