[schoen]

When you use pronouns for anaphora, would you use "es" for all countries, or is it plausible to imagine "er" or "sie", as with common nouns?

For example: Vor drei Monaten waren meine Mutter und ich in der Schweiz; wir haben _____ wirklich schön gefunden.

Would you accept "sie" here as a reference to Switzerland (because it was referred to as "die Schweiz"), or "es", or both? My intution is "es", but I'm not not a native speaker and non-native German speakers notoriously over-apply "es" to inanimate things.

[pluma]

I'd use "es" because it refers to the experience of being in Switzerland rather than the country itself.

But Switzerland is another example of a country that is typically used with an article. Consider the sentence "Ich fahre nach ____" with a country name. It doesn't work for countries like Switzerland ("nach Schweiz" sounds wrong, you'd instead say "in die Schweiz" -- same as "nach Kongo" vs "in den Kongo").

[schoen]

Thanks! Can we force the sentence to be about the country itself?

- Was meinen Sie über die Schweiz?

- ____ ist schön. / Ich finde ____ schön.