A fairly good vision of Switzerland from quite a few angles

http://www.swissworld.org/en/people/

This website appears to know what it is talking about (perhaps more than I do!)

Dancing and ear plugs

It is slightly discourageing being a musician in Switzerland, I imagine. I have observed on more than one occassion that dancing is not common practice at live concerts, and the wearing of ear plugs is recommended. Now, I may be alone in thinking this, but if I were a musician and I had scribbled songs for hours, tirelessly practised my chords and so on, I would be pretty peeved if punters turned up at my gigs with bits of foam in their ears. And trying to encourage the crowd to clap or to dance is as challenging as drawing blood from a stone.
I have to say though, that those who do dance and clap and ostensibly enjoy themselves are not frowned upon, although you do get a few smiles that could easily pass as sympathy smiles. It's sort of "Aww, bless them having a little bop, don't they look silly. And oh, they're not wearing ear plugs - they'll regret that when they're older."
As a fan of bopping along (usually out of rhythm, but that's not the point), I see live music as an opportunity to wave your arms in the air, wiggle your bum and generally let the music into your body through your ears. Maybe the Swiss have extra 'listening' holes and can therefore afford to block their ears with foam.
Hmm...now I feel like I'm missing out on something!

Learning Swiss German in Switzerland

I am a huge language geek. I read verb tables in the toilet and stay awake at night wondering about subjunctives and phrasal verbs. Well, not quite. Swiss German is however, rather baffling. It should be pointed out that Swiss German is really not like German at all. Germanophones pain to understand their linguistic cousins, and I find it frankly impossible; Swiss German is unlike any language I have ever come across.
There's a sort of guttural phleghming theme; it's not the most attractive of languages. (The fact that I find it sexy is not a reflection of it's sex-appeal, merely a sign of my madness). Words are often suffixed with -li, making it sound a little childish, similar to when you turn a dog into a doggy in English. However, it cannot be that infantile since I am not entirely convinced that children are able to make such violent sounds with such delicate mouths. That said, they must be, because Swiss German kids are just as chatty as any!
Even more confusing is the scattering of French borrowings such as 'merci' or 'billet' but for French speakers, the wrongly placed phonetic stresses ring in your ears like cow bells (or is that just me?)...And it seems unnatural not to reply 'de rien' to any 'merci.' There is a good side to the French borrowings - you can get away with buying things like ein Billet Retour without having to venture into your German phrasebook.
There is another issue with attempting to master the local language; it's so local that if you nip over to the next valley or town, the version of the language is slightly different, and for those who get accustomed to one dialect of Swiss German will take a while to get used to the Swiss German from another canton.
The final hurdle to learning Swiss German is that the Swiss Germans often speak impecable English. Those same people usually modestly claim that they only speak 'a little' English. Even the staff of Starbucks speak amazing English (which is barely true of Starbucks staff in the UK!)! Most young people have a great grasp of English, and are usually happy to use it, which is a refreshing change from France where the majority would rather eat dirt than converse in a foreign language.
So, if you're prepared to jump those hurdles, Swiss German is worth a try. It's more amusing than most languages to learn, since you can always pretend you're talking in your tiny valley dialect and that is the only reason the natives can't understand you!
Grab a Gipfeli and a coffee and set to learning one of the coolest languages in the world!

Flying upside down round and round...Acrobatic flight

The view from the top of Mount Pilatus is pretty impressive; the view of Switzerland from an open top airplane is mighty impressive. I had the chance to fly above one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Getting into the stunning aeroplane, you have to be careful not to press on the wrong parts of the plane: and you realise that the machine in which you are about to do fairly ridiculous things in is in fact fairly flimsy. I was a little concerned that I was getting into a large yellow paper aeroplane.

Once strapped in (with parachute and overalls - looking like I was auditioning for Top Gun, although not looking quite as sexy and fearless), you wait patiently while the pilot climbs in behind and does the final checks. The passenger sits at the front, facing the black box as a sombre reminder that your death would be recorded should something go wrong.

Since the nose of the aeroplane gets in the way of seeing straight ahead, we taxied along the runway by zig-zagging. The take off was smooth and very calm. It is amazingly serene and I felt surprisingly calm at this point; gliding along into the gorgeous evening sky. Tilting slighty to the left and the right so you can get a good view of what is beneath you is also surprisingly calm.

But serenity cannot last forever and the pilot was getting a little impatient to do some twists and turns. Luckily the pilot was fantastic- he explained how everything would work and told me before we did anything so I was as prepared as you can be for flying upside down in an open top plane!

The first test for the stomach was a 'simple' flip. Fine. Yes, a little scary since I forgot that there were bars to hold onto, but it was fine. Then we progressed onto the stomach churners. For the formations, the pilot descends before starting, and actually the inital drop is when your stomach goes, rather than during acrobatics. The Loop the Loop was amazing - you look up and see the ground, and you have to try really hard not to think about the fact your plane is virtually made of paper and you are held in only by an antique seat belt!

The worst feeling was when we went virtically up and then flipped over and nose-dived for about 800 metres. I was sitting at the front, and could see only the black box and the ground rapidly approaching! Flying upside down is also a very strange feeling and after a few seconds it almost feels like it's normal to fly upside down in an open-top plane.

The G-force (4.8) and the adrelelin aside, it was breath-takingly beautiful up there. A gorgeous summer evening, beautiful lakes and rolling green hills with mountains in the distance. Pottering around in the skies at 2000m is a wonderful occupation!

The landing was smooth and after the formations it was very tame! I hadn't felt sick at all in the plane, but once out of the cockpit and on solid ground, I felt very queasy. My poor stomach didn't know which way up it should be anymore!

I would recommend an acrobatic flight to anyone; especially over Switzerland! Although not after a heavy night out!