Author: switzerlandtimes.ch

At 37% of the total, one-person households are now the most common way to live in Switzerland, according to recently published data by Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The data from 2022, show that 37% of households contained one person, followed by the 32% that contained two, 13% that contained three, 12% with four and 5% with five or more. This does of course not mean that 37% of the population lived alone. Households of five or more members might have make up a relatively small proportion of total households (5%), but they contain five or more individuals living with…

Switzerland’s Gotthard tunnel is a key link between northern and southern Switzerland. During the summer holiday season it becomes a major traffic choke point. On Sunday 16 July 2023, traffic queues north of the tunnel stretched as far as 15 kilometres, according to SRF. The waiting time to get to the tunnel was as long as two and a half hours according to the TCS traffic service. Queues and waiting times were not as long on the southern side. There, the queue reached 5 kilometres with waiting times as long as 50 minutes. The Gotthard Road Tunnel runs between Göschenen…

Home rent could rise 15% in Switzerland by 2026, according to Martin Tschirren, the head of Switzerland’s federal housing office, reported RTS this week. Tschirren thinks the rental reference rate could rise again over the coming year or two – the rental reference rate is an officially computed figure that reflects average mortgage rates. It is used to set rent levels in many rental contracts in Switzerland. It is reviewed quarterly and the latest rate was announced on 1 September 2023, when it was left unchanged at 1.5%. If the rental reference rate rises 0.25 percentage points it lifts rent…

A popular initiative has been launched in Switzerland to vote on partially nationalising the UBS Group. For a popular initiative to reach the voting stage 100,000 signatures need to be collected within 18 months. The banks initiative aims to change the Swiss constitution to require large banks and insurance companies of systemic importance to be managed as joint stock companies with the federal government as majority shareholder, a set up described as a mixed-economy stock corporation. UBS Group would fall into this category. Switzerland has long been home to a banking sector with assets far larger than its economy. UBS’s…

Here is a list online museums and a concert below for everyone in lock down. Enjoy! ONLINE MUSEUMS: Pinacoteca di Brera – Milano Galleria degli Uffizi – Firenze Musei Vaticani – Roma Museo Archeologico – Athens Prado – Madrid Louvre – Paris British Museum – London Metropolitan Museum – New York Hermitage – Saint Petersburg […]

By Peter Hulm Remembering a Glarus native who bubbled with new ideas his whole life. Deputy editor of Global Geneve Magazine Peter Hulm reports. Ninety years ago, on 16 February 1933, Fritz Zwicky posited the existence of dark matter. It then took three decades for cosmologists to accept his ideas (three years after his death), and he ended his life excluded from the U.S. research telescopes where he spent most of his career, though he “discovered more supernovae than everyone else in human history combined” at the time (until 2009): 122. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) website says: “If a competition…

A report published this week by the Aarau Center for Democracy shows how far Switzerland leads the world on voting. Since 1848, Swiss voters have been asked to decide on 689 federal referenda and elections, a multiple of the number in any other nation. If cantonal and municipal votes are added the number of decisions presented to voters the total is probably ten times this number. Since 1900, 622 federal referenda have been held in Switzerland. The nations with the next highest numbers are New Zealand (117), Liechtenstein (115), Northern Mariana Islands (110), Italy (81) and Ecuador (70). The topics…

The sound of cow bells is an integral feature of Switzerland’s image, conjuring up idilic alpine scenes of cows roaming freely, chomping on grass. However, these same clanging bells can be less than idilic when you’re trying to sleep. In the small Bernese town of Aarwangen several poorly rested newcomers have complained. Town locals, shocked at what they view as an attack on their culture, are fighting back, reported SRF. The bells are essentially a sonar location device typically used in summer to find cows roaming freely at higher altitudes where they can get hidden in valleys and wooded areas.…

A report published this week by WSL, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research, calculates Switzerland could double the amount of energy it gets from burning biomass to 97 peta joules (PJ) a year, with 50 PJ coming from wood combustion. In 2019, Switzerland generated 41 PJ of energy burning wood. This represented 4.3% of Switzerland’s total energy consumption. Taking this to 50 PJ would boost energy from wood combustion to 5.2%. Currently, woody biomass in Switzerland is mainly combusted to produce heat (95%) and, to a small extent, electricity (5%) in combined heat and power. One…

Anyone wanting to drive on Switzerland’s motorway network must buy a vignette, a road tax sticker introduced in 1985 which currently costs CHF 40. This sticker must be displayed on the windscreen. From next week it will be possible to buy an electronic alternative to the physical sticker, reports Switzerland’s Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCBS). Those opting for electronic vignettes will have their licence plate numbers entered into a system that automatically checks whether there is an e-vignette registered to the plate. From 1 August 2023 the e-vignette can be bought via the federal government website www.e-vignette.ch…