[ramblerman]

Swiss cities are consistently among the most expensive in the world. Food is bad. Very xenophobic society.

It has a lot of great things too ofc. But I wouldn’t consider it representative of the nicer parts of Europe (vs pure financial optimization) mentioned above such as working less, walking, biking in the city.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Food is bad. Very xenophobic society.

Where did you get your info? Swiss food quality is some of the best in the world, well regulated and mostly organic, that's why it's so expensive.

How did you measure xenofobia?

[ramblerman]

By food I meant preparation, i.e. cuisine. You are right that food quality in supermarket although expensive is not bad (I wouldn't say it's as amazing as you claim either though, any french/spanish market would knock switzerland out of the park for fresh produce/meats).

xenofobia is subjective, and maybe wrong word, but expat society is largely cut off from locals. I know many germans firsthand that feel they can't integrate.

[FirmwareBurner]

>expat society is largely cut off from locals.

I'm not Swiss but, I think you don't know what xenofobia means. Honestly, I'm getting pretty tired of these tropes, of expats who think that because locald don't chat them up, and if the baristas never greet and smile at them like it's the norm in their home country they immediately take it as the country being xenofobic.

Expat societies are mostly isolated in most other countries, because the locals already have cemented family and social circles from their youth/childhood/university, especially in the Germanic/Norther-European cultures where small-talk and chit-chat is unpopular and people mostly keep to themselves and don't interact much with people they don't know out of respecting their personal space.

> I know many germans firsthand that feel they can't integrate

Then Germans get to experience exactly how expats feel in their country. Join the club.

Snark aside, a Swiss/German/Finnish person not chatting you up and not inviting you to hang out the moment they meet you is not xenofobia, it's people keeping to themselves. Every country and culture has completely different social norms which other cultures might find "unfriendly" but that's not xenofobia.

Xenofobia means something else. And I doubt you were a target of xenofobia too often in Switzerland.

[allarm]

> Then Germans get to experience exactly how expats feel in their country.

Not my feeling/experience at all. I’ve moved to Germany 1.5 years ago and the locals are the most welcoming people I’ve ever met. Especially comparing to Singaporeans, where I spent 6 years before.

I live in the North though, if I lived in Bayern my experience would probably be different.

[nvm0n1]

Switzerland has a massive foreign-born population compared to other places - their largest city is something like 30% foreign - yet very few problems caused by that even though those people often don't learn the local dialects or not even German/French at all. If it were actually a xenophobic society (spelled with PH not F in English) then they'd be having race riots all the time.

In practice Switzerland is one of the more accommodating societies in the world. Most Swiss people don't move far from where they grow up though, so often still have friends from school. It isn't a culture oriented towards chatting with strangers or making new friends at the drop of a hat, but that's not the same thing as xenophobia. Swiss who move abroad then back after many years experience the same difficulties with making new friends.

[sam_lowry_]

Swiss are also quite bullyish. The only time I saw two respectable white men get into a fight over a seat was in the train to Zermatt

[veave]

>Very xenophobic society.

Maybe that's why it works so well.

[Gud]

To paint Switzerland with such broad strokes… Switzerland is culturally very different, you cannot compare Zürich to rural Valais, for example.

I work for a small factory in Aargau and they send me across the planet to install their devices, but I live in Zürich.

It is genuinely one of the nicest place I’ve ever been and I would hardly describe it as xenophobic.

[pieter_mj]

Swiss wages are easily 20-30% higher than the rest of Europe as well.