Author: Madeline Gwinner | Major: Political Science and International Studies | Semester: Summer 2025

Visiting the United Nations whose European Headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland

One of the hardest balances to strike when studying abroad is the travel-to-home-city ratio. Everyone has their method, but generally speaking, there’s an art to both becoming a local in your home city and taking advantage of the opportunity you’ve been given to explore. I spent the first three weekends of my program out-of-country, and while I enjoyed it, by that point, I knew it was time to explore Switzerland. So, a quick Google search and a fight with the Airbnb website led me to a small town in central Switzerland called Menznau. My friends and I were seeking out a true Swiss weekend and had spent the afternoon researching everything from luxury chocolate tastings to cow-milking classes, but in typical Swiss fashion, everything had to be booked months in advance. We were stumped until I came across an ad for Das Zentralschweizerisches Jodlerfest: The Central Swiss Yodeling Festival. It’s a yearly event held by the local government whose sub-committee spends the entire year planning everything from the food vendors to the wooden structures built for the performers to sing in. And when we arrived, it became clear just how hard they’d worked. There were distinct yodel competition categories, colorful, hand-embroidered lederhosen and dirndls, and even metals for the winners. The Swiss take their yodeling about as seriously as we take American football, and they were thrilled to share their culture with us. The attendees explained that this festival is usually only attended by the Menznau locals, and they even let me try some yodeling myself. Needless to say, I was quickly humbled. If you’ve never been out-yodeled by a 9-year-old in traditional Swiss garb, I highly recommend the experience. Menznau is a primarily German-speaking part of Switzerland, and given the size of the town, English wasn’t an option. One of my friends, Cassandra from the University of Washington, was a German minor like myself. The two of us enjoyed learning some words in the Swiss-German dialect and putting our language skills to the test. That’s what drew me to a third-party program in the first place. I knew I wanted to form friendships with people from a variety of universities who grew up in very different parts of the U.S., and the SIT program was a perfect place for that. More generally speaking, I have been interested in studying abroad since my 8th grade German teacher let us look at a German train map that she’d taken off the wall of a Berlin station and stuffed in her suitcase. Geneva was particularly attractive to me because of its role in international politics, and the SIT program had a research-heavy component that allowed me to work on my honors thesis while abroad.We attended lectures several times each week, with special visits from experts like Dr. Wallace S. Cheng, a UN economist, and Dr. Marc Finaud, a former French diplomat. Outside of class, we had the opportunity to visit the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the World Trade Organization. Each of these visits were an incredible opportunity to see multilateral diplomacy in action, and everyone we met was eager to give career advice and insights on what day-to-day life looks like at some of the largest centers for peacebuilding. The SIT also encouraged us to find our own experts and create meaningful connections. My research project focused on differences in voting patterns between eastern and western Germany, so I sought out German politicians and academics. I had the chance to meet with Dr. André Bächtiger of the University of Stuttgart, Dr. Theo Glauch of Die Linke Bavaria, and Dr. Michael Mayer of AfD Stuttgart. Truly nothing can replace the lived experiences of those within a democratic system, and I am honored to have heard their first-hand accounts. Not only did they point me to new components of my research, but they gave me an insider look at the way German politics operates. While I won’t be trying yodeling again anytime soon, the passion the Swiss people bring to everything they do is something I’ll hold close to my heart. I have been fortunate enough to experience new European and American perspectives through this program, and I’m excited to keep in contact both with my host family and the friends I made along the way.