So I get this document dump in my inbox. The assignment: "Write about Switzerland." Simple enough. And the first file is exactly what you'd expect. It's a glossy, breathless ode to Swiss trains, probably ghost-written by a PR intern who's never been west of New Jersey.
It's pure, uncut tourism porn.
You've got your "expert," Everett Potter, telling us how the Glacier Express is a "Swiss train set come to life." It's the "slowest express train in the world," which is a perfect piece of marketing nonsense. They sell you on eight hours of being trapped in a glass box, but it's okay because you get a five-course meal with "braised Simmental beef" while you cross the Oberalp Pass. They even have "Excellence Class" with plush white leather seats. I'm sure the air is filtered to smell like money and fondue.
Then there's the GoldenPass Express, a train apparently designed by the same people who do Ferraris. It has "floor-to-ceiling windows treated with anti-reflective technology, ideal for photography." Translation: it’s designed for the sole purpose of making your Instagram followers jealous. It chugs past "sun-kissed shores" from Montreux to Interlaken, linking the French-speaking part of the country to the German-speaking part. A real cultural journey, I'm sure.
Let's not forget the Gornergrat, a 44-minute ride that climbs 4,900 feet so you can get a better angle of the Matterhorn for your pictures. At the top, you're promised St. Bernard dogs and alpine horn players. It's a living, breathing caricature of a country. A theme park where the rides just happen to be public transport.
Honestly, my last train ride was a three-hour delay outside of Secaucus, stuck next to a guy who smelled like he'd been marinating in airport chili. But sure, tell me more about the red carpet champagne arrivals in Zermatt.
This is the fantasy they sell. A perfect, clockwork nation where every train is on time, every mountain is perfectly snow-dusted, and every view is a postcard. A place where you can ride a train through a UNESCO World Heritage site and not think about a single real-world problem.
And then I opened the second file.
This is where it gets weird. The headline on this document is "Swiss glaciers shrank 3% this year, the fourth-biggest retreat on record." Pretty stark. Pretty important, you'd think, for a country that sells its entire identity based on alpine scenery.
But the text? The actual content below that headline? It's a cookie policy from NBCUniversal.
I'm not kidding. It's a wall of legalese: "Strictly Necessary Cookies," "Third-party Cookies," "Information Storage and Access," "Ad Selection and Delivery Cookies." It explains, in soul-crushing detail, how to opt out of tracking on Google Chrome and how Facebook's ad policies work.
This is a mistake, right? Some kind of clerical error. No, 'mistake' doesn't cover it—this is a goddamn prophecy. It's the most brutally honest piece of journalism I've ever seen, even if it was accidental.
Go back to the first document, the happy travel guide. On the Bernina Express, they tell you to stop at the Alp Grüm station, which "has commanding views of the rapidly melting Roseg Glacier."
Read that again. Rapidly melting.
They're not even hiding it. It's a feature. "Come see our magnificent, dying glacier! Get your pictures before it's a sad little puddle! And hey, while you're here, buy a five-course meal." The travel piece mentions the Aletsch Glacier, "Europe's largest," and the Gornergletscher, the "third-largest in the Alps." But the other document, the one with the real headline, tells me they're all shrinking. Fast.
This ain't just a glitch in the matrix. This is the whole damn system laid bare.
On one screen, you have the glossy brochure for the end of the world. It’s got plush seats and rare whiskeys and it whisks you from Lucerne to Lugano, from the German part of Europe to the Italian part, selling you "la dolce vita" while the scenery literally disappears. And on the other screen, you have the terms and conditions. The fine print. The endless, mind-numbing cookie policy that you scroll past to get to the content you actually want.
They're telling you how they're tracking you, selling your data, and manipulating your experience, but nobody reads it. Offcourse not. And right next to it, they're selling you a ticket to watch a natural wonder vanish in real time, and nobody seems to be screaming about it. They're too busy picking an Instagram filter.
And we just... click accept.
We accept the cookies, we accept the tracking, we accept that the train ride is more important than the destination, and we accept that the glaciers are melting. It's just another part of the scenic view. Another bullet point in the brochure. And honestly, I just...
Maybe I'm the crazy one. Maybe this is fine. People get a nice vacation, a few good photos. They get to see a glacier before its gone. What's the harm? It's just content. It's just a trip. It's just another article that'll get buried under a thousand others.
This Is All Just a Cookie Policy
It's the same damn thing. They give you this big, beautiful, distracting picture of Switzerland's mountains and luxury trains. And buried underneath is the reality: "By enjoying this view, you agree to the terms of its destruction. You consent to us tracking the decay and selling you personalized ads for the apocalypse. Don't worry, you can manage your preferences, but the service may not function properly if you opt out." We're all just scrolling to the bottom and clicking "Accept All."
Reference article source：
- The most scenic train trips through Switzerland, according to our expert
- Swiss glaciers shrank 3% this year, the fourth-biggest retreat on record
Tags: switzerland