Sweden and Switzerland are too often confused – at least the tourism organisation Visit Sweden thinks so and is launching an advertising campaign to help clear things up.
Switzerland Tourism is relaxed about the news and says Switzerland is “unmistakable” anyway.
“Welcome to Sweden (not Switzerland)” is the title of the video circulated on social media by Visit Sweden. As the Swedish tourism office announced on Tuesday, both countries are beautiful and have the same initial letters in German and English.
But that’s where the similarities should stop, if the Swedes have their way. Every year, 120,000 people even google the question of whether Sweden and Switzerland are the same. In the US, a study by Visit Sweden found that half of the respondents were not sure if there was a difference.
In the Visit Sweden video, a woman dressed in what appears to be official attire addresses the Swiss directly in front of two Swedish flags. She proposes a treaty whereby each country concentrates on its core competencies.
According to this, the Swiss yodel to their hearts’ content in their mountains, while deep silence reigns in Sweden’s majestic nature. And while time is forgotten in Sweden, Switzerland builds luxury watches. …
Video of Sweden Toursim: https://piped.video/watch?v=0oNX_BHgi3c
To be fair, the majority of Americans are geographically challenged/ignorant.
Yeah. A lady I worked with who was a good 15 years older than me asked “where is Norwegia?” when we were discussing something to do with Norwegians.
Lol in Spanish it’s even easier to confuse them as they are called Suecia (Sweden) and Suiza (Switzerland).
wait wait wait. isn’t suiza like covered in cheese? most of my spanish comes from taqarias.
Lol we do have enchiladas suizas, which are enchiladas covered in cheese. I have no idea why they are called that as I am 99.9% sure they were not invented in Switzerland.
actually it makes sense considering the fondness for fondue.
Swedish person here, don’t think that’s actually happened once
American who’s moved to Switzerland here, the number of times I’ve had friends/relatives ask me “How’s life in Sweden?” is quite frankly astounding
Well, you live closer to Sweden than they do. Surely you can glance out of your window and check every once and a while?
So I always doubted that meme… Then I went on holiday in the US and Canada… Nope. Quite a few people mixed it up
Well, yes, obviously if you bring US people into it. Asking them about geography is a bit of a cheat IMO.
If this is a real problem, then we can start using Switzerlands propper name Helvetica
Helvetica is a font, definitely not the proper name of Switzerland. https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica
You’re probably thinking of Helvetia, which is neither the real name of Switzerland as it is an allegorical figure which represents Switzerland.
If you want the real official name of Switzerland, then you’ll have to get it into one of the official languages:
- Confédération suisse in French
- Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft in German
- Confederazione svizzera in Italian
- Confederaziun svizra in romanche
On English it would be the Swiss confederation, or… Switzerland in short.
