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You'd think with all those differences they'd have lots of problems. But they've managed to maintain one of the strongest economies in the world and they are experts at staying out of Europe's wars. They seem to be on to something.
Pick up the museum guidebook and start your tour. This map shows how these rural homes have been grouped according to regions in Switzerland. These aren't replicas but the real thing, each one carefully taken apart and put back together here.
You can see the cultural heritage of each distinct canton at this museum, this is a time tunnel experience, look at the intimate attention to detail. The craftspeople are busy keeping the traditional ways alive. These buildings are from western Switzerland where French influences are strong, or what about this half-timbered winegrower's house from a village near Zurich where the Swiss speak their unique form of Swiss German. I love this house with its bread museum. One of my favorite things in all of Europe is bread, fresh, different, and always delicious. Tasty history, edible culture. I can't imagine a more painless and fun classroom for an introduction to Switzerland.
All right! It's gonna be a real TV show, isn't it? haha. Ok, to summarize, a third of Switzerland is French, in the west, half is German, in the north, and ten percent is Italian, in the south. The rugged Alpine terrain explains Switzerland's diverse demographics, While the Swiss may speak German, French, or Italian, they are uniquely Swiss. One of the things that Swiss do particularly well is manage money. Its stability, its thriftiness, and its willingness to let people store money secretly have produced the Swiss Bank, well, most of us don't have Swiss bank accounts, this is still a good place to talk about money. So before we head for the mountains, let's take some how-to time here in Interlaken / to talk about money strategies, you know, traveler's checks, cash, bank cards, exchange rates, and so on
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