Not only cheese & chocolate

Swiss cuisine combines influences from the German, French and North Italian cuisine. However, it varies greatly from region to region with the language divisions constituting a rough boundary outline. Many dishes have crossed the local borders and become traditional dishes in Switzerland.

These dishes include:

• Cheese fondue: Melted cheese with bread cubes. The bread cubes are picked up on the fork and swivelled in the melted cheese, which is served in a traditional ceramic fondue pot called ‘caquelon’. To end the first semester, the International Office invited us at the Christmas dinner where we ate a delicious fondue made with beer from Olten. I suggest you to try it! It's lighter than the traditional recipe with white wine.

• Raclette: Melted cheese served with "Gschwellti" (jacket potatoes), cocktail gherkins and onions as well as pickled fruit. Contrary to French raclette, the Swiss one is not served with cooked meats.

• Älplermagronen: A kind of gratin with potatoes, macaroni, cheese, cream, onions and stewed apple on the side.

• Rösti: A flat, hot cake made of grated, cooked jacket or raw potatoes and fried in hot butter or fat.

• Birchermüesli: Developed around about 1900 by the Swiss doctor Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Brenner, it contains oat flakes, lemon juice, condensed milk, grated apples, hazelnuts or almonds. As a lover of muesli I was over the moon when I discovered the brand MyMuesli in Switzerland (you can find shops everywhere). MyMuesli offers a large range of products to suit all tastes. Launched online in 2007 MyMuesli was the first company globally to offer customised muesli.

BEVERAGES

There are many beverages which you can try during your stay in Switzerland. Rivella, is a well-known brand and is a milk serum soft drink (where red is the standard drink, blue the light one and green a green tea extract). Another typical beverage, which has a long tradition in Switzerland, is beer. Popular brands are Eichof, Falken, Feldschlösschen, Haldengut, Schützengarten, Quöllfrisch and many other ones found in all the regions. As I don't like beer I tried the Swiss wines. Don't forget to try it! You can find vineyards all over the country. Kirsch, Appenzeller Bitter, Bündner Röteli and other fruit brandies are typical Swiss spirits that can be frequently enjoyed after a meal.

SWISS CHEESE & CHOCOLATE

One could quite easily explore Switzerland travelling from cheese dairy to cheese dairy. Switzerland has more than 450 varieties of cheese. Fondue and Raclette are some of the most famous Swiss dishes made with cheese (and each family has its own recipes for the fondue).

Each region of Switzerland has its own types of cheese. The diversity of products created from one single base ingredient: good Swiss milk. Such as, for example, the soft and melting Vacherin cheese, the aromatic Appenzeller, the full-flavoured Sbrinz, the Emmentaler, famous for its big holes, the world-famous Gruyère or the Tête de Moine which is shaved into decorative rosettes.

The Swiss eat more than 10 kilos of chocolate every year. Sometimes there is a greater selection of chocolate in supermarkets than fruit and vegetables. Chocolate came to Europe in the course of the 16th century, by the 17th century at the very latest it became known and was produced in Switzerland as well. In the second half of the 19th century Swiss chocolate started to gain a reputation abroad. The invention of milk chocolate by Daniel Peter as well as the development of fondant chocolate by Rodolphe Lindt were closely connected with the rise of Swiss chocolate's renown. But Switzerland not only exported chocolate, its chocolatiers went abroad as well and their names remain well-known to this day like the Josty brothers, who opened their famous chocolate shop in Berlin or Salomon Wolf and Tobias Béranger who ran the famous Café Chinois in St. Petersburg. Even Belgian chocolate has Swiss roots: Jean Neuhaus opened a confectionary shop in Brussels and his son Frédéric in 1912 invented the praline chocolate.

With the ESN I visited the Cailler' chocolate factory and the museum of gruyères in Gruyères. I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of Swiss gruyères that is very strong (compared to the French one).

TOBLERONE AND SWISS MOUNTAIN

Toblerone is the beloved Swiss chocolate brand I can't get enough of. Toblerone is a cleverly built chocolate bar. Here are 9 things you might not have known about the brand.

1. Its name is a play on words: The chocolate was invented by Theodor Tobler. Toblerone comes from his surname, plus 'torrone' - an Italian word for a type of nougat.

2. It's 108 years old: Theodor Tobler and his wife created this world-renowned chocolate in 1908. Chocolate making was in Tobler's family, as his father owned a confectionary shop in the late 1800s.

3. You've been eating it wrong: In 2014, a video went viral that proved the correct way to break off a piece of Toblerone chocolate.

4. It's the first chocolate bar to debut with a filling and after that, brands such as Almond Joy, Mounds, and Three Musketeers followed suit.

5. We consume 62,000 kilometers of Toblerone each year that's longer than the circumference of Earth.

6. Its shape comes from dancers: It's commonly thought that the shape of Toblerone represents the mountains of Switzerland. But the shape is actually meant to represent dancers the Folies Bergères — a cabaret music hall in Paris. The dancers form a pyramid at the end of the show, hence the triangular shape of the candy.

7. There's a hidden message in its packaging: You know the mountain on the packaging of a Toblerone box? Look more closely. Theres an outline of a bear within the mountain.

8. It comes in 10 sizes: From fun size, to life size, Toblerone comes in 10 sizes and weights. It's tallest candy bar for sale is one meter in length.

9. There have been 11 different varieties of Toblerone: The candy bar has played around with different flavors in its 108 year existence. Flavors such as fruit and nut, honeycomb, and salted almond have all been tested.

Matterhorn (aka Toblerone mountain) from Zermatt

There is a lot of Swiss chocolate brand. If you want to have a wide selection of chocolate I suggest you to go to Läderach. Läderach has stood for top-quality, hand-made Swiss chocolate specialities since 1962.