Swiss Culture

Switzerland is in the highly unusual situation of being the home of three of Europe's major languages, but apart from Rumanstch - spoken by only 0.5% of the population - it has no written language of its own. Whichever language group they belong to, the different Swiss communities have linguistic and cultural ties with one of their larger neighbours. It's easier for someone from Geneva to speak to a Parisian than to a fellow Swiss from Bern, or for a native of Ticino to read Milan's Corriere della Sera than the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
The language communities eat different things and have different traditions and customs. Even their shared history only goes back about two centuries. Before the Napoleonic invasion of 1798, some of the cantons even ruled other parts of Switzerland. The inhabitants of what is now Canton Vaud, for example, were the subjects of Bern, and did not enjoy the same rights as the Bernese.
The Swiss themselves are sometimes puzzled about what they have in common apart from their passport, what it is that makes them Swiss. The Swiss say they are held together by the desire to stay united. The general attitude is summed up in the formula "unity, but not uniformity."