Travel, 50+, Switzerland

There is Switzerland and then there is Geneva...

Out of these two, Switzerland is highly coveted. One of the most coveted things on Earth, you might say. The Pope and his minions covet our young men. The gourmands covet our chocolate while some of our mountain boys and girls cut the cheese under their nostrils (the more aromatic, the better). Many of the foreign millionaires and billionaires covet our taxation and some sorry bagholders covet the scalps of Credit Suisse. George Raa Raa Martin covets if only a fraction of the inspiration JRR Tolkien received hiking our Sky Tinkle Valley and the glorious humps with his fellowship...

...but it wasn't always like this. Only a couple of centuries ago you could go into the wild and end up in a bit of a Hills Have Eyes situation. Just a little before that, there were the witch hunts that only lasted from the 1400s through to the late 1700s, even earning Glarus/Switzerland the honor of being the last place in Europe to try and execute a witch. She was finally pardoned in 2008, which confirms she, indeed, was a witch since no average Joe human lives that long. (In case you are for realsies interested, there are recent publications on the subject, but a feminist with a victim fantasy will be much disappointed to find most of the victims were, in fact, men).

To get out of the dark times, the Swiss needed a vision. Some went about it in less dramatic ways. The people from a fairly un-arable land around La Chaux-de-Fonds had a lot of time in their hands and, for the lack of better things to do, they needed to be able to tell it. As a pastime, they created what is now known as Watch Valley and some of the most desirable timepieces. The bigger cities had bigger visions and Basel did it on LSD. Albert Hofmann not only had a grand vision on his groovy bicycle ride home, but he left us with a tradition when everyone drops on April 19th (also known as Bicycle Day) and has evermore visions to push us forwards, not only in Switzerland, but also as human kind. He left us with psilocybin and psilocin, too. But, as first there must be lesser visions to be improved by greater visions, there must also be the eventual garbage visions. In the latest category, we have the all too famous WEF conference of superiors meeting and scheming on how to rule the peasants. The father of this movement, Klaus Schwab (resigned in 2025 with public shame and accusations on his back) having being born in Nazi Germany is, well, yet another stain they smudged on the Swiss somehow. And now, Switzerland is going on about closing doors from the outsiders. It's been discussed that once the country hits a population of 10 million, the doors are closed and the key is shoved in the leading political party's "secret compartment". Curious times we live in.

The Judgment:
Well, obviously Switzerland is at least the best country in the world. We have the best watches, best drugs, best chocolate, best cheese, we don't talk about the wine, best mountain lakes and the most hilarious Alpine marmots. Your eyes will begin pulsating out of joy as you roam around, but somehow the tourists end up in somewhere like Lucerne or Geneva... Oh well.

Would I go again? Well, I mean...