Swiss Watching Read online

  Visit almost any Swiss town or village and there’s one quick way to tell if the church is Protestant or Catholic: look up and see what’s on top of the spire or tower. A cockerel means it’s a Protestant church, a cross means it’s Catholic. That’s it. Almost 500 years of religious strife reduced to cocks and crosses, which is at least better than bullets and bombs. Of course, going inside a church gives the game away instantly. On the whole, Swiss Protestants are in the less-is-more camp when it comes to interior décor. Their churches are so bare as to make English ones look fussily over-decorated. Few have any fripperies such as paintings, choir stalls, ornate lecterns or even an altar. It’s all about singing and praying, and not being distracted by stucco cherubs, ceiling murals, or bells and smells. For that, you need to go to a Catholic church, preferably a big one.

  In the heart of Canton Schwyz is a huge plaza in front of an even huger monastery. This is Einsiedeln, about as Catholic as it gets. A gaggle of nuns and a black-cassocked priest hurry across the cobbles, an ornate fountain has a gilded Madonna as its centrepiece, souvenir stalls are piled high with rosaries, crucifixes and Jesus-and-Mary knick-knacks. This is definitely not in Protestant country. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s still in Switzerland; it feels more like Spain or Italy. The monastery’s twin-towered entrance is monumentally impressive but only until you step inside; then it’s hard to remember what the outside even looks like. Welcome to a world designed by a wedding cake artist on acid. It is breathtaking, though not necessarily in a good way.

  The white walls are encrusted with flowery pink stucco, curling its way round pillars and paintings. Throw in a pulpit fit for a Pope, golden capitals and angels popping up all over the shop and you have a Protestant’s nightmare. It’s probably going to give me bad dreams. Beyond the eye-bulging Baroque interior, this is a working Benedictine monastery, with about a hundred monks in residence and six services daily. The most memorable is Vesper, every afternoon at 4.30, when the monks sing Salve Regina. It’s goose-bumpingly good, but all it brings to mind is the same line sung by Whoopi Goldberg and her nuns in the film Sister Act. A very different black woman is the main attraction for the pilgrims who flood in all year round: a Madonna holding a baby Jesus, both swathed in sumptuous robes, both their faces originally stained black by decades of smoke from candles and lamps.

  For all its overt Catholicness, Einsiedeln is only an hour from Zurich, the cradle of Swiss Protestantism. Two towns, two beliefs, two worlds apart. Only 40 kilometres separates two of Switzerland’s greatest religious landmarks, the Grossmünster in Zurich and the monastery in Einsiedeln, but the gulf between them is huge. Together they illustrate how different Protestant and Catholic still are, in terms of style if nothing else. One is Queen Mary, all severe and proper with the merest hint of tasteful decoration, and the other Princess Diana, full of exuberance and colour to attract an adoring audience. But what is most Swiss is that the two live together in peace. Then again, the church in Switzerland is a very different beast.

  A DEMOCRATIC CHURCH

  The most notable thing about Einsiedeln is not the ostentatious décor or the quarter of a million pilgrims who come every year, but that it is an autonomous entity within the Catholic Church. It doesn’t belong to a Swiss diocese but reports directly to His Holiness himself, down there in Rome. It’s a hangover from long ago, but there are fewer than a dozen other such examples in the world. For Swiss Catholics, however, it might not seem strange, as their branch of Catholicism has its own rules. There’s no archdiocese in Switzerland, meaning that, like Einsiedeln, all six dioceses are directly beneath the Pope in the Catholic hierarchy. Not only that, but Swiss bishops are chosen in consultation with the people rather than by orders from Rome. The Catholic Church being influenced by a secular democracy? How very Swiss.

  It’s not just the Catholics in Switzerland who have their own way of doing things; the Protestants manage it as well. The Swiss Protestant Church doesn’t exist as a single body, the way the Anglican Church does in England. Known as the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches, it is in effect an alliance of cantonal churches, all independent from each other. Some are still essentially state churches, others not; some liberal in tone, others stricter; some French speaking, most German. In essence it is a mirror of Switzerland itself, all very egalitarian with no one dominant authority.

  The fact that both Catholics and Protestants have a more democratic way of running their affairs is perhaps the biggest reason religion has ceased to be the issue it is elsewhere in the world. For anyone who grew up during the conflict in Northern Ireland, it’s rather astounding to see that the Catholic–Protestant divide in Switzerland, while still there, no longer really matters. That wasn’t always the case. It took the Swiss a while, and some bloodshed, to sacrifice religious dogma in favour of national interest. The trouble all began with one man. No, not that one 2000 years ago, but a Swiss man a little more recently.

  THE THIRD MAN

  The Grossmünster in Zurich is not, despite its name (literally meaning ‘great minster’), Switzerland’s largest or most splendid cathedral; it’s too small and plain for that. Neither is it the Swiss equivalent of Canterbury Cathedral, as Swiss Protestants are not organised hierarchically. However, the Grossmünster can be considered the mother church of Swiss Protestantism, as it was here that the Swiss Reformation was born in 1519. And the father – one Ulrich, or Huldrych, depending on what you read, Zwingli – was present at the birth.

  Zwingli is the forgotten third man of the Reformation; Martin Luther and Jean Calvin get all the press. Around the world you can find Lutheran and Calvinist churches, but Zwinglian ones are hard to come by. Instead of being remembered as one of the martyrs of Protestantism, or even a great Swiss man, he is merely a footnote in its history. In Zurich, his adopted home town, his statue is hard to find, almost lost behind bushy pine trees on the riverside. That might have more to do with the Swiss reluctance to glorify the dead by erecting monuments in their honour. Swiss cities are relatively statue free, unlike their European counterparts, which are littered with stone or metal likenesses of past heroes. This is undoubtedly helped by the fact that the country hasn’t had any monarchs and emperors, or notable generals and presidents, to revere for ever. But it’s also a typical example of Swiss modesty and unwillingness to show off.

  Born near Appenzell in eastern Switzerland, Zwingli left the country backwater for the wider world. He studied in Basel and Vienna, perfected his Latin and Greek, and traded ideas with the great humanist Erasmus. His self-imposed retreat in Einsiedeln monastery ended when he was elected to the post of priest at the Grossmünster. On 1 January 1519, his 35th birthday, he broke all the rules in his first sermon by reading out the Gospel of St Matthew. More daring was being party to eating sausages on a Sunday in Lent, though it was not the sausages themselves that were the problem, rather the timing. Today, it would be hard to find a non-vegetarian Swiss person who’d object to sausage consumption; it’s a national obsession. Zwingli also opposed clerical celibacy, with some self-interest given that he’d secretly married, and fell out with Luther over the precise meaning of the Eucharist. ‘Is it bread and wine or the body and blood of Christ? Discuss.’

  Zwingli’s revolutionary ideas spread across the country like runny cheese, though, as this is Switzerland, there were some holes. Within ten years of that first sermon the country was split, roughly divided into Protestant cities and Catholic countryside. With both sides increasingly intransigent, war wasn’t long in coming. At the Battle of Kappel (1531) Zurich lost to the Catholics, with Zwingli among the many dead – a simple stone memorial beside some linden trees now marks the spot of his death. And that was pretty much the end of him. In terms of reformers, Zwingli is far outweighed by Calvin, who transformed Geneva into a Protestant stronghold. But the fact that he was first, and Swiss (Calvin was French), makes Zwingli a fundamental figure in his country’s history. Who knows what Switzerland, and its people, would be like today if he
had never lived? Or, indeed, hadn’t died prematurely.

  His legacy is clear to see when sitting in the Grossmünster’s compact nave, which is all hard wooden pews, bare stone walls and Romanesque arches, instead of the gilded chapels, overblown artwork and flights of fancy often found in Catholic cathedrals. It’s possible to appreciate the simplicity and beauty of the church itself, and it’s quite a calming experience. A covered stone font serves as the altar and the only real splashes of colour come from the vivid stained glass in the three tall apse windows; a modern addition, designed by Augusto Giacometti in 1932. Zurich’s Protestants today are clearly less bothered than Zwingli about appearing frivolous. Across the river is the Grossmünster’s slender sister church, the Fraumünster, which has even more colourful stained glass windows, though hers are delicate Chagall creations from 1970. Sublimely beautiful if just a little decadent.

  The irony of Switzerland’s city of excess being the birthplace of its Reformation is seemingly lost on Zurich’s inhabitants. They like to think of themselves as well dressed, trendy, sophisticated people who live in a go-getting, hip city that’s on a par with New York or London. I’m not sure Zwingli would approve. No wonder the rest of the country views them as too big for their Dolce & Gabbana boots. However, Zurich isn’t all chi-chi boutiques and shopping excesses along Bahnhofstrasse. Niederdorf, Zurich’s old town, has a distinctly mediaeval air to it, with no traffic, no big chain stores, no trams and no banks. This used to be the city’s red-light district but now the tarts are of the plum or apple variety, with the last survivors of the bad old days a lone sex cinema and a couple of exotic bars, islands of vice stranded in a sea of gentrification. Stepped alleyways branch off to the left and right, leading to a maze of narrow, hilly streets and pavement restaurants. It’s a different city in here, a world away from the suited bankers and twenty-first-century hubbub across the river. Little squares with fountains, stout tower-like houses, front-room tailors, colourful window boxes, one-room bars. It feels like it’s straight out of Zwingli’s era, even though that was 500 years ago. So little has changed, and yet so much.

  WARS OF RELIGION

  In the three centuries after Zwingli’s death, Switzerland was as fractured as everywhere else in Europe. The Swiss managed to stay out of the big conflicts, such as the Thirty Years’ War, but fought each other more than once. It’s hard to imagine the Swiss fighting anyone, let alone each other, but they were still doing it just over 160 years ago. In November 1847 the Catholics’ last stand ended in defeat in the Sonderbund War, a very civil war that lasted less than four weeks and claimed fewer than 100 lives. Seven Catholic cantons, opposed to both the expulsion of the Jesuits and the liberalisation of Switzerland, had formed the Sonderbund, or ‘separate league’. It was all top secret and highly illegal (how very un-Swiss), and when the Protestants found out, they weren’t too pleased. So much so that, led by General Dufour and his new battle flag, they invaded and it was all over by Christmas.

  Of course, the war was about more than religion. What started as squabbles over Mary’s virginity and a priest’s celibacy became nothing more than a power struggle. The mainly rural Catholic cantons had fallen behind the more urban Protestant ones, who believed that wealth was a reward from God. It helped that over the centuries waves of Protestant refugees from France, Italy and England had brought with them their expertise in such areas as textiles, watchmaking and banking. Cue lots of hard work to bring gains of both a worldly and a spiritual nature, also known as the Protestant work ethic.

  To their credit, the Protestants didn’t pursue a vindictive peace but a lasting one, one which would build a country for everyone, regardless of what they believed (except the Jesuits, who were banned until 1973). A new constitution, a new federation and a new-fangled idea called a referendum resulted in a unique political system, a crucial factor in the creation of modern Switzerland. Possibly the best outcome of any religious conflict in history.

  A CLEAN AND PLEASANT LAND?

  One thing that Swiss Catholics and Protestants can agree on is putting cleanliness next to godliness. There are few other countries as clean as Switzerland. It sometimes feels like an army of elves goes around every night making sure that everything from roadside verges to park benches is spotlessly clean. As my father once remarked, you could eat your lunch off the floor of a multistorey car park, which is so clean it makes the tyres squeak. Litter is rarely a problem. Even after day-long festivals, such as Carnival, the ankle-deep detritus and overflowing bins are dealt with promptly. However, take a moment to look beyond the pristine surface and you’ll notice that Switzerland does have cleanliness issues: cigarette ends, chewing gum and graffiti. All three are everywhere.

  Most Swiss smokers clearly don’t regard fag ends as litter. They flick them to the ground so often that the area round a bus stop can look like a cigarette massacre, with little brown corpses littering the ground. It’s perfectly possible to see a smoker carefully put his rubbish in a bin, take a last drag, then flick his still-lit end on to the pavement. Some communities, such as Bern, have tried to fight the flickers with on-the-spot fines of 100 francs, but with smoking banned indoors, the fag ends are piling up even higher outside.

  Then there’s the gum. The Swiss love chewing gum. Per head, they consume as much as those master masticators, the Americans: a jaw-dropping 700 grams per person per year.2 Young, old, male, female, it makes little difference – but I think I know why. By repeating that slow, cud-chewing motion, they’re revealing a subconscious desire to mimic the cows that fill their fields. It’s just another sign that inside every Swiss person is a country soul trying to get out. No surprise, then, to learn that the German for chewing gum is Kaugummi (from the verb kauen, to chew, but it’s very apt for an English ear: ‘cow-gummi’). Living in a nation of copy-cows wouldn’t be so bad if half of them didn’t spit the gum out onto the ground. A lot of Swiss people, particularly young men, spit a lot, particularly with gum. Swiss pavements look like they have some particularly virulent form of measles, so numerous are the hundreds of dots that splatter the ground. It’s a problem in most countries, but totally not what is expected in Switzerland.

  The same goes for graffiti. Every morning I open the shutters of the bedroom window and am confronted with FUCK NAZIS scrawled in big black letters on the house opposite. While I might agree with the sentiment, though not literally, it’s decidedly unattractive to have it plastered across the wall of a house in a normal street. But the Sprayers (as the graffitiists are known here) leave their mark everywhere, just like most dogs. As elsewhere, favourite targets are alongside railways, on road signs or billboards; some of the more colourful and artistic ones brighten up a dull bridge. Sadly, Swiss graffiti also appears on normal houses, historic buildings and windows. Most surprisingly, it’s an act of rebellion that seems to be tolerated, or even accepted, by Swiss society as a whole. No one seems to notice it. Or, unusually, care, even in places where it matters a whole lot more than on an old warehouse or motorway flyover.

  Neuchâtel is apparently the place with the best spoken French in Switzerland, and also has one of the prettiest old towns. Huddled beside a lake, it’s a glorious concoction of steep alleys, cobbled squares and golden sandstone buildings, which Alexandre Dumas described as having been carved from butter. Crowning the whole ensemble are a turreted castle, hence the town’s name, and a fairytale church. It’s rather like a little slice of French heaven has been airlifted into Switzerland. But just to prove it really is Swiss, the graffiti along the road from the station into town is some of the most prolific in the country. It’s so sad to see handsome mediaeval walls defaced by modern scrawl, but the locals seem to walk on by without noticing.

  GREEN IS THE COLOUR

  As if to make up for these three shortcomings, the Swiss are among the world’s most ardent recyclers, with figures that put most other countries to shame. Most aspects of Swiss life are efficiently organised and strictly controlled, and recycling is no different. Sup
ermarkets take back old light bulbs, plastic bottles and batteries, while paper and cardboard collection is free from the doorstep, and bottle and can banks are dotted everywhere. Sorting your rubbish is seen as a civic duty, rather than a personal choice. There are two possible reasons for this.

  One: The Swiss may be neutral but they’re eco-warriors at heart. Rather than doing anything too daring, like chaining themselves to trees or fighting whaleboats, they save the planet through recycling. And by voting Green. At the last general election the Greens were the fifth largest party, winning just under 9 per cent of the vote,3 nine times the Green vote in the UK.

  Two: It’s cheaper. In a country where you pay for every bag of rubbish you put out, it’s in your own interest to recycle. Rubbish is only collected if it’s in the official pre-paid bin bags (in Bern the bags cost about £1 each) or in normal bin bags with the proper sticker; as with everything in this country, the system is different in each community. Suffice to say, the more you recycle, the less rubbish you have, so the less you pay. Saving your pennies is a good incentive for saving the earth.

  Nevertheless, I have a sneaking suspicion that most Swiss recycle avidly because it means following the rules. How satisfying to look down a street on collection day (usually twice a week) and see a host of identical bin bags on the pavement. So uniform, so tidy. Even more rewarding is tying your bundle of newspapers neatly with string, knowing it will be collected. Leave it out in a paper carrier bag or badly tied and it will be left behind, most likely with a little sticker on it saying Unfit for Collection. And I’m not joking.

  Whatever the reason, the Swiss are champion recyclers. With batteries, for example, they manage a recycling rate of 71 per cent compared to the UK’s paltry 3 per cent.4 Yes, that’s right, 71 to 3. But if Mr Joe Brit could drop off his old batteries (and light bulbs and Coke bottles) every time he went to the supermarket, British rates would probably be higher too. Even better, in Switzerland the retailers are legally bound to take back empty soft-drink bottles5; so much better to have the collection costs paid by the likes of Tesco, with its £1 billion-a-week sales,6 rather than a cash-strapped local council. These PET plastic bottles are then recycled into anything from egg boxes to fleeces. Who knew it takes 25 PET bottles to make a fleece jacket?7 That’s the kind of fact the recycling lobby uses to promote its cause, and it clearly works.