Student Exchange Switzerland

Switzerland has everything. It has mountains, lakes, and snow, of course, but also castles, fondue, wild ibex, and probably one of the most honorable collections of human beings on the globe.

With standards as high as their snow-tipped Alps, the Swiss command a special mandate on quality. It's a neat, sophisticated little nation where cleanliness is not only next to godliness, but sometimes seems to be a notch above it. The cities are perfection itself, and even the humblest farmhouses in the back-of-beyond are bowered with carefully pruned vines and bedecked with bright flower boxes. Fields are so well groomed you'd think they were primping for a calendar photographer.

More than 60 percent of the nation is alpine, peaking at over 4,572 meters (15,000 feet) atop the glorious glacier-clad Dufourspitze in the Monte Rosa chain, only a few hours from downtown Geneva. The average height of those Helvetian mountains is well over a mile above sea level. Between the Alps and the Jura in the northwest lie the central plains of wildflowers and economic bliss—the powerhouse zone of Swiss industry that has made it one of the richest countries on Earth.

But while it is the home of international banking, the repository of wealth, and the soul of stability, Switzerland need not be expensive. It suffers somewhat from an exaggerated press that has often focused on the luminaries who relax in Gstaad, St. Moritz, or those who confer with their gnomes at Zurich banks and visit their trust funds in cool green vaults. In fact, there are scores of value-plus boardinghouses, hotels, and inns where the sheets are crisp and sparkling, and where the breakfast trays are heaped with croissants and buttered rolls, hot coffee, and fruits from the abundant Swiss orchards—at prices that are astonishingly low.

It's not uncommon for students to go skiing, or go to see a glittering palatial buildings.

Summer bristles with folk fairs, music and film fests, jazz concerts, cultural exhibits, and a multitude of gala events in historic, idyllic settings. In the mellow fall, the grape harvests provoke colorful wine festivals and seasonal celebration