Insight Guides Switzerland (Travel Guide eBook)

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight Guides
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786717054
• eBook ISBN: 9781786718525
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

From the beautiful Lucerne, to the sleek Zurich, Switzerland has much to tempt the visitor. Insight Guide Switzerland is an in-depth full-colour travel guide that combines lively text with vivid photography to highlight the best that the country has to offer.
Inside Insight Guide Switzerland:
A fully overhauled edition by our expert author.
Stunning, specially commissioned new photography that brings this breathtaking country and its people to life.
Highlights of the country's top attractions, including the mighty Lake Geneva and Zurich.
Descriptive region-by-region accounts cover the whole country.
Detailed, high-quality maps throughout will help you get around and travel tips give you all the essential information for planning a memorable trip, including our independent selection of the best hotels and restaurants.

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-colour print guidebooks and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine

Language

What to speak where

About 64 percent of Swiss people speak Schwiizerdütsch or Schwiizertüütsch (occasionally also called Schwyzerdütsch), a variation of German; but don’t be afraid to try standard German on them, as they grow up with High-German at school and it is the official written language. The three other official languages are French, used by about 19 percent of the population in the western part of Switzerland; Italian, used by roughly seven percent of the Swiss in the southern part of Switzerland, especially in the Ticino; and Romansh, spoken by 0.6 percent of people in some regions of the canton Graubünden. All Romansh-speaking and a lot of Italian-speakers also understand and speak German. But in the French-speaking part of Switzerland you would be more successful speaking English than German.

Swiss people are in general friendly and patient, and will take the time to listen to foreigners who do not speak their language fluently.

Since a lot of English vocabulary is related to German, travellers will often recognise many helpful cognates: words such as Hotel, Kaffee, Milch, Markt and Bett hardly need to be translated. You should be aware, howe...

Table of contents

• Switzerland’s Top 10 Attractions
• Editor’s Choice
• Introduction: A Magnet for Myths
• Lakes and Mountains
• Decisive Dates
• Beginnings
• Swiss Confederation
• The Reformation
• Insight: Traditional country life
• The Making of Modern Switzerland
• The Swiss
• The Arts
• Insight: From Roman Ruins to glass towers
• Food and Wine
• Flora and Fauna
• Outdoor Adventure
• Introduction: Places
• The Bernese Oberland
• Insight: Switzerland’s Alpine railways
• The West
• Lake Geneva
• The Valais
• Ticino
• The Southeast
• Insight: Touring the Swiss landscape
• Zürich
• The Northeast
• Basel
• The Jura
• The Luzern Lowlands
• Central Switzerland
• Transport
• A–Z
• Language
• Further Reading