In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. – Orson Welles.

I visited Zurich for ISIR 2024, the annual conference for intelligence research (appropriately it likely has Europe’s highest national IQ).

• Zurich – 8/10 (2024)

Switzerland is a country that is defined by its high function and clockwork attention to detail. It is also visibly very moneyed. About a third of Zurich denizens are millionaires, and this shows in the high number of sports cars; a density only otherwise observed in major rich American metropolises, not European ones. Even the water from the fountains is drinkable. The Cold War-era civil defense system of bunkers is lowkey but remains stocked and functional (unlike Russia’s).

That said, I can’t say Zurich is a particularly beautiful city. The Reformation was ruinous for the visual arts, and Switzerland’s proto-democratic and federal politics constrained the resources that could be channeled into grandiose architecture. Finally, Switzerland only became really, really rich in the postwar era, when architecture took a turn for brutalism. That said, there are pockets of excellent, with ETH Zurich being idiosyncratic in how many of the interior walls looks as if they could have been outside facades.

For the digital nomad, Switzerland is horrifyingly expensive; a cappuccino costs 5-7 Euros in Zurich. This city is the priciest in the world if you exclude rent (15% more expensive than NYC in 2024). It’s an Elite Human Capital magnet for sure – Zurich has about as much Nature Index points as the entirety of the ex-USSR – but at the end of the day, if you’re not with the university or working in finance or an UHNWI, then you don’t have business living in Zurich. It’s not a party city. So far as I can make out, nightlife is close to non-existent, and the local culinary scene is thoroughly mid (the Swiss are an eminently practical people who work to make more money instead of wasting it on frivolities like good food and drink). Vienna is almost twice cheaper (!) and has nicer architecture and more cultural amenities.