Swiss Watching, 3rd Edition: Inside the Land of Milk and Honey

The author (a Brit) gives the reader an interesting and entertaining perspective about living in Switzerland. The book includes a brief overview of Swiss history, and also humorous but informative commentary on various behaviors by the Swiss people. This is not a guidebook, but would be helpful to anyone planning to visit Switzerland. Although a small state, Switzerland has a rich and complex history, four languages, a famous version of direct democracy, world class scenery, and much more. As someone who has been to this beautiful country, I greatly enjoyed reading this book, and highly recommend it.

Your first red flag should be the fact that this book's title is incorrect on the Amazon listing. Hint: It's "Milk and Money" not "Milk and Honey".

In short, this book was very disappointing because the subject - Switzerland - is so potentially interesting but the author falls short in nearly every category. The book is neither illuminating (I did not learn anything I could not learn on Wikipedia or from taking a public tour) nor funny (the author's corny puns are placed numbingly at the end of nearly every paragraph). A few examples:

- Instead of showing us, the author tells us. I cannot count the number of times he used the phrase "The Swiss love X or Y". In a random sampling of a chapter or two I recorded his use of the following phrases: "The Swiss love their mobile phones", "Switzerland loves its apples", "The Swiss love being in a group", "The Swiss love their trains" (shortly followed by) "The Swiss also love their cars", and "The Swiss love their muesli". Ignoring the fact that many of these things are pretty much universally loved by human beings in every country, this is just poor writing. In my opinion, a good travel book or a book that is attempting to paint a portrait of a country and a people should show these traits through anecdotes, stories, and characters. The author instead simple tells us. It gets boring fast.

- I think the greatest crime of this book is that it is completely lacking in any characters. We do not meet any Swiss people. The 350+ pages are filled with the author's own pedantic observations, but no attempt to go out and talk to Swiss people and let them bring the book (and their country) to life - whether bankers or dairy farmers or politicians or immigrant workers. What do Swiss people feel about the fact that English is becoming more popular? The author will tell you, and you'll just have to take his word for it. What do Swiss people feel about their political system? You won't hear a word from an actual Swiss person on the matter. What is it like to collect signatures for and successfully pass a public referendum (something very Swiss!)? You'll be disappointed if you were hoping that the author would take the time to talk to someone who had done it and paint a picture of the process. You'll have to settle for the author reciting statistics on the matter and making corny quips instead. I could got on and on. It makes the book exceedingly dry as you just have to listen to the author drone on, rather than getting to "meet" Swiss people through the pages. Even when he describes a train ride or a visit to a museum and mentions interacting with Swiss folk, the deepest he goes is describing a bland encounter with a "nice" or "friendly" (his favourite descriptors) tourist information worker or bus driver. I have more interesting encounters in my daily life in Switzerland and I'm not even trying to write a book about it.

- The author makes no attempt to show us anything deeper than the experience of the average tourist in Switzerland. When he visits a museum does he score an interview with the museum's director so as to paint a nuanced and unseen portrait of the museum? No. He takes the public tour just like everyone else and then describes what he saw on the public tour. It's as dull as it sounds. When he visits the Swiss parliament does he use his connections to visit with a Swiss politician and walk down the corridors of power while interviewing an interesting character? No. He tells us that the parliament building is closed to visitors on that day and that's that. I may alone in this, but I feel that a travel writer or journalist (as the author calls himself) should put in more effort. In this book you will learn nothing more than what you could learn from Wikipedia or from a public tour. The author apparently has no sources, no contacts, no connections, and nobody to talk to anywhere he goes. So he takes the public tour of the chocolate or cheese factory by himself and then regurgitates it for us.

- The author loves to use the phrase "How Swiss!" and variations of it. Invariably, at the end of some description of trains or cheese or chocolate he will conclude the section with the insightful observation of: "How very Swiss" or "So very Swiss" or sometimes just "So Swiss". Play a drinking game where you drink a shot each time you read this phrase and I guarantee you'll be drunk in no time. How Swiss!

- The author seems to equate Swiss with Swiss-German, as that's the part of Switzerland he lives in. He barely brushes over the French-Swiss parts, and god help you if you are interested in anything Italian-Swiss. When he describes how Swiss people talk, for example, he is talking about Swiss Germans. On that topic, at one point in the book he spends several pages explaining with incredulity that letters in German have different names than they do in English. You know, the same way it is in every language. He finds it hilarious and shocking that the Swiss (Germans) don't say the letter "K" or "Y" or any other letter the same way we do in English, without even a mention as to the fact that this is the way it is in every language that uses the same letters (including French and Italian, which he ignores in this section).

- The author is British and apparently therefore everything in Switzerland must be compared to how it is in Britain. This is boring in and of itself, but he never digs deeper to explain why they are different. Brits queue and Swiss don't? Okay, interesting, but why? He doesn't even try to explain (or god forbid, ask a Swiss person). One of the major Swiss supermarkets doesn't sell alcohol and tobacco, and the author cannot imagine this ever being the case in a British supermarket? I'm bored already but can you maybe explain why there is this cultural difference? Nope, the best you'll get is a eye-roll-inducing pun or quip at the end of that section. He even talks about how they drive on the "other" side of the road in Switzerland, which is a travel-blog-level "observation". It reads like a 22-year-old gap year student seeing something new for the first time.

- On the matter of writing like a 22-year-old, the author is obsessed with the Swiss (German) use of the word "fahrt". He seems to think it is hilarious, while still managing not to turn it into anything funny for us. It's like fart in English! Get it? Fart!

- Speaking of language, the very last section of the book on "Swinglish" is so bad. It's basically just the author making fun of Swiss (Germans) who don't speak or spell perfectly fluent English. He seems to find this uproariously funny, and sees no irony in the fact that he cannot speak even 1 of the 3 Swiss languages fluently.

- Lastly, the author cannot drag himself away from the clichés of cheese, chocolate, and watches. You would hope a travel book would quickly get beyond these, but the author returns to them over and over and over again. Imagine if a travel book on India kept coming back to curry, Bollywood movies, and the caste system. There's so much more to any country than it's clichés, and this author fails to escape the seemingly gravitational pull of making a pun or a quip about cheese or chocolate or watches on nearly every page. It's nauseating - just like you might feel if you ate too much Swiss cheese or chocolate! (This is literally the level of pun we are subjected to over and over.)

In summary, this book is a boring and clichéd attempt to paint a picture of what is a truly unique and quirky country. Skip it and read Wikipedia or watch a YouTube video instead.

I originally started SWISS WATCHING: INSIDE THE LAND OF MILK AND MONKEY before my first trip to Switzerland. Finishing it post-trip has been a nice way to process and appreciate my experience.

Author Diccon Bewes is a queer British expat turned resident of Switzerland & naturalized citizen. The book is focused primarily on modern Switzerland, with Bewes talking about everything from Swiss democracy & federalism, the banking, watch, and chocolate industries, to beloved literary icon Heidi (spoiler: she might not be as Swiss as you think). Bewes' writing is insightful and humorous in that oh-so cheeky British way, but his affection for Swiss cultural history and its people is what anchors this read.

Strongly recommend! 🇨🇭

Learned a lot prior to my trip to Switzerland. Glad I read this.

I read this just before traveling to Switzerland and it really enhanced my experiences in the country. It's a warmhearted look at a nation that is as quirky and as admirable as any in the world. Highly recommended reading.

Swiss Watching is informative and at times amusing look at ‘Swissness’. Bewes has pulled together a lot of information, and although most of the facts are easily available, he has mustered them better than most of the many writers whom have milked the same vain. The facts are accurate, and his personal insights all help expose the deep foundations of nationhood. I have lived as a foreigner in this diverse, generally loved and often envied country for a similar length of time to Bewes. Above all, Switzerland is proof that diverse democracies can really work. It light of how badly democracy is performing in its birth countries, that is a point that can’t be overlaboured. I would have liked Bewes to be rather more affirmative of this, to me, crucial point. However, I acknowledge that for everyone who wishes to know more about politics there are half-a-dozen who variably avoid exposure to the subject. Be assured, that this book is an easy read for a great diversity of individuals.
This is a book that every would-be immigrant to Switzerland should read, and from which every visitor can gain snippets of information with which to enhance a stay of any length. If anything, Bewes underplays how much better Switzerland is than everywhere else, though even here, not everyone has nearly as much milk and money as most outsiders are inclined to believe. Yes, lifecan be tough, even for the Swiss.
This is more than a compendium of facts and percipient interjections, it is also likely to be of real help to those new to Switzerland, often struggling to get a grip on how this fascinating and unique cultural and linguistic puzzle functions so smoothly. A book worth everyone’s hard earned frank-and-cents.

As promised