Switzerland turns 735 today. For a country this composed, that is a remarkable run, and the 1st of August still feels less like a parade and more like a quiet family celebration that happens to involve an entire nation.
I was not born here. I am German, and I came to Switzerland for what was meant to be a short chapter. The chapter turned into a life. Years later I received my Swiss passport, and I still count that among the proudest days I have had. A country you are given by birth is a fact. A country you choose, and that eventually chooses you back, is closer to a love story. Wahlheimat, we say in German. Chosen home. It makes today rather personal.
What I love most is how much this small country manages to hold. Water so clear you can count the stones under six metres of it. Mountains that look computer generated until you are standing in front of them.
In winter those same mountains become the best skiing on earth, from the first cable car up in Zermatt with the Matterhorn watching over your shoulder to a long, sunny lunch on a terrace in St. Moritz before the last run down.
Vineyards above Lake Geneva, palm trees in Ticino, glaciers in Valais, and all of it reachable by a train that arrives at the minute it promised. World class cities you can cross on foot, with a hiking trail and total silence thirty minutes away. Grand hotels holding a century of stories in the lobby, and lakeside bathhouses where people swim before work. Very few places offer both.
Then comes the part the rest of the world knows us for. Art Basel, the most important fair in the international art market since 1970, which this June brought 290 galleries from 43 countries into a single city.
Watches and Wonders in Geneva, the biggest watch fair in the world, with 66 maisons at Palexpo in April and Audemars Piguet finally back among them. The cheese, the chocolate, the wheels of Gruyère and the boxes of pralinés that make every Swiss suitcase heavier on the way out than on the way in.
And next Saturday, the 8th of August, Zurich becomes the world’s largest techno party when the Street Parade takes over the lake basin with close to a million people dancing along the water. Bankers by day, ravers by night. Nowhere else do discretion and hedonism share a postcode quite so happily.
Fashion has noticed all of it, usually with a perfectly straight face. Prada once sent out a pale yellow openwork knit that the internet immediately and correctly identified as a slice of Emmentaler, priced at just over 900 pounds.
Jeremy Scott mined the same seam for years at Moschino, with melting chocolate handbags that looked good enough to lick, a whole Moschino Farms season of cows and barnyard prints, and, in fall 2021, a wool jacket trimmed with real cowbells.
Burberry has put cow print on silk dresses and mini skirts, which any farmer in Appenzell could have confirmed was a classic several decades ago. Alpine kitsch, it turns out, is the one Swiss export the runway simply cannot leave alone.
A few things worth knowing about the date itself. It goes back to the Federal Charter of 1291, when Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swore to stand by one another, legend says on the Rütli meadow above Lake Lucerne. The document only specifies early August, which is charmingly vague for a nation famous for precision. It was rediscovered in an archive in Schwyz in 1758 and can still be seen there. The first great celebration came in 1891 for the 600th anniversary, and it became annual from 1899. What surprises most people is how recent the holiday is.
Until 1993 the 1st of August was an ordinary working day in most cantons. That September, 86.3 percent of voters said yes to a nationwide public holiday, and the first official day off followed in 1994. Very Swiss, that. Nothing happens until everybody has voted on it.
Traditionally the day belongs to bonfires on the hills, lanterns carried through the streets by children, church bells at eight and an alphorn making everyone go quiet for a moment. This year the celebrations are more restrained in many places, which suits the occasion better than you might think. The Swiss have never needed spectacle to know exactly who they are.
Happy Birthday, Switzerland. Danke für alles.
LoL, Sandra
Photos: Photos: © Sandra Bauknecht / Rian Davidson / David Biedert Photography and @kazmva0
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