A beautiful country in my books. I have visited once for a week’s holiday and was impressed by the majesty of the mountains and the cleanliness.
Perhaps rather too tidy and organised for my liking but I suppose that’s the Germanic side, they are rather manic about it.
And perhaps there is a somewhat antiseptic feel about the country, the parts I visited. Of course it has long been a place for people to recuperate after being ill.
No wonder as the mountains and alpine pastures are stunning and the contrasts between azure blue skies, snow white and lush green fields can take your breath away.
My friend and I flew in to Berne airport, a complete contrast to Gatwick from which we left. We walked off the plane into the terminal which was little more than a large hall and were out in five minutes once we had our luggage.
Berne airport lies to the south of the city, and as you come in you can see the mountains in the distance, including the Jungfrau which was silhouetted against the light.
I always think of Switzerland in terms of Julie Andrews and the Sound of Music but that was set and largely filmed in Austria I gather.
Anyway, I thought that I would look at Switzerland today from the anagrams of the name to see if anything interesting comes up. And, perhaps not surprisingly after all I have observed in the last two years or so, it does.
Trains and rails
These two words can be found in the word Switzerland. Well, certainly Switzerland is well known for its trains! It has the highest station in Europe on the Jungfrau mountain. Most of the railway is inside a tunnel, a prodigious feat of engineering for which the Swiss are well known.
Though I imagine they used more than their Swiss army knives!
By Kabelleger / David Gubler (http://www.bahnbilder.ch) – Own work: http://www.bahnbilder.ch/picture/11844, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24456772
You can take your bicycle on the trains.
https://www.redbull.com/se-en/how-to-ride-switzerland-by-bike-and-train
And take a steam train.
Another site well worth looking at, some great photos and descriptions.
Trails
There are lots of walks and everything seems well trodden. Signposts to places indicate the time it should take which I find bizarre. I suppose the authorities have an average pace use to justify this, but this smacks of too much control. Haven’t people got the brains to work things out? It reminds me of the mind numbing intricacies of the COVID 19 guidance in the UK let alone the rest of the world.
The part of Switzerland my friend and I stayed in was the Bernese Oberland, Kandersteg to be precise where you can put your car on the train to go through the Lötschberg Tunnel to Brig in the Rhone valley.
We did walks out from our base, the International Scout Centre, and being October the autumn colours were stunning. We walked over to the Lötschental valley, famous for its traditional villages.
By I, Herzi Pinki, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2334198
Here is a useful link on walking in Switzerland which has some stunning photos.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/best-hikes-in-switzerland
Island
One would think of islands and Switzerland, except perhaps as a land locked alpine island in the sea of Europe. But there are some small islands in the lakes.
© emoiphotos.ch
Latrines
It is hardly surprising that latrines will be found in Switzerland but here’s one in the iconic Château de Chillon on Lake Geneva.
Or in this case perhaps I should say Chiteau de Challon! As ‘ch’ is to be pronounced ‘sh’ in this case, I’m sure you will understand me.
The Swiss are as I have indicated well known for precision engineering but here we see a ‘bog’ standard example.
One can visit the castle I gather, which lies close to Montreux of jazz festival fame and not far from Caux and the Mountain House, where my wife once lived and worked for a year.
The Mountain House is owned by Initiatives of Change International, a non-governmental organization formerly known as Morale Re-Armament.
Going back to something basic, here is the Swiss equivalent of the modern latrines, at least the treatment end. I wonder if these mask-ists are wearing masks because they think the coronavirus will eat them if they don’t or because of the smell?
As I visited a treatment plant on the outskirts of Reading, Berkshire when I was a school, part of the geography A level course, I suspect it may be the former. We never wore masks despite the smell which wasn’t pleasant.
https://www.eawag.ch/en/research/humanwelfare/wastewater/
Reinwald
This is a principality and a valley. The upper reaches of the river Rhine flows though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwald
Randiest
I wouldn’t have said the Swiss were known for their sex drives but prostitution in Switzerland is legal and regulated; it has been legal since 1942.
This explains some of the grim reality of it.
The Brutal Normality of Switzerland’s Sex Market
Geneva is not just a popular tourist location but an important hub for business, trade and political visitors — many of them male sex tourists.
OCT 30, 2018
Paste link into browser to make it work.
The article is by Julie Bindel. She says:
I have been researching and writing about the global sex trade for 20 years and have visited numerous countries around the world to do so. But nowhere have I encountered such normalization of prostitution as I saw in Geneva—not even in Germany or the Netherlands.
And
There is nowhere in the world where street prostitution has been legalized. However, in Geneva and Zurich, as well as elsewhere in Switzerland, selling sex on the streets is both tolerated and accepted. There are unofficial zones in Geneva where pimps know to take the women and where johns know to go to stalk their prey. The off-street sex trade is also prolific, with numerous brothels, massage parlors and saunas offering women for sale. Unless a complaint is made by a member of the public, the police turn a blind eye.
And
To tackle its prostitution problems, the Swiss must look to France for its law targeting sex buyers and providing protection for prostituted women. Its other neighbor, Germany, is the worst example to follow, where legalized prostitution continues to generate massive human rights violations for the profit of the state, including dozens of murders of prostituted women since 2002.
It is interesting to see the reference of Germany and the generation of profit for the state. And here are the bizarre Coronavirus rules which should have made people wonder about the supposed transmissibility.
‘No older men or oral sex’: How Swiss brothels are responding to the coronavirus
23 Jun 2020
Paste link into browser to make it work.
It says
While condoms must be worn for all sexual services, face masks are only recommended or all participants – which mirrors the government’s advice that masks are recommended rather than required.
The concept also encourages positions where “risk of droplet transmission is low” and there is a forearm’s distance between participants’ heads.
So here we have the hypocrisy in Switzerland, they can be extremely strict about some things and not others. Still, that’s true about all other countries.
Ratlines
These were
systems of escape routes for German Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in Latin America, particularly in Argentina, though also in Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as the United States, Spain and Switzerland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)
I note with interest that ‘ratlines’ is an anagram of ‘latrines’. Whilst latrines are more of a toilet than a sewer, the relationship is clear.
Here is another link for reading.
What did the Vatican know about the Nazi escape routes?
https://www.dw.com/en/the-ratlines-what-did-the-vatican-know-about-nazi-escape-routes/a-52555068
Certainly there were Catholics involved but that is not surprising as today with the pope endorsing the vaccines. And the pope Francis comes from Argentina where many Nazi went…
Strained
It could be strained relations with the European Union.
Switzerland is facing a dual crisis over its relations with the EU
June 29th, 2021
The 26 May decision by the Swiss government not to proceed with an Institutional Framework Agreement (IFA) with the EU has been seen by academics as simply a matter between two administrations which might lead to accommodation or to ‘disintegration by default’. It has also been seized on by anti-Europeans as a glorious snub to the bullying EU and a vindication of self-determination and direct democracy, as well as a harbinger of a possible break-up of the EU.
Or perhaps it could the strain of the coronavirus, also known as the ‘flu.
Swiss scientist warns of possible Covid ‘super strain’
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/swiss-scientist-warns-of-new-covid–super-strain-/46886994
or maybe a super train
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/world-record-train-switzerland/index.html
As the so-called strains of Covid are a load of bollox and I have already covered trains, I will go for the EU. It will be good thing to see the EU dismantled and Germany’s Fourth Reich destroyed.
Swindler
There was a scandal, can that count as a swindle? I think so.
Fifa scandal: What took Switzerland so long to investigate?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32912533
It says
Despite the scope of the Swiss investigation, a number of questions are being asked today about why it has taken Switzerland so long to take a close look at the multi-million dollar sporting associations on its territory.
Traditionally Fifa has been subject to the vaguest legislation, its book-keeping standards needing to be no more rigorous than those of the village ski club.
and
Whether it is the big Swiss banks themselves, or foreign banks like HSBC courting tax evaders from its plush branch in Geneva, or international sporting associations like Fifa, there is a growing feeling here that Switzerland has been too slow, and too quiet, about financial crime.
Wikipedia refers to some issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA
On 28 February 2022, due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and in accordance with a recommendation by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), FIFA suspended the participation of Russia. The Russian Football Union unsuccessfully appealed the FIFA ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which upheld the ban.
Some observers, while approving of the boycott of Russia, have pointed out that FIFA did not boycott Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as an aggressor during the Iran–Iraq War, Saudi Arabia for its military intervention in Yemen, Qatar for its human rights violations, or the United States for the actions of the U.S. military during the Iraq War.
Double standards here, but then the Nazis hated Russia so perhaps this is why.
You can see the mention of the infamous Sepp Balter. His name according to Wikipedia varies but an anagram of Joseph Blatter is ‘he job splatter’!
Waltz
Waltzes are associated mainly with Austria and Germany but there is this.
Little Swiss Waltz (Switzerland)
Wetlands
I don’t suppose we think of Switzerland and wet lands, but where there’s water there will be some.
https://www.ramsar.org/wetland/switzerland
There are these too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_raised_and_transitional_bogs_of_Switzerland
and so we come back to bogs, another word for a toilet or Latrine!
Interestingly, ‘latrines’ is an anagram of ‘ratlines’. Latrine is related to sewers and sewers are routes for rats, hmm….
In Switzerland’s case Nazi rats.
Lizard
Rare green lizard makes appearance in Switzerland
July 29, 2020
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/rare-green-lizard-makes-appearance-in-switzerland-/45935074
The study leader said participants had been disciplined in respecting coronavirus distancing and wearing masks, while the young people had learned to look at Switzerland with the eyes of a biologist.
I believe the study leader must be the group leader and biologist Marco Barandun referred to in the link. He may know lots about lizards but not about the coronavirus. Hopefully he will wake up.
Ireland
Apparently
Ireland and Switzerland have long enjoyed excellent relations, politically, culturally and economically. These relations have been documented as far back as 612 when St. Gall was credited with the foundation of a monastery in the Swiss city of St. Gallen. Ireland established an Embassy in the capital city of Berne in 1940.
From
Ireland-Switzerland Relations
https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/switzerland/our-role/irish-relations/
It also says
Ireland has also been an attractive country for inward investments from Switzerland particularly in the pharmaceutical field and also financial services. For example Zurich insurance has its European headquarters in Dublin employing over 1,000 people.
Well, hopefully you now understand about pharmaceuticals. Of course health insurance and big pharma go together. In Switzerland I gather health insurance is compulsory, albeit you seek your own cover, subsidised by the government if necessary.
A good money spinner of course for both parties, if not for the individual concerned.
5 Bad Things I Hate about Switzerland
06 April 2023
https://thepoorswiss.com/5-things-i-hate-about-switzerland/
Note the reference to health insurance and the Serafe tax to pay for Swiss Radio and Television whether you want to use it or not.
Nazi
The Nazis had a plan to invade Switzerland in WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum
It says that Hitler said
“Switzerland possesses the most disgusting and miserable people and political system. The Swiss are the mortal enemies of the new Germany.”
There are questions as to whether he actually said that.
Further
In August 1942, Hitler further described Switzerland as “a pimple on the face of Europe” and as a state that no longer had a right to exist, denouncing the Swiss people as “a misbegotten branch of our Volk.”
From a Nazi viewpoint, Switzerland, as a small, multilingual, decentralized democracy where German-speakers felt more of an affinity with their French-speaking fellow Swiss citizens than towards their German brothers across the border, was the antithesis of the racially homogeneous and collectivised “Führer State”.
This gives further information about Nazi plans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Germanic_Reich
Here is reference to Eva Peron of Argentina where many Nazis fled after WW2.
Evita, the Swiss and the Nazis
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2022/03/evita-the-swiss-and-the-nazis/
There’s this on the Swiss banker’s role. It alleges that
Supposedly neutral, Switzerland was happy to take German gold in return for hard currency and weapons, enabling the Nazis to continue their war effort. The effect of this, asserts Professor Ziegler, was that his country extended the Second World War.
From
How Swiss oiled Hitler’s killing machine
23 March 1997
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/how-swiss-oiled-hitler-s-killing-machine-1274447.html
And only this month
Credit Suisse faulted over probe of Nazi-linked bank accounts
APRIL 19, 2023
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/credit-suisse-nazi-linked-accounts-probe/
So that was looking at some single words, how about a few phrases?
Notable phrases
Lizard newts – amusing
Dr Nazis welt – interesting.
AZ RT swindle – Switzerland has not banned RT, Russia Today from broadcasting.
Switzerland and Norway refuse to ban RT and Sputnik
Meanwhile, Swiss Federal Council, the executive branch of the federal government of the Swiss Confederation, decided not to restrict access to RT and Sputnik, despite following the EU on the rest of their sanctions. The Federal Council considers that opposing false information with facts is more efficient than banning them.
Switz darnel – darnel is a poisonous plant referred to in the Bible. See Matthew 13.
https://biblehub.com/matthew/13-25.htm
And please especially note that the Greek word translated as ‘darnel’ or ‘weed’ is ‘zizania’ an anagram of ‘I AZ Nazi’!
As Matthew 13 talks about the end of the age and the revealing of the evil ones by their fruit or lack of it, so this is coming to pass in this time of COVID 19.
Other things about Switzerland not in the anagrams
Cheese
Some great cheeses, many with holes in them such as Appenzeller and Emmental. It has been debated why they have such holes.
By Manuel2 – Foto stammt von mir, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11069131
New Discovery Shows Why Swiss Cheese Has Holes
https://www.thespruceeats.com/why-does-swiss-cheese-have-holes-591200
I would have thought it was obvious; the Swiss like making holes in the hills for their roads and rails so you would expect the cheese to be the same!
And of course it can make the consumer think they are buying something with more in it as the volume will be larger weight for weight.
But maybe it also reflects on some of the hollowness of what goes on in Switzerland and the Nazi rats hiding in their hideaways. All is not as it seems.
Still, cheese in Switzerland is great in their fondues. I suppose if one is Swiss away from home and missing the fondues, it is a case of “absence makes the heart grow ‘fondue’”!
Chocolate
Swiss chocolate is famed and rightly so I think. Although nowadays as I have mentioned Toblerone, a Swiss chocolate brand, is actually owned by Mondelez International inc, once Kraft Foods inc., the headquarters in Chicago where the Priztker gangster resides.
And then there’s Nestlé the biggest food company in the world and makes far more than just chocolate. And has had various controversies and criticisms, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9
Davos
The annual meeting place of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
It says
Each year in Davos, Switzerland, world leaders, corporate titans, celebrities and other members of the global elite gather for a week of glitzy discussions on the state of the world. But during World War II, long before the modern confab started in 1971, the city of Davos gathered together a surreal collection of residents that included Nazis, Jews and downed U.S. military pilots.
Beginning in the 18th century, Davos and its supposedly healing mountain air drew scores of consumption patients to sanitariums for treatment. Patients ate five meals and guzzled two liters of milk each day, went for walks and sunned themselves on balconies.
“In the early 1920s it was the melting pot of old noble families, the rich upper class, sick dandies and millionaires from all over the old world,” said Tobias Engelsing, director of the Rosengarten Museums of Konstanz in Germany.
But, as Engelsing wrote in 2007, things took a darker turn in the 1930s. Germany established a Nazi headquarters in Davos, led by a fanatical follower of Hitler named Wilhelm Gustloff. Gustloff used coercion to convince many newly arrived Germans to become members of the party.
I hope you are up to speed with what the WEF is doing under Klaus ‘You will own nothing and be happy – or else!’ Schwab.
Geneva
The Geneva area seen from above the Jura mountain chain, with the International airport in the foreground, and the Mont Blanc mountain range in the background
By Sdnegel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124013743
There are a lot of organizations with their headquarters here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_organizations_based_in_Geneva
I will note these especially
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI)
World Health Organization (WHO)
World Trade Organization (WTO)
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Now whilst it is not surprising that world headquarters might all want to be in one place, it is interesting that so many are all here in Geneva in Switzerland with its Nazi associations.
Geneva, which is an anagram of ‘avenge’, the only single full word.
So perhaps the Nazis getting their revenge on the world. Hmm…
Zürich
The capital of Switzerland and home of many banks.
Just under one third of the approximately 270 banks in Switzerland have their headquarters in the City of Zurich itself or in the Canton of Zurich.
Zurich sounds like ‘zoo rich’ so it makes sense that the capital of Switzerland should be rich.
And have a zoo, the Zoo Zürich. A keeper was killed by a tiger in July 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/04/keeper-killed-by-siberian-tiger-in-zurich-zoo
I’m surprised they didn’t blame coronavirus. Perhaps the tiger was frustrated at being locked down. I know the feeling.
In Zürich cocaine gets into the water, but not just in Zurich.
High cocaine levels present in Swiss water
July 15, 2010
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/high-cocaine-levels-present-in-swiss-water/16049384
It says
“You find them in high concentrations in sun protection products, which are used by very many people. Yet we still don’t know what effects the presence of the substances in the water will have on humans and the environment in the long term,” he said.
Once filtered, even by the most effective purification stations in the country, the water will return to the ground water or lakes.
“Ultimately the water will be consumed again by people, mainly as part of the food chain [in fish].”
No wonder the world seems drugged.
Square flag
Switzerland is one of the two countries in the world to have a square flag.
The other is Vatican City.
Switzerland supplies the Swiss Guard for the pope from the Catholic cantons. About one third of the Swiss identify as Catholic.
Summary and final thoughts
A land of mountains, snow and pastures green, to the outside world a place of purity, great engineering, cheese and chocolate.
A beautiful country but with dark secrets, Nazi secrets. Secret bank accounts where the filthy rich can hide their ill-gotten gains.
A land where top world organizations go, including the WHO. Are many of these organizations Nazi, Nazi controlled?
The WHO is trying to centralise health decisions to limit individual countries’ policy making in those areas. I hope to cover this in more detail in May, but this is all part of a putsch for One World Government.
P.S For further reading on Switzerland
The Culture Of Switzerlandhttps://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-culture-of-switzerland.html
And link to my WordPress site home page for more truth and humour. Or visa versa.
For such an incredibly wealthy country (without natural resources like oil and gas), I have to wonder where all their wealth comes from.
It sure ain't from selling cuckoo clocks and chocolate! So it must be something secret - like bank accounts. Whatever, methinks there is more to this than meets the eye, however beautiful the natural vista....