What Nobody Tells You About Switzerland

Let’s start with what everybody tells you about Switzerland:

1. It’s beautiful.
2. It’s expensive.
3. The food is bad.

Having just returned from a little over a week in Switzerland, I can confirm that all three are true. And obviously, I went because it is beautiful. I can’t overstate just how beautiful it is. I willingly traded my love of good food for incredible scenery on this trip, and it was absolutely worth it.

The food, however, surprised me in a different way.

The restaurants were every bit as underwhelming as advertised. What nobody told me was that the grocery stores were fantastic.

Whether it was yogurt, cheese, drinks, chips, cookies, or chocolate, the local Coop supermarket was packed with great options. And yet, somehow that quality doesn’t translate to restaurant food.

Of course, nobody is visiting Switzerland for the food, but you wouldn’t know it from some of the Google reviews of the restaurants I visited. “The food is out of this world,” people would gush, and it made me wonder what these people eat on a regular basis, and what their standards for good food actually are.

Since I’m not a fan of cheese fondue or other “Swiss” food (a.k.a. bad German food), I went to the Italian restaurant just downstairs from my hotel in Grindelwald. I ordered the spaghetti bolognese because I didn’t think you could really mess that up. Yet somehow it came out bland and completely forgettable. I’m not kidding when I say that 1) I’ve never cooked spaghetti bolognese in my life, and 2) I’m pretty confident I could make a better version at home with a jar of canned sauce.

But none of that really mattered, because everywhere I looked there was another ridiculous view waiting for me. Whether I was on a train, riding a gondola, hiking through the mountains, or simply on a casual walk outside, Switzerland constantly reminded me why people travel halfway across the world to visit.

Beyond the food, here are a few more things nobody tells you about Switzerland.

The Swiss are not as efficient and timely as they would like you to believe.

My first encounter with Swiss bureaucracy came at the airport immigration line. There was a row of self-service kiosks that one employee told us to use, only for another employee to stop us before we reached them. A few minutes later they told us to use them after all. Then they stopped people from using them again. After you finally made it through the kiosk, you still had to wait in another line for an officer to verify everything.

The whole process took an inordinate amount of time, and I can confidently say that every airport I’ve visited in Asia has been more efficient at processing visitors than Zurich.

I was also surprised that the trains and buses weren’t quite as punctual as I expected. Switzerland is famous for watches and keeping time, yet there were numerous occasions where they ran several minutes late, and nobody seemed particularly concerned. Japan is still king in this department.

The Swiss do not have “AC culture.”

I arrived at the tail end of a heat wave, and thankfully I was staying in the mountains where temperatures were more moderate, but none of the hotels I stayed at had air conditioning. This is more of a Europe problem than a Switzerland problem, but it’s still shocking that in 2026 entire countries seem to avoid air conditioning like it’s the Bubonic plague.

At some point, “we’ve always done it this way” stops being a convincing argument when thousands of people die from extreme heat across Europe every summer. So if you’re sensitive to heat, do your research before booking accommodations. Thankfully, every hotel I stayed at had fans, although I had to ask for one each time.

Lastly, nobody tells you that there are a shocking number of flies in the Swiss mountains.

As my traveling companion put it, “I have never seen so many flies in my life.”

Thankfully they aren’t mosquitoes that bite you, but they’re still incredibly annoying. I found myself swatting flies away at almost every restaurant where I ate, and it was usually worse indoors because the restaurants kept their doors and windows open (no air conditioning, remember?). It got to the point where eating a meal often meant sharing it with at least a dozen uninvited guests.

Switzerland isn’t perfect. Yes, the restaurants were underwhelming, the flies were relentless, and the lack of air conditioning was baffling.

Turns out, the tradeoffs weren’t nearly as important as the reasons I came in the first place.

I’ll be back.