Swiss Watching Read online

  Lake Constance never features much in British travel articles, television programmes or holiday brochures, which all seem to concentrate on the Italian and Swiss lakes. Maybe it’s a German thing; for all its historic towns, grand castles and many sausages, Germany isn’t top of most British holiday lists. But for Germans the lake is a prime tourist destination, and even with the summertime crowds there’s something rather magical about sitting on one of its promenades eating ice cream. It feels so very un-German. In contrast, the Swiss shore is too dull for words, with depressing towns and nothing much for visitors; no wonder the German side is full of Swiss day-trippers, though that’s probably also because Germany is cheaper. Pop into Müller (a German equivalent of Boots) in Constance and pretty much everyone in there will be Swiss, buying up a six-month supply of perfume, toiletries and medicines. I know, because I’m usually one of them.

  Instead of lining the lake with handsome towns, the Swiss hid them inland, as if trying to keep them secret. It didn’t work. You can’t build such gems as the extravagantly baroque cathedral in St Gallen or the impossibly quaint village of Appenzell and not expect people to find them. But the place that became Dunant’s home for the last 23 years of his life was neither of those; it was Heiden, a small town in the half-canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, the Protestant one of the pair that’s marginally larger than its Inner twin. In those days Heiden was firmly on the convalescent map as one of the places to come and recuperate, thanks to its clean air and its railway. The former made it ideal for a spot of R&R, the latter made it possible to come directly from the big German cities without changing trains. The line up to Heiden from the lakeside is one of two rack-railways in Switzerland that uses a normal gauge. If that means as little to you as it did to me, the simple explanation is that most mountain railways need rails close together (narrow gauge) to cope with the corners, whereas normal lines have a wider space between the tracks. Maybe it’s enough to know that the arrival of this railway in 1875 started Heiden’s boom time, which lasted until the First World War. And it was during this period that Dunant lived, and died, here.

  Today Heiden is a shadow of its former self, though its past glories can still be seen around the town square. One of the grandest buildings is the Rathaus, a pale three-storey affair with that simple, symmetrical elegance that looks Georgian to my English eyes. One look around the empty square and it’s immediately apparent how uniform the architecture is. All the buildings appear to be siblings of the Rathaus; they all seem to have been built at the same time, in the same style and in the same colour, mostly varying shades of off-white. It’s almost as if it were a new town built from scratch. An info board in the square reveals why: Heiden burned to the ground in a Föhn-assisted firestorm in 1838 and was rebuilt in classic Biedermeier style, roughly equating to Georgian in Britain.

  Heiden sits on the edge of the undulating Swiss Plateau 400 metres above Lake Constance, one of Europe’s largest lakes. Even on sunny days, the horizon can be shrouded in blue mist so that water and sky merge in the distant haze, making it feel like Heiden is at the edge of the world. In fact it’s just the edge of Switzerland: Lake Constance is shared with Germany and Austria, with the borders somewhere mid-water. It’s a tranquil scene, and one which apparently Dunant enjoyed on his regular constitutionals. At one spot, the one with the best view of the lake below, there is even a little park named in his honour, complete with a large sculpture, though the angular 1950s affair is rather out of synch with the man and the town. But to get the whole story of Heiden’s most famous resident we need a trip to the hospital, an imposing grey-stone building that’s a larger version of the ones in the main square. It’s no longer a hospital but now houses the Dunant Museum, as this, or at least one room of it, was Dunant’s home from 1887 until he died on 30 October 1910.

  ONE MAN AND HIS MUSEUM

  It’s a Sunday, but even by Swiss standards there’s not a lot happening in Heiden. Maybe that’s why it’s such a good place for R&R; there’s actually nothing else to do but rest. Having walked through deserted streets and empty squares, I was beginning to think the town had been abandoned. Then at the museum I finally meet a living, breathing person. Luckily, my one human contact is very welcoming (maybe she’s glad to see someone as well) and offers to play the short introductory film in English, purely for my benefit. As we walk across the hall to the TV room I notice she is wearing red shoes, which makes my day. Only one person to be seen in Heiden, but she really is Swiss.

  For a comprehensive but easily digestible overview of one man’s life, there can be few better small museums than this. In four rooms, it manages to explain and illustrate the man and his work so well that you come away with a very clear picture of him. Unfortunately, it’s not a happy one. For all his good deeds and overwhelming humanity, by the end he was a deeply sad, bitter, sick and lonely old man, largely forgotten by the world. It’s a far cry from being feted by royalty and hailed as the author of one of the nineteenth-century’s most influential books.

  Henry Dunant was born on 8 May 1828, the eldest of five children in a very Calvinist family. As a young man he set up the Geneva branch of the YMCA, and then went on to be the driving force behind that organisation’s conversion into a worldwide phenomenon; without him it might have remained a parochial English charity. But it was the Red Cross that was the high point of Dunant’s life. When his idea became a reality, international law was created and the seeds of international cooperation were sown. How sad, then, that the rest of his life was largely a disaster. In 1867 he went bankrupt, as did the bank where he was a director. For Geneva society there were (and probably still are) few worse crimes than being involved in a bank’s collapse. Dunant was forced to resign from the Red Cross, expelled from the YMCA and driven into exile in Paris. He never saw his home town again. He flitted around Europe, often homeless and hungry, before ending up in Heiden, an ill hermit with a white beard and long coat.

  In among all the man’s artefacts, the museum has one document in pride of place on a wall. It looks like a school certificate, with Dunant’s name and the year 01 written by hand in ink. This piece of paper is proof that the world, at last, remembered Dunant and honoured him for what he had achieved. On 10 December 1901, he was the recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize. True, he had to share it with Frédéric Passy, founder of the French peace society, but I know which man, and which organisation, has had a greater impact on the world. As for the prize money, Dunant never touched it and it remained in a Norwegian bank account until his death nine years later. In his will, he provided for a free bed in Heiden hospital for anyone too poor to afford treatment – a humanitarian right to the end.

  His was truly a riches-to-rags story, not only financially but in terms of fame and family as well. There can be few other people in history who dined with kings but foraged for food in Paris dustbins, who created an international organisation with a multimillion-dollar budget but was a bankrupt businessman, who helped save thousands of lives but died in a lonely hospital room. His lasting legacy is the Red Cross, which employs 14,000 staff worldwide and has a tax-free annual income of over one billion Swiss francs,10 or roughly the same as the GDP of Burundi.11 I hope he’s smiling in his grave.

  As perhaps the clearest physical example of neutrality and humanitarianism, on the whole the Red Cross has only strengthened Switzerland’s image abroad. The big difference between the two is that while the Red Cross deals with the aftermath of the latest war, Switzerland prepares for the next one; two sides of the same coin, just as their flags are the reverse of each other’s. Neutrality, Swiss style, is not only about being impartial, it’s about being prepared. Very prepared.

  MILITARY TRAINING

  The train ride from Geneva to Bern is quite unlike any other in the country. On a map, Lake Geneva resembles a croissant in a down-turned mouth position, with Geneva sitting at the bottom left, which might explain the city’s outlook on life. By the time the train passes Lausanne, at the top of the b
end, it’s possible to look down on both arcs of the lake. Azure water sprinkled with golden sunlight stretches as far as the eye can see, while rocky peaks tower over the opposite (French) shoreline and villages cling to the steep slopes either side of the railway line. Okay, if it’s raining and you’re sitting on the wrong side of the train, all you’ll see is grey, wet stone. However, sit on the right side and it feels like being beside a small sea, making Switzerland seem a little less landlocked. As enchanting as lakes are, they’re not the same as the sea, but beside this lake there’s a feeling of openness and flatness that is hard to find elsewhere in Switzerland. Ignore the mountains, and the very French architecture of high sloping roofs and iron balconies, and you could almost be beside the Channel.

  Tear your eyes away from the grandstand splendour and focus on the detail, and you won’t believe you’re still in Switzerland. Vines are everywhere: three lines beside the train tracks, long stretches that reach practically into people’s houses, marshalled rows marching down to the water’s edge. Every possible square inch seems to support a vine so that villages appear to be afterthoughts, hemmed in on all sides by cascading terraces of plants. These 30 kilometres of south-facing slopes are in effect one giant vineyard, known as the Lavaux, dating back to the eleventh century. Switzerland may not be as famous as its neighbours for its wines (and I’m excluding Austria from that sentence), but the Swiss love to drink them almost as much as the imported ones. A bottle of Switzerland’s finest is always a good option as a thank-you present.

  This stretch of landscape may look rather un-Swiss – the plethora of vines, the lack of cows, the dearth of green fields – and yet it still all looks so very Swiss – organised, tidy, regimented yet somehow beautiful. It’s as if the landscape has evolved in complete harmony, with man and nature working together for the benefit of both.

  But even with the vines and wines, this train trip can seem like almost any other in Switzerland. Not because of the multilingual announcements, or the efficiently friendly conductor, but because chances are you’re sharing the carriage with a group of soldiers. For many visitors it can be rather unsettling to see a bevy of beer-drinking soldiers carrying assault rifles on public transport. That’s often the biggest surprise of a trip to the world’s most peaceful nation. It may be neutral, but Switzerland is certainly not pacifist. Far from it. It is a highly militarised country, with uniformed soldiers a common sight in trains and towns; it can often feel like the whole country is mobilising for the First World War every weekend. Nevertheless, the Swiss think nothing of it. For them, it’s just a fact of every Swiss man’s life.

  From the age of 20 a Swiss man must complete 260 days of compulsory military service,12 either all at once or in annual stages, before he reaches 34. After his active service time is up, he remains in the reserves for a further ten years and must regularly practise shooting his rifle. Objectors used to go to jail, but in the 1990s the law was finally changed to allow community service instead, though it’s a longer stint of 390 days.13 Women can join in voluntarily, but unsurprisingly, few do: only 141 did in 2010.14 It all adds up to an army of over 200,000 that can be called up at any time to defend the country. But the big question is, against whom?

  Having a permanent army in waiting doesn’t come cheap. Defence annually eats up over four billion Swiss francs, 8 per cent of the national budget, or more than agriculture.15 That’s quite an achievement for a neutral country that hasn’t been attacked in over 200 years. When a Swiss man is away on his military service, the government pays 80 per cent of his salary.16 Given that, in total, 6.5 million days are needed every year,17 that’s quite a bill for the taxpayer. Not only that, each soldier gets his own rifle and two uniforms to keep at home, so that he is ready at a moment’s notice to shoot the enemy and be properly dressed for it. The rifle has to be kept locked out of sight, but this doesn’t stop army weapons being used in over 300 deaths a year.18 With about 2.3 million guns in Swiss homes (75 per cent of them army issue),19 it’s really no surprise that Switzerland has by far Europe’s highest rate of gun suicide.20

  As if being armed to the teeth wasn’t enough, Switzerland is also prepared for anything else that might be thrown at it. Everyone has access to a nuclear shelter, because you never know when the bomb will drop. Mine is in the primary school down the road, but for most people it’s in their cellar, as almost every Swiss building has a cellar. Most house a laundry because most Swiss don’t own a washing machine. Instead there are communal ones in the cellar for all the flats in the building to use. Some laundries have few rules about usage; others have a rota so that everyone gets a turn at washing their dirty laundry in public. Just imagine, having only two days a month (not including Sundays, when it is forbidden) when you can do your washing. It’s so uncivilised. But at least you’d survive a nuclear blast if it was on one of your laundry days.

  Then there are the sirens. No one warns you about those so the first time they start, it sounds like war has broken out. As you contemplate running to the nuclear shelter, a glance out the window shows that everyone else is acting normally. Either the Swiss are frighteningly calm in a crisis, or they know something you don’t. And that something is that at precisely 13.30 on the first Wednesday in February the siren system is tested.21 At least it has a use beyond warning of an imminent attack from God knows who – it’s also used for flood, avalanche and other natural disasters.

  Perhaps the worst side of Swiss militarism is the export of weapons. A lot of them. It defies my logic to see how a country that preaches peace and neutrality can sell weapons to 69 different countries, with the number one customer being Germany.22 Per capita, the Swiss are one of the largest arms’ exporters in the world, selling more than either the British or the Americans.23 Armed neutrality is one thing when it’s a matter of self-defence; it becomes a whole different issue when you are exporting death. To declare yourself neutral in a conflict, and even offer mediation, is laughably hypocritical if you’re selling arms to one side; the Swiss get over that by selling arms to both sides. What are morals when there’s money to be made? War is an extension of business by other means, as Clausewitz might have said if he’d been Swiss. Just as when it exported its men as mercenaries or accepted gold from anyone who had it, Switzerland is still profiting from wars fought by others. A referendum on banning weapons’ exports was defeated in November 2009; clearly most Swiss aren’t willing to put their mouth where their money is.

  FORTRESS SWITZERLAND

  Having been to the lakes at the far east and west of Switzerland in search of peace, I am now standing beside one in the middle of the country, looking at war. Or more precisely, at how Switzerland survived a war. On the tranquil shores of Lake Lucerne (see map on page 30) is an old army bunker, buried deep inside the mountains so that from the outside it’s barely visible. Festung Fürigen opened in 1942 as part of the vast network of Swiss underground defences against a German invasion. The army stayed until 1987 (clearly no one told them the war was over), since when the bunker has been preserved as a museum. And quite a spooky one at that. Wearing an army greatcoat (it’s only about 10°C inside), I walk down long, dank corridors with roughly hewn sides and flickering lights. Marshalled rows of rifles, huge guns that can fire shells 12 kilometres, an emergency operating room and atomic air filters (added in the 1950s) prove that this was not built for peace. The cramped bunk rooms and one shower for 100 men show that it wasn’t designed for comfort either. This was part of Fortress Switzerland. In the event of a German invasion, the cities would have been abandoned and the army would have retreated to these mountain hideouts and fought to the last man. This is armed neutrality in its most extreme, and arguably most successful, incarnation. It’s an engrossing sight and one which exemplifies the Swiss be-prepared mentality.

  Nowhere in the world does neutrality like the Swiss. They’ve been at it for almost 500 years, so they know exactly what’s involved in not getting involved, not taking sides and sitting on the fence. Or do they
? Switzerland exports more arms than Israel, has the world’s fourth highest gun ownership rate and spends more on swords than ploughshares. Armed neutrality is a very Swiss concept, one that defines both the country itself and its relations with the outside world. And it’s still popular with the Swiss, with polls continually showing that both the army and neutrality are seen as necessary; that’s possibly no surprise, given that the former is one of the few sources of cohesion in a fractured country and the latter an essential part of Swiss national identity.

  Shortly after he became Defence Minister in 2008, Ueli Maurer said he wanted the Swiss army to be ‘the best in the world’24 (though no sign of him, as Sports/PE Minister, promising the same for the Swiss football team). A lot of Swiss would agree with his goal for the army, even if they couldn’t say why it’s necessary, but not all of them: in a 1989 referendum, over a third of voters said yes to abolishing the army.25 And things are changing, albeit at Swiss speed. Since 2008 soldiers have had to keep their ammunition in the arsenal, not at home.26 This is rather odd given that their guns are in the cupboard, but with the rifle seen as a symbol of both Swiss manhood and the state’s trust in the individual, that is unlikely to change soon.

  If your only knowledge of history and international law came from war films, you would at least know that the Geneva Conventions are good things, there to protect POWs and define the rules of war. And after watching Steve McQueen trying to jump the border fence on a motorcycle or the Von Trapps walking over the hills, you’d also know that Switzerland is the safest place to be in wartime. But the world is not as simple as Hollywood. War and peace are not black and white, or in German schwarz and weiss; combine the two and you get Schweiz, the German for Switzerland. How apt for a country that lives in that grey area of armed neutrality, striving for peace but continually preparing for war. This seemingly untenable position may be why Switzerland has survived unscathed for centuries.