With temperatures dropping and winter around the corner, warm boots, fluffy sweaters and big woolly scarfs are slowly re-emerging from the back recesses of our closets. But we need more than warm clothes to protect us from the harsh claws of winter. By making sure that our bodies are getting the right vitamins and minerals, […]
You are being fleeced: “Reputable” foreign companies taking money off Swiss consumers
Many supposedly reputable foreign companies are taking Swiss consumers to the cleaners. Their marketing is masterful in its obfuscation. Some recent product launches exemplify how such companies seek to make excessive profits by charging “Swiss prices” when they have no need to, and how they abuse consumers’ trust here. Netflix, the US-based video on demand […]
Switzerland’s Anne Frank Legacy: Beyond frontiers and religions
Several weeks ago, I travelled to Basel with my wife and 14-year-old son to see an old family friend, Buddy Elias, now 88 and the last living relative of Anne Frank. The first cousin of Anne, Buddy had emigrated to Switzerland in 1931 with his family from Frankfurt, two years prior to the Nazi takeover. […]
Destroy mode!
“Nothing,” said my younger daughter when I walked past her last week, and my blood froze in my veins. As any parent knows, a child’s protest of innocence usually means that they have done something naughty. And if that protest comes before they’ve even been accused of anything, then they’ve done something really naughty. Luckily […]
Swiss don’t speak English very well according to new study
How well do the Swiss speak English? Not as well as most of their counterparts in other European countries according to a study released Wednesday by EF Education First. The 4th edition of the EF English Proficiency Index ranked the English skills of 750,000 non-native speakers around the world. Switzerland placed 18th out of 63 […]
German Community celebrates St. Martin’s Day in Geneva on Saturday 15 November
Imagine small children bundled up in winter clothing carrying homemade lanterns and munching on pretzels. They sing in unison well-known songs like “Ich geh’ mit meiner Laterne” and “Abends, wenn es dunkel wird” (see performances on Youtube) as they follow a man riding a horse through the snowy cobbled streets of Geneva’s old town. Eventually […]
Vitamins. Are they always a good thing?
To understand why we need vitamins, it is better to figure out what vitamins really are. Vitamins are small molecules that our body requires to perform certain biochemical reactions in our cells. The human body has no way to produce vitamin molecules itself, so the vitamins must come from the food that we eat. Inside […]
Champagne, art gallery and fantasising
Last week I spent a happy hour or so strolling around the Montreux Art Gallery, fantasising about what it would be like to a) have enough money to buy whatever I liked and b) have a big enough house to hang it all in. On my second lap of the place, and a few complimentary […]
Swiss want yodelling on UNESCO heritage list
Argentina has Tango, Portugal has Fado, China has the Beijing Opera, and Austria has Viennese coffeehouse tradition recognized by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Switzerland announced last month that it wants the international body to give yodelling protective status as well. Yodelling started as a way of communicating from mountain to mountain, eventually […]
Swiss companies out-perform analysts’ expectations – except for UBS
Markedly positive third quarter earnings are now being released by Swiss companies. According to IG Bank, eight of the 15 companies that have reported so far have beaten analysts’ expectations by an average 2.21% with the exception of UBS. At Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, profits were lower than expected at CHF 762 million against analysts’ […]
