Lessons from the Last Swiss Finishing School | The New Yorker

An abundance of wealth and time are de-facto prerequisites for admission at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu.

Save this story Save this story This past summer, as Austrian glaciers melted and Swedish forests burned, the Swiss Air Force, which exists to protect a nation that hasn’t fought a war in five hundred years, was tasked with supplying tens of thousands of gallons of water to herds of parched cows stranded in Alpine pastures. Meanwhile, in Glion, a tiny village roosting high above the city of Montreux and accessible by funicular, it was already above seventy degrees Fahrenheit by 8:30 A . M ., which is when classes begin at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu. To Viviane Neri, the school’s headmistress

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