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Visiting Switzerland? Here’s what the locals love
19.09.2023 - 00:43 / nationalgeographic.com
With its storybook alpine scenery, cultured lakeside cities, and miles of peerless pistes, Switzerland packs a lot into its landlocked borders. We consulted resident experts, from museum curators and musicians to hiking guides and authors, for their insider tips.
Switzerland grows an impressive number of grape varietals (252, to be exact) for its diminutive size. “For centuries, Swiss winemakers have tended vines to help preserve the land and pass it on to the next generation, in a place where mountains and waterways are continually vying for space,” says Ellen Wallace, author of Wine Hiking Switzerland.
While most visitors flock to the Valais’ vertiginous vineyards, it’s the Italian-speaking, Ticino, the country’s southernmost canton (region), that’s won Wallace’s heart. Reached via Monte Carasso cable car, the six-mile trek from Mornera station to family-run Settemaggio Winery promises 14th-century church frescoes and chestnut forests, capped with a tasting of Ticino’s signature white merlot.
For centuries, alpine herders and villagers would communicate across valleys with nearly 10-foot-long horns hewn from fir trees. “Up in the mountains it sometimes creates echoes,” says Fritz Frautschi, a renowed alphorn player (and former Swiss Army cornetist), of the wooden wind instrument’s soft and velvety sound, which can carry up to six miles. Played solo, in church choirs, or as part of an orchestra, it’s at its most lyrical when blown in the great outdoors. Hear it for yourself at one of Switzerland’s folkloric events or Nendaz’s annual Alphorn Festival, where the music of a hundred alphornists rings out above the Rhône River valley in July.
(Switzerland’s yodeling tradition is changing. Here’s how to experience it.)
It’s no secret that Zurich and Geneva’s lakeside residents enjoy bathing en plein air, but the Bernese have a more freestyle approach. Snaking through the Swiss pseudo-capital is the 180-mile-long Aare River, where locals (including Bern’s mayor) float down its fast-flowing turquoise course come summertime. “It’s total relaxation,” says retired journalist Laura Fellmann, whose “lunch break dips” became a three-decade daily meditation. For calmer waters, she suggests entering the glacial-fed Aare (pronounced Ar-reh) just upstream from the Lorraine Bad, then warming up afterward in the riverside public bath’s tented sauna. “It’s even more magical at night,” she says.
“We’re in another world here,” says Gianna Mestermann, guide and long-time resident of Carouge’s old town. Although only an orange tram ride from downtown Geneva across the Arve River, this bohemian neighborhood—scattered with chic pavement cafés and secret courtyard gardens—feels more Mediterranean than Swiss, says Mestermann.
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