Why this Switzerland journal exists.
Helena Schmid on running an independent travel archive from the only country that puts a glacier and a particle accelerator into the same train timetable.
The remit
Most travel guides to Switzerland age faster than their next edition. Train timetables shift twice a year, museum wings get rehung, the Aletsch glacier retreats by tens of metres each summer. Kunshaus exists to share the specifics — not the impressions. Which ticket is cheaper. Which gondola runs in shoulder season. Where in Bern you should actually leave the tourist axis.
Editorial principles
The project does not work with tour operators, hotel chains or cantonal tourism boards. Routes are walked in person or with a local guide. Pieces written "from photos" never make it into the archive. If a place is in the journal, the editor has been there at least once in the past twelve months.
How issues are built
The archive is released in small seasonal batches. Each entry includes a plain-text map (station names, stops, walking minutes), prices in Swiss francs as verified, operating hours, and the kind of detail that rarely makes it onto official sites: where to eat without overpaying, which public toilet is free, when the panorama drowns in low cloud.
A good guide does not describe a country. It shortens the distance between the traveller and the place.
If you spot something dated, write in. Reader corrections are read carefully and credited where they reshape a piece. Switzerland rewards travellers who plan once and then commit — and the project tries to give you a planning surface you can trust.
— Helena Schmid, Zurich / Lausanne