Switzerland: Present Conditions and Future Prospects

by Algernon Blackwood

Having recently returned from a long sojourn in Switzerland, I have been bombarded with questions as to present conditions there and future prospects. What are prices like? What about food and heating? What is the feeling about the war? Will passports soon be available? The answers to these enquiries are simple: Prices have doubled; food is very scarce and heating inadequate; German-Switzerland, generally speaking, is still pro-German, while French-Switzerland is still splendidly pro-Ally (if perhaps, more strictly speaking, pro-French); and as for passports, that is a question to be solved by three main considerations: Whether Switzerland can feed an army of tourists, whether the French can supply rolling-stock to convey them there, and whether the British Government intends to encourage money being spent outside this country. There are evidently some optimists among us. A West End bootmaker, famous for his climbing boots, told me last week that he was already in receipt of many orders for Alpine purposes and that most of these orders were marked “urgent.” With the signing of the Armistice many saw our prison doors opening. The idea of travel became a possibility again. Thousands, after an enforced captivity of four years, turned their thoughts once more to lake and mountain and forest, and Switzerland still remains the most accessible, in point of time and money, of all available foreign playgrounds.

The Swiss, too, were optimistic. I use the past tense, for reflection has somewhat reduced the first hopeful estimate which followed the great event of mid-November. The hotels, of course, are hungry for us. The managers, scanning their empty dining-rooms (many a big hotel counts barely a dozen guests at present), return to their desks and calculate prices and profits in the good time coming. And these prices, they frankiy admit, must be high for a year or two at least; the losses, carried by the banks at a high rate of interest for the past four years, have been gigantic; it is we who are expected to recoup them.

The days of a cheap Switzerland, I believe, are gone forever, with many another happy pre-war condition. One huge mountain hotel, for instance, in a certain place that was famous five years ago for its summer and winter season, a place crowded to overflowing by English visitors at reasonable prices, now has a debt of 600,000fr.; it was run this winter (only one wing in use and that wing so chilly that people came to dinner in furs and overcoats) at a heavy further loss. The bedroom radiators, owing to scanty coal of poor quality, were only hot in the top twelve inches, the rest of the pipes being too cold to touch with comfort. The rooms were, therefore, icy. “It is a question of pressure,” explained the resigned manager; “with coal of low calories sufficient pressure is unobtainable.” He told the truth.

While on this question of heating, the trains, too, may be mentioned. The locomotive tenders are piled with wood, express trains hardly exist, not only is the service reduced to a minimum, but every train is an omnibus train, and from Geneva to Montreux, formerly a matter of three hours or so, is now a whole day’s journey. On Sundays no trains run at all, there is no post, no newspaper, an early milk train being the only Sunday traffic.

The Armistice, however, brought with it a wave of happy optimism. The story ran from place to place, fathered upon Thos. Cook and Son, probably without a shred of evidence, that a thousand English were coming out at once⁠—mostly invalids, the report took care to add, but still English visitors. Hotel managers certainly received applications and enquiries from would-be travellers, but these enquiries were not followed up; when I left the country in February, my own hotel in Territet, a popular resort of the English for many years, had not increased its list of a baker’s dozen (half of them in bed with influenza) by a single name. With slight modifications and exceptions, this is representative of all other hotels as well, although these remarks refer entirely to what are called “Resorts” which, whether in the valleys or on the mountains, depend upon tourists, transients and travellers generally for their clientéle. The towns, of course, are crowded to overflowing; in Berne, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich quarters were only to be found with the greatest difficulty. In Berne the German Legation alone employed a staff of 1,500, and the increase of “officials” from every country, it may be added, while a source of joy to the hotel-keepers, has been a source of anxiety, annoyance and even anger to the Swiss authorities, and a cause of almost daily protest in the country’s Press. But the “Resorts,” though eager for the English tourist, have now realised that they must still wait patiently for a considerable time before their hopes can be fulfilled, and that a summer season this year is out of the question altogether. They build their hopes, meanwhile, upon next winter.

Information as to actual present conditions may interest numerous readers of Country Life who are lovers of Switzerland, always bearing in mind that certain of these conditions may before very long be favourably modified. To begin at the beginning⁠—I went out on behalf of a London newspaper to study the question of our prisoners. “Yes,” said the Swiss Legation here, “we shall welcome your visit, but we can only give you permission to stay there two weeks. You must arrange any extension of your visit with the police in Berne.” On arrival at one’s destination, the passport is surrendered and a permis de séjour, good for one month in my own case, received in exchange. This permis takes the form of a carte de controle upon which any and every change of address must be duly entered. The movements of an individual are thus closely checked. The Berne police, courteous if dilatory, extend it from month to month indefinitely, provided the individua!’s record remains good, and when a given month is up, the mere fact of having written for a further extension allows one, meanwhile, to remain on in the country. The days of free and happy Switzerland, it will be seen from this, have temporarily gone, and even after Peace is signed it is said to be probable that some modified form of controlling the movements of foreigners may remain in force.

When surrendering the passport, food cards must at once be obtained, for without them no single meal is obtainable. Bread, milk, cheese, fat, butter, grease are all very strictly rationed. Of the first no crumb is delivered without first handing up the corresponding coupon, the ration of 250 grams a day (raised last February to 300 grams) being amply sufficient for average need, the bread itself, however, being most unpalatable. The milk allowance is very small, and that of cheese scarcely worth buying, the latter also being often unobtainable in any case. Butter is in the same category as cheese⁠—it has disappeared almost entirely. And that these staple foods, with which Switzerland formerly overflowed, should have become thus microscopic in quantity is probably the first thing that will strike the hungry visitor. As for “fat,” with every dish taken in a restaurant is printed the requisite number of grams deliverable, and if one’s food cards have been left at home by mistake, no food is obtainable at all. Meat, usually of execrable quality, is fairly plentiful. The table d’hôte menus in hotels may be imagined without further description. Sugar is equally microscopic, of course, in quantity, but the individual has no sugar card.

With regard to cost of living generally, it may be said that prices in almost every commodity are double what they were, if not more. What we call methylated spirit and the Swiss call alcool à brûler, formerly sold at 70c. a litre, now sells at 2fr. 50c. a litre. Paper is so expensive that the hotels no longer supply a single sheet in the writing-rooms, but sell packets of a few sheets, two ugly picture postcards showing the hotel, and one or two envelopes, also smothered by hotel designs, for 50c. a packet. Railway tickets are heavily taxed. The Hotel Keepers’ Association not long ago agreed upon a minimum price of a room at 9fr. Halls and lounges are kept gloomy in order to reduce the cost of burning electric light. Two francs a day per room is charged extra upon the bill for heating, and hot baths, of course, are rare, varying, according to the hotel, from one a week to one in ten days or a fortnight. Even postage has risen in price, the postcard for the interior being 7½c. instead of 5c., and a letter 15c. in place of the former 10c.

This list of changes might be much extended, but enough has been said to show that Switzerland is no longer the paradise for short pockets that it used to be. It is, in fact, unrecognisable. And to the general cost of living, for an English visitor drawing his money from England, must also be added his heavy loss upon the exchange. When I left last month a pound sterling was worth 23fr. Switzerland just now is a somewhat dreary and uncomfortable place to live in, and the recent evacuation of the many thousands of prisoners interned there has certainly added to this desolation, both from the natives’ and residents’ points of view. The blue of the jolly poilu and khaki of our Tommy have disappeared; Château d’Oex, Muirren, Interlaken and a dozen mountain villages are empty of them; kilts no longer swing down the streets of Montreux and Lausanne, and the gaiety of nations is no longer added to by the marvellous French heard for so many months in street and tram and shop. Those of us who in imagination just now yearn for sunny Switzerland would sympathise, after a sojourn there of a week or two, with the longings of the much reduced English colony to get back to foggy, black, rainy and expensive London. By way of compensation there is, certainly, both sun and scenery, but at a cost in cash and discomfort that seems prohibitive rather.