18 April 2012

Heidi and Peter do it

Think Swiss, think high mountains, chocolate, cheese and watches, spick and span villages with cuckoo clock houses where ZZ Top lookalikes play the Alphorn while the little gnomes of Zürich shunt their gold to and fro in the vaults under Bahnhofstrasse. Don’t we all love these tired and trite clichés about Switzerland, which give us a healthy dose of patronising amusement at the twee-ness of it all? Swiss stereotypes capture much of what Switzerland was and still is – but miss out what it has become: a nation of garagiste brewers. In a country of 7.8 million people there’s over 340 of them already – and rising. When it comes to putting the romance back into the beer, these newly converted show great stubbornness and perseverance. But isn’t that another typecast?

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