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!