The Week in Switzerland

Dear Swiss Abroad,
 
Welcome to our selection of some of the biggest – and most colourful – stories in Switzerland over the past seven days.
 
Here in Bern we’ve been living in a cloud for the past week or so, but the fog is slowly lifting. The metaphorical fog is also clearing concerning the political situation in the United States. Although we now know who the next president will be, it’s still not clear what a second term for Donald Trump will mean for Switzerland. We look at Swiss reactions and examine possible consequences.
 
This week’s round-up also includes Zurich-born photographer Robert Frank who was born exactly 100 years ago and famed for The Americans, the “miraculous” saving of Edelweiss Village in Canada, and a quirky project testing whether Swiss office workers are laughing enough.

The big stories of the week

Trump supporters celebrate victory in the US Afp Or Licensors

Well, he’s back. Donald Trump pulled off a remarkable political comeback on Wednesday when he recaptured the White House after a polarising campaign marked by two attempts on his life and Kamala Harris’s late entry into the race following Joe Biden’s withdrawal.

Defence Minister Viola Amherd, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, tweeted her congratulations to Trump and his running mate JD Vance and said Switzerland looked forward “to continuing to work together on the basis of our shared values and interests”. The US is Switzerland’s second-largest trading partner after the European Union.

Nevertheless, the thought of four more years of Trump, a convicted felon, makes many people nervous in Switzerland. International Geneva, in particular, has bitter memories of his first term in office.

Following the news that Switzerland is one of the Trumpier countries in Europe, what was the reaction when the result was called? Predictably, politicians were divided, as my colleague Matthew Allen reported. Trump is “a threat to democracy, peace, women’s rights and climate protection” and his re-election “devastating news for the world”, reckoned two politicians on the left. However, a parliamentarian from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party thought Trump’s return “could also strengthen Switzerland’s historical position of neutrality”.

Swiss businesses are on the one hand worried about rising tariffs and trade wars, but on the other they are hoping Switzerland can seize potential opportunities under Trump 2.0, for example a long sought-after free trade agreement with the US.  

One answer to US protectionism could be for Switzerland to repair its battered relations with the European Union. “All over the world, right-wing populists and autocrats are gaining ground,” said a politician from the Green Party. “The only way forward for Swiss democracy is to forge closer ties with its European neighbours.”

Robert Frank in 1995. Keystone/Walter Bieri

“Who are the Americans?” is a question many people around the world might have asked themselves recently. Zurich-born photographer Robert Frank’s attempt to answer that question made his name.

In 1955, Frank, who would have turned 100 today, set off on a two-year road-trip across the US. He took some 28,000 photos, and selected 83 for publication in The Americans. This is our obituary of Frank, who died five years ago.

“When Robert Frank published The Americans, he knew the satisfaction of having delivered a masterpiece,” the Financial Times wrote last month. Critics, it noted, said the pictures constituted a “slashing and bitter attack on some US institutions” and “a wart-covered picture of America”.

However, the book’s success pushed Frank into a creative dead end – “he felt doomed to spend the rest of his life rehashing The Americans,” according to the FT. A new exhibitionExternal link at the MoMA in New York looks at Frank’s “restless experimentation” over the next 60 years.

• Robert Frank at MoMA – a photographer in conflict with his craftExternal link (FT, paywall)

Tourists can now spend their holidays in the chalets of Swiss mountain guides in Canada. Diane Selkirk

Staying in North America, but nipping across the border to Canada, a group of historic Swiss-style chalets faced with demolition has been saved! We paid them a visit.

“Edelweiss Village” is some 8,000km from Switzerland, in the middle of western Canada’s Rocky Mountains. It was built around 125 years ago as homes for Swiss mountain guides who took tourists up the various mountain peaks.

Three years ago the dilapidated houses came onto the market at a bargain price, and were threatened with demolition. But two Swiss Abroad, Ilona Spaar and Johann Roduit, were determined to save this Swiss cultural heritage site. My colleague Melanie Eichenberger visited Edelweiss Village, looked around the renovated chalets, and met Spaar and Roduit, who explained how they did it.

• The miraculous resurrection of Canada’s Edelweiss Village

Keystone-SDA

Swiss-EU relations have recently been at the centre of several heated debates, with major sticking points being immigration and the free movement of people (the EU wants it, Switzerland doesn’t).

On Tuesday the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) pointed out that freedom of movement is a two-way street and that for every 11 EU nationals moving to Switzerland, only one Swiss person relocates to the EU.

“This is hardly surprising given that the lower wages in neighbouring European countries are not very attractive,” the NZZ wrote. “But are wages even relevant for Swiss emigrants? Do they move to the EU to work there?” Unfortunately, there is hardly any data on this question, the paper admitted. It said that “theoretically” there are three main motives for Swiss emigrants: working/studying abroad; returning home having picked up a Swiss passport; and retirement.

In June a government reportExternal link found that “the nationals of the main recipient countries all have a low propensity to emigrate. The proportion of Swiss in the EU/EFTA area is particularly low in a cross-comparison and is only undercut by Norway”.

“The free movement of persons appears to motivate only a few Swiss to emigrate to the EU,” the NZZ concluded.

• Many EU foreigners move to Switzerland. Only a few Swiss go the other wayExternal link (NZZ, paywall)

‘My Spanish Friends’, now showing in cinemas in French-speaking Switzerland and soon to appear in German-speaking regions, was directed by Adrien Bordone. Adrien Bordone

Our most-read non-Trump article this week looks at a documentary about Swiss schoolfriends who, after leaving school, were forced to “return” to Spain, the homeland of their parents but a country which was totally alien to them.

My Spanish Friends was directed by Swiss film director Adrien Bordone, who has a Swiss mother and Italian father. During his schooldays in the Swiss city of Biel/Bienne, Bordone made friends with the children of immigrants from Galicia, northwestern Spain.

The film was partly made in Galicia, where Bordone met his schoolmates’ parents, who had returned to “build themselves a house back home”. But what became of their children? During the film the parents and children whom Bordone brought together open up. We see each one expressing their opinions – and the resulting clashes. Former obedient teenagers have turned into sceptical adults, questioning the consequences of a decision made by their parents 20 years earlier.

• ‘My Spanish Friends’ trailerExternal link (French)

Quirky Switzerland

Funny business: former Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz gets the giggles in parliament in 2010. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

I’m usually wary of people who laugh too much, but in one Swiss office, workers who don’t laugh enough are sent an email with a funny video.

Swiss insurance group Baloise is testing the frequency of laughter in an office to improve job satisfaction. “The average adult laughs about 15 times a day, which is why we said four laughs in two hours should be possible, anything less is insufficient,” project manager Alexandra Toscanelli explained.

I get to the bottom of this funny business in this article, which features two former Swiss government ministers who went viral and made people laugh – for very different reasons!

Photo of the week

Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

Even Olympic medallists have to do their Swiss military service. In this photo taken on Wednesday, swimmer Noè Ponti, who last month set the world record for the 50m short course butterfly, is fitted for a beret and other army uniform and equipment in Wangen, central Switzerland. Ponti will spend 18 weeks in the recruitment school.

The week ahead

The freeing of the bear in February 2020. Keystone

If you’re in the Swiss capital at 11.11am on Monday (the 11th day of the 11th month), head to the Käfigturm (prison tower) to see the city of Bern lock up its carnival bear (someone in a bear suit). Exactly 111 days later Bern’s carnivalExternal link kicks off when the bear is woken by drumming and liberated.

That’s pretty tame compared with what happens in the central Swiss town of Sursee on Monday, St Martin’s Day. The Gansabhauet tradition involves blindfolded revellers trying to decapitate a dead goose hanging from a wire. Here’s a guide I wrote a few years ago to Gansabhauet and four other bizarre Swiss customs.

Edited by Samuel Jaberg/gw