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This is Switzerland—where the cheese has holes, the knives have screwdrivers, and the
flags teach you math—and this is the city of Bern, famous for blue waters, a flag whose
bear probably didn’t need to be that anatomically correct, and of course, for being Switzerland’s
capital.
But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: you’re adopted.
Wait, wrong secret.
Bern isn’t Switzerland’s capital.
“But Sam,” you ask, “if Bern isn’t Switzerland’s capital, what is?”
To that I would say, “ask your birth parents,” but… well, you know… so instead, I’ll
tell you: Switzerland doesn’t have a capital.
You see, nowhere in Switzerland's constitution, whether you look at the 1848 original, the
1874 revision, or the critically panned remake, Tyler Perry’s: A Madea Constitution, do
you find a specific location named for the nation's capital, and that's weird, because
basically every other country in the world has either a law or constitutional provision
naming their capital.
Take the United States for example: according to the documentary Hamilton, in 1790, following
a rap battle, we passed a law declaring that our capital was going to be Washington DC:
a sinking swamp city in the middle of nowhere.
Switzerland, on the other hand, never passed any such law, probably because they did yodeling
battles instead, where the true loser is everyone.
But never actually naming a capital wasn’t just a trivial slip-up we found on a list
of weird, useless facts on Wikipedia that I figured I could make money off of with five-minute
sponsored YouTube videos published six or seven times monthly.
Nope, instead, Switzerland’s lack of a capital serves as a microcosm for how Italy’s hat
works.
Back in the day, before people thought Switzerland was cool because of skiing and chocolate and
questionable banking practices, it was kind of a backwater that other empires didn’t
even bother trying to control, because of the mountains and difficult terrain and annoying
accents.
Left to their own middle-of-nowhere devices, cute little baby states, called cantons, took
shape across the region, and some of these cantons figured, “hey, rather than always
doing war to each other, maybe we could do not that, and get along sometimes,” and
so they formed cute little alliances, called confederations.
Then, in Europe and the Americas, people started making nations, and not wanting to be left
out, cantons from across present-day Switzerland said, “hey let’s be even more friendly
and do even less wars and start a nation, too.”
And thus, there was Switzerland.
But unlike most nation-states, Switzerland pumped the brakes on all that “one nation,
indivisible,” fraternity stuff, and said “look, um, you guys are cool and all, but
let’s not get too carried away here with all this unified blood and soil stuff—it’s
getting kind of weird.”
And so, to avoid early-onset H.P.W, hyper-patriotic weirdness, the Swiss decided to keep the cantons
around as powerful, semi-sovereign states tied loosely together under the umbrella of
Switzerland.
That meant the industrious cantons could keep speaking German, the pretentious cantons could
keep speaking French, and the spicy meatball cantons could keep speaking Italian.
The point is, without a particularly strong or centralized federal government, the process
of creating a nation that wouldn’t tear itself apart came down to balancing power
between the cantons.
So, they chose not to have a capital to ensure that no single canton or city was more important
than the rest, and all the Swiss went on to build lots of clocks, invent velcro, be the
“very fine people on both sides” of countries in every major world conflict, and live happily
ever after, the end.
Okay, okay, I can already hear you asking, “but Sam, everything I’ve ever read or
watched my whole entire life outside of this single video told me that Bern is the capital
of Switzerland.”
To which I say, “why has everything you’ve ever read or watched mentioned what the capital
of Switzerland is?
What sort of freaky streaming site are you subscribed to?”
The truth is, Bern is inaccurately referred to as the capital because it is home to federal
government buildings.
This is because while balancing power across a decentralized Switzerland was an idea that
all the cantons could get behind, the nation still needed at least some sort of federal
government, and they needed to put that government somewhere.
So, in true rom-com fashion, the Swiss picked a quiet, unassuming city who doesn’t see
how beautiful she really is, as the home of the federal assembly.
This was okay with all the cantons because unlike the larger cities of Geneva, Lucerne,
and Zurich, the smaller Bern didn’t come off as intimidating—after all, they wore
short skirts, Bern wore t-shirts, they were cheer captain while Bern was on the bleachers,
et cetera.
Not all federal buildings are located in Bern, though.
For those who have broken Swiss law—maybe you dropped your bread in the fondu or only
got a Bronze medal in bobsled—you’ll end up in the Federal Criminal Court, located
in the Italian-speaking city of Bellinzona.
If you’re less criminal, though, and more supreme, the Swiss Supreme Court is in the
French-speaking city of Lausanne.
So, while Bern gets the star and bold font on all the maps, federal government functions
are spread across the country in order to maintain a balance of power.
So the next time you hear someone on the street say that Bern is the capital of Switzerland,
now you know what you need to do: stop whatever you’re up to, call them an idiot, yell at
them in front of their family, don’t stop until they’ve started crying, tell them
to go watch this video, and then, finally, and most importantly, give them this link
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