Switzerland - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

Don’t just see the sights—get to know the people.

Set aside your preconceptions of postcard scenery, chocolate and cheese, faceless bankers, and spotless cities. The real Switzerland is anything but bland. This small, multilingual, and fiercely independent country at the heart of Europe is full of surprises.

Culture Smart! Switzerland reveals the human dimension of this enigmatic country. It provides an historical overview, explores Swiss values and attitudes, and looks at the cultural continuity of festivals and traditions. It will help you navigate your way through various aspects of Swiss life and society and reveal the warmth, decency, wit and intelligence that characterizes its inhabitants.

Have a richer and more meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

Kendall Hunter is a Canadian freelance journalist, author, photographer, and entrepreneur. A graduate in Political Science from the University of Calgary, she has lived in South Africa, England, Wales, and Switzerland. Her first book, Black Taxi: Shooting South Africa, describes a year she spent working as a news photographer in Johannesburg during that country s first democratic elections. Kendall subsequently lived for ten years in Zurich. Married to a Swiss citizen and with two daughters in the Swiss school system, she wrote a regular column for an expat parenting magazine about raising children in Switzerland. She now lives in Toronto and is the founder and CEO of Culture Dock, a crowd-sourced global travel app.