With just 8.5 million inhabitants and 11 million annual tourists, Switzerland has plenty of room for everyone, which means that one never feels anything like the crush and traffic of Rome, Paris, Madrid or Athens in Swiss cities.
    There are no long, snaking lines to get into Swiss museums, as there are at the Vatican, the Louvre, the Prado or the Pantheon. No need to book restaurants weeks in advance. And, while all the international fashion brands have stores in the big cities, it’s better to seek out the less expensive, more distinctive Swiss designer shops on the smaller streets.
    It’s also easy enough to blend in with the local citizenry of Zurich, Lucerne, Lausanne, Vevey, Basel, Lugano and Geneva.  The ski slopes of St. Moritz, Zermatt and Gstaad get very busy in winter, and in spring, summer and fall the lakes and mountains may be dotted with hikers, climbers and boaters, but the number of dots will be small within the vastness of the territory.  Snow-capped mountains loom over every lake, and their cloud-reflected blue waters are clear to remarkable depths. You might not want to but you could actually drink it.
 
Wachseldorn
Photo: Martin Maegli 

  A recent ten-day trip to Switzerland—nine with perfect weather—showed both its cities and the countryside in ideal relief, and the word “frantic” never entered my mind. My usual New York stride slowed to a Swiss stroll, and, since everything runs on time, I never had to rush anywhere.  No one would ever make an idle bet against the on-time performance of a bus, a tram, a subway or a train, because they always depart and arrive on the second. If you have a train leaving Zurich at, say, 9 a.m., and the tram from your hotel takes exactly four minutes, you could leave your hotel at 8:50 and have time to spare to grab a coffee before getting on the train.  Over those ten days I never once used a taxi or Uber, because the transportation system is so efficient everywhere.
    The best way to travel around the country is to buy a Swiss Travel Pass, an all-in-one ticket that gives access to trains, buses and boats on 3, 4, 8 or 15 consecutive days, plus admission to 500 museums (out of 1,000). With the Swiss Travel Pass Youth, people under 26 years of age benefit from a 15 % discount off the regular fare. (For info and prices go to: swiss-travel-pass).

Glacier Express
Photo: Andrea Badrutt

    The problem with clichés is that they become outdated and fatuous, like calling Paris the City of Lights, Las Vegas Sin City or New York the Big Apple. But so many of the clichés about Switzerland remain delightfully true, not least that on-time performance. Indeed, there’s a very funny book entitled How to Be Swiss by Diccon Bewes and cartoonist Michael Meister that sends up enduring Swiss habits that include “Thou shalt eat chocolate daily”; “Kiss strangers three times on the cheek”; “Address your boss as ‛Mister’ until one of you dies”; “Feel lost when you travel an hour across country and can’t understand anyone”; and “Feel superior.” (More on this last later.)
   
    The German, French and Italian cantons are, certainly, very protective of their respective cultures, but all pride themselves on being open to new ideas via polite social democracy. To bring an idea to a vote, one need only gather 200,000 signatures, as one fellow did when he tried to pass a law that would prohibit the cutting of goats’ horns, a traditional process that keeps them from injury and saves space; the measure failed.

Cheese market vendor in Lausanne
Photo: Galina Dargery

    I will happily add that Swiss cheeses—Emmenthaler, Gruyère, Berner Alpkäse, L’Etivaz, Schabziger, Raclette, Sbrinz, Tête de Moine, and many others—and breads are among the best in the world. First-rate Swiss wines are wholly underappreciated because no more than two percent of the production ever leaves the country. Swiss restaurants, from casual eateries serving raclette and fondue to haute cuisine dining salons, are excellent.
    As for the Swiss air of superiority, I believe it is more true about the last generation than the current one. I recall some fifteen years ago my wife, who speaks fluent French,  endured a dinner table conversation among middle-aged locals, in Swiss French, who gloated about how unsophisticated Americans were. At meal’s end, my wife stood up, smiled and said, in perfect Parisian French, “We are leaving now and hope never to meet any of you pompous snobs ever again.”
    But on more recent trips I found the Swiss wonderfully cordial and eager to help in any way they can. And the fact that just about everyone, at least in the cities, under the age of forty now speaks English makes an American tourist feel very comfortable at every turn. And the streets are astoundingly clean.
    It is certainly true that Switzerland is an expensive place to live and visit.  Eurostat ranks Switzerland’s consumer prices as the most expensive in Europe overall and 61% higher than the EU average, with food and non-alcoholic drinks 73% higher, hotels and restaurants 67% and clothing 43%. I certainly found prices in the cities I visited high, though they won’t come as much of a shock to anyone who visits London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York or San Francisco. Still, many Swiss cross over to France to go shopping to save money.  
                                                                                                            Lausanne Palace
                                                                                                                                            Photo: Galina Dargery 

    We found there were plenty of hotels—this was in early spring—under $150 a night (the US dollar is now just about at parity with the Swiss franc, which makes calculating easy), and the most deluxe restaurants, while pricey, cost somewhat less than comparable restaurants in Paris or London. And always remember: A 35 franc main course in Switzerland includes VAT and service charges, whereas in the U.S. a comparable main course might cost $28, but with tax and tip comes out to about the same. (Tipping is not expected in Switzerland.)

Lucerne at twilight 
Photo: Galina Dargery
  I shall be writing a series of articles about the individual cities I visited on my trip, but let me mention one more thing about Switzerland: Nowhere—not on the street, in the train station and airport, on the metro, in restaurants of any stripe—was there anything like the cacophony of noise one experiences in similar places in American cities. A full dining room in Switzerland will have a happy ebullience about it, but no one is screaming to be heard—unless it is packed with foreign visitors. Perhaps to be Swiss means never to guffaw.

    Every varietal has its own distinctive smell—the smoky brick of Bordeaux, the tropical fruit of Sauvignon Blanc, the spiciness of Gewürztraminer—but the aroma of good Burgundy is one of Pinot Noir’s great pleasures, one not often found in examples from California or Australia. To be more romantic, Burgundy’s “bouquet” does open up like buds in bloom, and it is richly satisfying, even before you taste the wine.
    I was reminded of this while tasting eight examples of Pommard from Domaine de Courcel with owner Gilles de Courcel (left) over dinner in New York. He is a wiry fellow who looks as if he’s happiest in the vineyards, checking the grapes’ ripeness, watching the rain clouds and shading his eyes from the Burgundian sun, although he actually lives in Bordeaux. His family has been at the estate for four centuries, and he took over its management in 1983 together with his sisters, Anne Bommelaer and Marie de Courcel.
    The domaine, arrayed over 26 acres, has always sold its own wines, rather than sell them to a negoçiant, which is more common in Burgundy. (About 95% of the Pommard vineyards are owned by families, and 50% sell their own wines.) The vineyard area of the Pommard region (Pommard itself is a village) is one of the largest within Burgundy—about 850 acres—with the best estates under the appellation Premier Cru, and within that illustrious group, Épenots and Rugiens are the most highly rated. Lesser Pommards are produced in very large quantities; Domaine de Courcel’s production is never more than 30,000 bottles per year.
    De Courcel is most certainly committed to both the traditions of his family and the estate’s terroir, improving the estate itself as well as the vineyards, and says that “Too often winemakers make a style, not a wine,” which is what many negoçiants do when they blend wines they buy from different estates.
     In addition to its Grand Crus, the domaine produces another Pommard called Les Vaumuriens. Over our dinner of roast chicken, frites and sweetbreads at Benoit bistro in Manhattan, the 2016 vintage ($120) was aromatic and lustrous, from a high terroir with a large percentage of limestone.
    The Grand Clos des Épenots accounts for 50% of the domaine's production, and while Pommard has a reputation for being heftier than other Burgundies, Épenots are a somewhat softer expression of Pommard and constitute the largest acreage of the domaine. The 2016 ($176) has Pommard’s typically deep color, layers of silky fruit and a long finish, while the 2015 ($166) was a bigger wine, a bit more tannic and will take a few years to mature.
    I was fortunate to taste two older examples of Épenots—the 2006 ($186), which was lighter in color and in impeccable balance (“The years have been very kind to the 2006,” said de Courcel), while the 1999 ($286), from a very large crop, had a bit of a barnyard smell one associates with older Burgundies, but a few moments in the glass brought all its elements of fruit and acid into supple equilibrium. It showed the lasting power a Pommard can exhibit twenty years after being made.
    There was also one Les Rugiens  to taste, a 2015 ($223), which, despite its youth, was delicious. Rugiens (the name derives from the red soil) is a bigger wine than Épenots, yet it had none of that overpowering plumminess you find in hot California Pinot Noirs. It went extremely well with a course of three French cheeses.
    Since I faced a 40-minute drive home it killed me not to be able to drink every drop poured and to have to drain out the remains to make way for the next wine. For one thing—and at these prices—I rarely get a chance to drink Pommard. Perhaps next time Gilles de Courcel invites me for dinner in New York, I’ll get a hotel room for the night and have sweet dreams about all the wonderful wines I drank every drop of.