ChristianYou do not have to put yourself in Bill Murray's position sitting on a hotel bed in Tokyo to be lost in translation.
Sometimes, you just need to look around. Switzerland with its four national languages has many place names that will surely make you grin if not burst out laughing. Some locals might not understand what you find so funny about the place name, like the stern inhabitants of Misery in Canton Fribourg, but others are great at playing it up, like the ski resort in Laax with their famous Crap Burgers named after the mountain Crap Sogn Gion.
Crap is Romansch for rock. As a follow-up to 10 Hilarious Swiss Town Names, we have collected even more fun place names from across the Helvetic Confederation.
Bad Egg (ZH)
Crap Sogn Gion (GR)
Frick (AG)
Gland (VD)
Grandson (VD)
Misery (FR)
The real name of this town is Misery-Courtion, but Misery sound so much more - well - miserable!
Poussy (GE)
OK, this is not exactly a town, but a neighborhood of Vernier-Place, Geneva.
Rain (LU)
They sure have a beautiful roundabout in Rain!
Rapperswil (SG)
Can you spot any rappers in Rapperswil, Switzerland's City of Roses?
Root (LU)
What is it about Switzerland and roundabouts?
And a bonus: Tinizong (GR)
Sounds Chinese to me!
Click below for 10 more Swiss town names with funny connotations:
(Photo credit Bad Egg by Christina Hitt, Crap Sogn Gion by HolidayCheck and mountainbiker.ch, Gland by GeorgeLouis/Wikimedia Commons, Rain by kreiselkunst.ch, Root by Jeroen Massar, Tinizong by ADV Rider)
Dimitri Burkhard
“Bad Egg” isn’t a town, either. The town is Egg, and that’s the town’s swimming area (Bad) at the Greifensee.
I totally agree and the whole region is great (sooo peinlich would my kids say in swiss german)
This is a really really shit article, simply for missing out Wankdorf….
Hold your horses! You must have missed the predecessor article, which included Wankdorf:
http://www.newlyswissed.com/6-hilarious-swiss-town-names/
Haha yes I wondered why that was missing.
Tinizong = came out as 提你总 = in Chinese “I’m promoting you to CEO” (OK, it should have a few extra characters, but still). :-P
Hi David! That’s pretty hilarious, and I take it as a sign to visit this town someday… ^Dimitri
Fun fact: “crap” is one of a handful of pre-indogermamic words in Rumansch that survived the influence of the Roman culture.
The photo of Gland certainly isn’t.
[…] terms, that's a topic for another post… Speaking of which, have you discovered these additional Swiss town names with hilarious connotations, […]
Don’t forget Bitsch