We arrived in Zurich a few days ago, thrust into this mid-winter monochrome landscape where you might be forgiven for thinking you had stepped unwittingly into a 1940s movie. The city’s sound has not changed in decades; the protest from the trams as they squeeze through its narrow streets and the dull, mournful church bells which cast the city in a somber light as today they were ringing to acknowledge the deaths a week ago of forty, mainly young, people in a resort in Crans-Montana, three hours away. Since arriving, it has snowed every day with varying degrees of enthusiasm; now was the most aggressive, with winds that tore across the Zurichsee, bending the willows and scattering the seagulls, leaving only myself and a few other hardy locals to witness the stark beauty of the moment. The small sailboats added to the mournful soundtrack drifting across the icy water, their pale, hollow bells provoking an unreliable moment of nostalgia; one that might lazily be called déjà vu, a moment that was either truly remembered or perhaps one that existed in some celluloid version of the past, a film or a photograph; it’s hard now to tell, but distinctly and unmistakably northern European in winter time.

Across the lake, the buildings came in and out of focus thanks to the blankets of snow, ghostlike in their lack of definition, so were the young families who momentarily appeared through the haze, children in their arctic spacesuits while their wary parents looked on, across to the north where the city’s ornate churches continued with their melancholic message, not convincingly one of either spirituality or poetry but certainly obedience.

It is this Swiss characteristic that I always forget until I am here. The agonizing wait at pedestrian traffic lights with others, watching passively an empty road but not crossing until we are told to by the green light. It’s to keep order, it’s for the children to learn, it’s to protect ourselves from ourselves; more than that, it is perhaps key to understanding the Swiss character, one of pragmatism, one that is a little grim and overly analytical but with a deep appreciation of order and control. It’s hardly surprising that there are so many direct flights to Asia, to Thailand in particular, where a certain chaos, a certain discord is guaranteed. In the past when I worked closely with Swiss businessmen and had long nights drinking beers with them, I heard stories.

Alongside this sense of safety and comfort is a staggering opulence. Because our trip is funded by a weak dollar, eating out is rarely an option. However, on our first evening, tired from a flight from Heathrow, we went to a charming local restaurant where the bill, when it finally arrived after a sparse dinner of starters and wine, was alarming. One cannot fault the kindness and hospitality, but we were left reeling, wondering how anyone could afford to eat out. But they do, we noticed during our evening walks, restaurants full of prosperous-looking people. The same feeling of disbelief was with me while walking through our local neighborhood, which is populated with large villas, many of which are now offices for companies that seem to offer global financial, consultancy, and management services, each driveway tightly parked with large Mercedes SUVs and Porsches.

The casual visitor asks how did this small, landlocked nation become so wealthy. The official answer: a nation of hardworking, serious, and well-educated people, many multilingual; a nation without enemies and hence the lack of a massive defense budget; one with a history that doesn’t take sides or have territorial ambitions; one that didn’t fall into the trap of colonization like the UK, Holland, Portugal, and Spain. Its long-term political strategy of being agnostic to world events has protected its economy from boom and busts and from massive financial outpourings; instead, it has benefited (some might say cynically) from other nations’ wars and conflicts, its banking sector seen as a safe, discreet place to secure money and goods. Surely a vast amount of wealth has risen from interest and storage charges from the world’s assets parked here. Its manufacturing sector has focused on quality, and its tourist industry has capitalized on the beauty of its landscape. Yet this self-containment, its insularity, has both admirers and detractors; it bothers some, this history of turning its back on the world’s conflicts, its agnostic worldview.

I have a little firsthand experience of how business is conducted in Switzerland. Many years ago, the American company I worked for was “merged” with a Swiss business; that was the official story. In fact, the Swiss company had been acquired by a much larger German organization, which gave it the authority to buy the company I worked for and integrate the two businesses. The inevitable culture clashes provided both grim comedy and countless examples of Stockholm syndrome. There was a crude joke circulating at the time; the gist of which was that the American company couldn’t accurately account for the profits that it was making while the Swiss company could tell you to the penny how many losses it was incurring. It spoke to the self-absorption and bureaucracy of the European entity, one whose primary focus was apparently on administration as opposed to innovation and enterprise.

During that time of upheaval, strict rules on organization and roles were a little shocking for us in the USA, and the general observation was that the Swiss saw the business like a clock, with each individual completing small, clearly defined tasks and punishing those who wanted to do something better or different; perhaps illustrating both a stilted understanding of humanity and a cultural misunderstanding over the nature of conflict and dissent within groups, probably the most valuable asset any organization can have. There is nothing new to this thinking; travel back six hundred years to this part of the world and you would find the notion of being “individualistic” abhorrent and likely fatal. Everyone had to be defined by trade or family and usually both; who you reported to, who owned you and made decisions for you was unambiguous. Stepping out of this bondage would incur serious punishment, even death, and so it was easiest to conform, to accept your role no matter how mundane.

It is a country with deep folk art and cultural beliefs. Walking around any of the cities, there are examples of local myths and legends painted on walls and found in public statues. They are a little frightening to children and adults who had not been raised on these stories, for us, there is an alarming cruelty and violence in their message. Yet perhaps the most potent of all myths about Switzerland is its natural protection from its sometimes aggressive neighbors thanks to its topography, the formidable mountain ranges that over the past few centuries have prevented hostile invasion. Today, believing this is surely the greatest risk, technology has moved on in this atomic age. There is a healthy oblivion to all this in the character of the Swiss. We took a day trip with a guide to a local mountain resort where we donned snow boots and walked vigorously up a mountain for an hour or so until, out of breath, we suggested finding the local restaurant. The landscape was beautiful enough to feel unreal, an artificiality to the snow-covered mountains and strangely in the recent animal markings in the pure snow; unreasonably, it seemed hard to believe they existed within such perfection. Our trail was also shared with skiers, on this day teenage children in bright, spotless outfits, fearless as they sped down the slopes at alarming velocity, apparently deeply content in this safe European home.