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7 Reasons Switzerland is not Sweden

Swiss House - manwalk  / pixelio.de
Have you been to Switzerland? And have you ever visited Sweden? If you've been to both you probably know that Sweden is very different from Switzerland. To an English speaker the names of these countries and their inhabitants might sound a bit similar - Swedes and Swiss - but they are culturally, geographically and on many other levels quite different.

7 Differences between Switzerland and Sweden

  1. Switzerland does not border the sea. In Switzerland the only big waters are lakes and rivers. Sweden has an extremely long coast line and a lot of sea islands. 
  2. The highest Swedish mountain is 2'111m high and called Kebnekaise. Switzerlands highest mountain is the Dufourspitze which is 4'634m high. That is more than twice as high!
  3. The Swedish people speak Swedish and the Swiss people speak either Swiss German, French, Italian or Rumantsch. Yes, Switzerland has four official languages!
  4. Sweden is about 10 times bigger than Switzerland. 
  5. Sweden has over 10 million inhabitants. Switzerland only 8.5 Million. Because it is much smaller than Sweden (see #5), Switzerland is much more crowded than Sweden, even if it has less inhabitants.
  6. Sweden and Switzerland are about 1500 km apart. Switzerland is located in the middle of Europe and Sweden in Scandinavia in the north of Europe.
  7. Switzerland is not part of the European Union but Sweden is. This means, we Swiss do not use the Euro but our very own Swiss Franc to pay for our groceries.
Swedish House - marlis dülsen  / pixelio.de
Needless to say that  both countries are beautiful and worth a visit. Just make sure to remember which country your are visiting so you won't accidentally ask a Swiss person if they speak Swedish. We definitely do not! Swedish people might actually also not like that question very much...


 Sources:
Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden
Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland


© 2011 IRENE WYRSCH "A HUMOROUS GUIDE TO SWITZERLAND" ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 26, 2012 at 4:55 AM

    What a humorous, yet pinpointed contribution!
    I'm Swiss, married to a swedish goddess, and i
    can only second your opinion :)
    There's no downside to either country, actually,
    Switzerland and Sweden have a lot more in common
    than you might think.

    ReplyDelete

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