Sweden’s tourism spot shows it is not Switzerland and why

The Swiss ambassador to the United States does not hold back in his response.

Sweden and Switzerland are nowhere close to each other geographically despite calling Europe their home.

The former finds its home in the north of the continent and the latter is in the opposite direction. And yet, Sweden has released a tourism campaign to stop people from confusing it with Switzerland.

Go figure.

News website Euronews quoting SwissInfo says each year, 120,000 people Google whether Sweden and Switzerland are the same country.

Called Welcome To Sweden (not Switzerland), a mock Swedish tourism official in a satirical ad spells out what each of the two countries gets to represent.

Switzerland gets to talk about banks, mountaintops, loud noises such as yodelling, LSD, particle accelerators, and leather couture, among others. On the other hand, Sweden gets sandbanks, rooftops, silence and a lack of yodelling, Northern Lights, and contemporary fashion.

Notice who gets what and you will see they are opposites to each other. Sweden is open to negotiation, says the mock official.

A week after this campaign video was released on the web, Jacques Pitteloud, Switzerland’s ambassador to the United States, in a video, spoke about the differences between the two countries in the States. There was a noticeable tilt towards his home country, of course.

For instance, Swiss cheese and fondue over IKEA’s meatballs, the Swiss knife over IKEA’s DIY, the bigger foreign direct investor in the States, and how Switzerland’s website for the United States is better than Sweden’s.