As I live in Switzerland, I can comment to the above comment...living here is amazing to me...my co-worker can flip between high German, Swiss German, French and English. Everyone pretty much speaks at least 3 languages. That's not to say there aren't challenges (for example, on the German side of der Schweiz, English is being taught in elementary school...but at the cost of French being taught, which the French side does not like). Also, the Swiss are pretty merciless (in their modest Swiss kind of way) with their teasing of each others regional accents (and in fact, some people can't understand others dialects!). But you have to give it to the Swiss...they are as close to a Pan-Euopean country as they come.
Thanks again Sirocco, real good insights here... "Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
And for the briefing on Switzerland. It's a sobering thought though that if it's "as close to a Pan-European country as they come," it is also the one country where most important policy is decided on a local or regional level. The world's northernmost desert wind.
Well, we're not boring yet... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
