Zürich, 330km from the sea, is one of the world’s great urban swimming paradises.

While you can dive into the lake or river more or less anywhere you care to (except in the very centre of town, where boats make it too hazardous — though otherwise the Swiss attitude towards personal safety is thrillingly non-existent), the city is dotted with public-bathing facilities, the official Badi, which offer changing facilities, showers, refreshments and lockers, many free of charge.

Utoquai was built as a “Moorish-style” swimming pavilion in 1890 on the shore of the lake, just past the Opera House. Not much of the original aesthetic remains: the domes and mock minarets were removed in the 1940s, but other Art Nouveau flourishes endure, making this a sophisticated-feeling spot for a swim.

There are two small pools enclosed by decks — one for women and one for men (changing areas are also segregated), and steps and diving boards straight into the lake. There are two floating platforms moored 30m out in the lake itself, which swimmers can use to lounge on. There is also a mixed sauna (nudity is mandatory) and raised sun terraces to dry off on. An on-site café serves wine and snacks, with tables on the deck to drink, work or chat at in the sunshine.

Flussbad Oberer Letten

Lettensteg 10, 8037 Zürich

• Good for: Socialising and carousing

• Not so good for: Solitude or actual exercise

• Entrance: Free

• Open: Daily, 9am–8pm

• FYI: Mixed bathing. The Letten channel can be swum in whenever you want, though facilities abide by daylight hours. The current can be very strong, making the Letten sometimes unsuitable for young children

• Website; Directions

If there is a single spot in the summer that will confound most people’s preconceptions about Zürich, this is probably it. On warm days the banks of the Letten Oberwasserkanal — the name given to the deeper channel that runs parallel to the stony Limmat river itself (it splits at a weir just after the National Museum, as it flows out of the lake) — are packed out with a sea of young sunbathers and water-lovers. By the evenings it’s a giant party. The northern bank of the channel has a number of bars along it and is generally the busier side. The southern bank of the channel (a strip of land with the actual Limmat river on its other side, which is too shallow to swim in) is dominated by the beautiful 1950s Oberer Letten pavilion, which has showers, changing facilities and mobile-phone sized lockers for valuables, all free of charge. The entrance to this is from the Lettensteg footbridge, a little downstream.

When it comes to swimming, the trick is to walk upstream as far as one can — generally towards the weir at Dynamo — and jump in, letting the current sweep you back to the spot you put down your towel. There are diving boards from the pavilion, though adventurous bathers also jump in off the bridges.

There are lifeguards during the daytime, but the overall approach to safety is refreshingly Swiss: take responsibility for yourself. The channel terminates in a small, working hydroelectric power plant. There’s nothing to stop you drifting into its intake except a single sign on the riverbank of a man twirling down the spout of a whirlpool. This sounds more dangerous than in is — there are plenty of places to get out. Just make sure you do before you go under the Kornhausbrücke, the high road bridge that spans the whole channel (and is popular with daredevil local teenagers as a jumping spot).

Flussbad Unterer Letten

Wasserwerkstrasse 141, 8037 Zürich

• Good for: A quick refreshing dip first thing in the morning, when no one is around

• Not so good for: Lounging around on deck. The long rectangular pool — a fenced-off portion of the river — is good for swimming, but only if you’re comfortable with a (sometimes strong) current

• Entrance: Free

• Open: Daily, 9am–8pm

• FYI: Being shallower, the water here is usually warmer than in other outdoor Badi. Every July, the baths transform in the evenings into an atmospheric outdoor cinema, with the audience on the deck on one side of the channel and the screen on the other

• Website; Directions

Zürich’s oldest riverside Schwimmbad. A charming wooden deck raised relatively high above the fast-flowing Letten, right at the point where it rejoins the Limmat (a bit further downstream — the other side of the hydro plant, in fact, from Oberer Letten), this is a great place to stop for a dip if you’ve gone for a stroll down the river from town, or as a place to finish a run or a jog. Drinks and food are available from a kiosk.

Strandbad Mythenquai and Strandbad Tiefenbrunnen

Mythenquai 95, 8002 Zürich, and Bellerivestrasse 200, 8008 Zürich

• Good for: Families

• Not so good for: Serious swimmers

• Entrance (at both): Adults, SFr8 (about $9/£7); under 16s, SFr4 (about $4.50/£3.50)

• Open: Both daily. Mythenquai, 7am–8pm; Tiefenbrunnen, 9am–8pm

• FYI: Both Badi have automated paddle-board vending machines (SFr30 an hour – about $33/£26)

• Mythenquai: Website; Directions

• Tiefenbrunnen: Website; Directions

These two “beach” Badi, one on each side of the lake, are both an equidistant short tram ride (or a walk) from the city centre. They are ideal family spots.

At Mythenquai, on the western side of the lake, a 250m-long beach gently slopes into the water, with a large park area behind, where visitors can barbecue, picnic and play games. There’s a diving platform (with 1m, 3m and 5m boards). Hiltl, Zürich’s cult vegetarian restaurant, has a small concession here.

There’s a similar set-up at Tiefenbrunnen, with the addition of a 62m water slide, and a range of wellness activities: yoga, Pilates classes and massages are bookable. A large paddling pool is perfect for toddlers and babies. There are two single-sex nudist terraces.

Seebad Enge

Mythenquai 9, 8002 Zürich

• Good for: Serious swimmers, sipping rosé at sunset, winter saunas

• Not so good for: Kids

• Entrance: SFr8 (about $9/£7)

• Open: 8am–8pm (reduced opening hours in bad weather)

• FYI: Enge hosts a series of super-hip parties, music concerts and events throughout the summer

• Website; Directions

Enge is small but has the full range of Badi facilities on offer. It’s the newest, and arguably most dynamic of the city’s baths. The facility is divided into two floating platforms: one is reserved for the exclusive use of women.

For more serious swimmers, there are two 44m lanes that stretch out into the lake (closed, like most of the Badi, in the winter due to freezing temperatures). Swimming lessons and coaching for all levels are available to book. A rotating cast of masseuses and masseurs through the week offer a range of different bookable therapies, from shiatsu to acupuncture.

A small on-site restaurant serves barbecue food and light meals. Tables on the decks can be reserved and groups can book catering packages — ideal for small parties. And after the summer, the women’s platform is converted into a Finnish-style sauna experience, where visitors can work up a sweat and then plunge into the gelid waters of the lake.

On a clear day, all this is set against the spectacular backdrop of the Alps in the distance.

Tell us where you like to go open-air swimming in Zürich in the comments below

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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sam Jones

Cyclists are a hard tribe to like. The dedication. The smug tribalism. The uniforms: that faintly obscene and hyper-competitive Lycra-fetishism. The appalling sunglasses.

Of course, you can easily get trains further afield from Zürich (they all have ample space and reservations can easily be made online) to attempt some really challenging routes in, for example, the High Alps. But part of the magic of being a cyclist here is that you can also begin right from the city itself and be in the countryside in moments.

This is the post-work ride of choice for many Zürich cycling aficionados. It’s quick, intense and fun, an ideal early-evening lung-opener ahead of a pre-dinner sharpener. It’s also, I’m told, do-able (though I have my doubts) in an hour lunch break.

A short ride out from the city centre takes you towards the big hospital at Triemli. From here a steady, moderate uphill begins, skirting the Uetliberg — Zürich’s 870m mini-mountain — towards the prosperous suburb of Waldegg. Turning south, the route descends the other side of the ridge of hills that runs down the western side of Lake Zürich. This is a pleasant valley of meadows, pastures and dinky Swiss villages. Soon the harder work begins, as one turns off the valley road and begins a short, sharp 200m ascent through the woods to the hamlet of Buchenegg on the top of the ridge itself. At the top there are views of Zürich and the lake. All that remains is to hurtle all the way home on a more-or-less uninterrupted 13km downward journey.

In reverse, this ride is more of a challenge, while an extended version involves continuing along the valley to the Türlersee — a small lake — and then heading up the ridge over the Albis pass.

Four rivers

• Distance: 43.5km

• Elevation gain: 686m

This medium-length route traverses gentle hills across the contours of the Limmat and Reuss valleys and tributaries west of Zürich, with one moderate climb halfway. It begins with a long but gentle cycle through Zürich’s suburbs towards the district of Schlieren, along the Limmat valley. Within a heartbeat the city transitions from tram stops and apartment buildings to cowsheds and pastures. Once in the countryside, it’s an easy ascent to the municipality of Birmensdorf (through which flows the Reppisch — river two, really more of a stream).

The route continues through the small military range at Bergdietikon — one of many around Switzerland that train national servicemen — and then a 250m ascent begins up Hasenberg, heading just above and parallel to the Mutschellen pass, a saddle that joins the Limmat and Reuss valleys through the village of Widen. At the crest — just short of an observation tower, the Hasenbergturm, which can be reached by a short diversion — there are glorious panoramic views westward over the Ruess, which flows down from the Gotthard pass, with the Alps rising as a backdrop to the whole scene.

This medium-length route with two steep but short ascents explores the uplands north-east of Zürich, towards the neighbouring city of Winterthur. The highlight (and convenient midpoint) of the route is the pretty Kyburg Castle, a perfectly formed Swiss medieval redoubt with expansive views.

The route leaves Zürich over the Limmat river and around the Zürichberg hill towards the suburb of Dübendorf. From there, you’ll cycle through woods and past wheat fields up towards the castle. There’s a moderately challenging 180m ascent just after the town of Effretikon, before you reach the castle. As you approach the fortress, after the village of Ettenhusen, there are stunning views out across the lowlands towards Germany.

This longer tour heads south from Zürich to Zug and towards the foot of the Alps, taking in some of the stunning scenery around the Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne), one of Switzerland’s largest lakes.

The route begins on the west coast of Lake Zürich, before crossing over the low ridge of hills just parallel to the lake that separates it from the Sihl valley at the suburb of Kilchberg. Literary cyclists may care to stop briefly at the grave of the novelist Thomas Mann, who made Kilchberg his home in his last days, before aiming for the Sihl and leaving views of Lake Zürich and its sprawling wealthy suburbs behind. It’s a steady climb along the course of the Sihl, through dark woods, to Sihlbrugg, an old valley-crossing, linking Zürich to Zug and Lucerne in the days before heavy engineering blasted quicker routes through the hills themselves.

The gradient becomes marginally steeper on the next leg, up to the village of Edlibach, above Zug itself. On the way down into Zug (the canton is a famous tax haven and the unexpected home of companies such as Glencore) there is a cluster of things to see as the route crosses the Lorze river. The ruins of the 13th-century Wildenburg castle, the striking Lorzentobelbrücke viaduct and the Höllgrotten cave complex — if a pit-stop is needed — are all just off this road.

From Zug, the route continues along the eastern side of Lake Zug, through the cherry orchards for which the canton is traditionally famous. On the right, across the lake, rises the Rigi, the “Queen of the Mountains”, which is the isolated massif this route will loop right around.

Once past Arth and up a moderate set of hills, the third lake homes into view: the Lauerzersee, which is small, shallow and popular with Swiss for camping in the summer months. Looking east across it, you should have a clear view of the oddly shaped Kleiner and Grosser Mythen peaks, which Tolkien-esquely dominate this valley as it curves around to the town of Schwyz (from which the country takes its name). In the high summer, hikers climb up Grosser Mythen during the night to watch one of the most spectacular dawns in Europe, as the sun gilds the Alps with a kaleidoscopic light show.

A short detour from the end of the Lauerzersee will take you into Schwyz, which has a charming old centre and is a good spot for lunch. I prefer to push on to Brunnen, however, on the shores of the fourth lake, the Vierwaldstättersee. With its grand hotels, paddle steamers and glittering Alpine backdrop, Brunnen has a distinctly Wes Anderson-like charm to it. On a hot day, jumping into the water here is very tempting. This is the halfway point.

If you do stop in Brunnen, with a bit of peering across the lake you should be able to see the Schillerstein on the opposite shore — a 30m obelisk rising from the lake water, engraved with a golden dedication to Friedrich Schiller, the German poet and William Tell playwright. Just visible a little further down the shoreline is the Rütli meadow: the most hallowed pasture in Switzerland, where, according to the Tell legend, the original oath of allegiance between the three founding cantons, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, was sworn seven centuries ago (the exact date is a matter of dispute).

Leaving the town, the route traces the shoreline along the Vierwalstättersee west and north, at the foot of the other side of Mount Rigi. Things stay relatively flat as we approach the 100km point, curving back around to the other side of the Zugersee.

One challenge remains, however: a 250m ascent into the Albis hills south of Zürich, a bucolic area of rolling pastureland. After passing the fifth lake, the tiny Türlersee, comes the home stretch. A brief climb again up the Uetliberg, before coasting down back into Zürich — no more peddling needed — all the way down Birmensdorferstrasse.

Mountain passes: Gottschalkberg and Etzel 

• Length: 111km

• Elevation gain: 1,839m

This is a challenging route with a serious midcourse ascent that heads up into the foothills of the Alps at the southern tip of Lake Zürich.

The first stage climbs out of Zürich up Birmensdorferstrasse and around the Uetliberg into the Albis hills (reversing the final stage of the previous route, the five lakes tour). It continues across the Albis chain to Sihlbrugg, crossing the river to begin the main ascent, up 630m, at times hitting 12 and 14 per cent gradients, across pastures with increasingly impressive views out over the lowlands, before entering forest to the summit of the Gottschalkenberg (1,150m). You can break the ascent halfway with a stop in the pretty village of Menzingen. At the top of Gottschalkenberg, there’s also a restaurant with typical Swiss dishes — sausages, schnitzels and a selection of huge salads — that is a good place to break for lunch.

The route swoops down from this summit, past tiny village ski areas to the town of Einsiedeln, which is famous for its large monastery. A causeway then stretches out across the middle of the Sihlsee to the east side of the lake. Another steep series of hairpins takes you to the top of the Etzel mountain (almost). By the tiny chapel of St Meinrad (erstwhile home of the hermit martyr, killed in 861, to whom Einsiedeln is dedicated), there is an excellent Gasthaus with a lovely terrace. It’s a nice spot for lunch, with slightly more refined dishes than the average pit-stop — if you’ve held out until this point.

From here, a steep descent takes the route on to the uplands above the southern curve of Lake Zürich, through a series of pretty villages before descending down to Sihlbrugg and to the Sihl valley. It’s then a simple question of just following the Sihl — more or less gently downhill all the way — as it flows back towards Zürich.

Share your favourite cycling routes in and around Zürich in the comments. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sam Jones

As part of a three-and-a-half-year scientific study starting this summer, 2,100 residents of Switzerland’s biggest city will be able to buy regulated doses of cannabis for personal use if they agree to answer a questionnaire every six months on their consumption habits and health.

Evidence from the trial will be published on a rolling basis from next year.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sam Jones

“Well,” deadpans Taylor, looking down mournfully at her meal — alcohol banned as part of the miracle treatment in a Swiss clinic that will restore her youthful beauty — “whichever goes best with roast beef.” 

Beyond my own neat little Swiss table for one, a trim green lawn slopes down towards the lake, the gentle blue of which terminates in the Dents du Midi, dusted with snow, askance in the distance.

Back to the carrot: was a carrot ever so delicious? I had expected the dietary strictures of my time at CLP to be the biggest bore. In fact, they were the opposite. Lunch and dinner were three-course meals that were inventive and delicious. (Evidently not everyone felt so. Midweek, two teenagers from a large extended family turned up to lunch with two big McDonald’s bags.)

In absolute truth, after just four days, I had not felt healthier or fitter in months. I was sleeping deeply and well. And yet . . . 

The evening before I left, I stayed up late in my room, trawling the internet for articles on ageing and the point of all this. There is a moral question, of course, about having so much money that you can buy treatments that will, in promise at least, take a class of humans closer to becoming demigods. But even before that, I think, comes that hoary old cliché of whether a longer life, or even a more beautiful looking one, is a better one.

None of us wants to feel old. The cure can’t be found in a syringe, a pill or a pot of cream, the longevity (née wellness), industry now knowingly tells us. But I’m yet to be convinced we’ll find it in a diet, or a lifestyle, either, regardless of how meticulously crafted and how expensive to maintain they are.

Sam Jones is the FT’s Austria and Switzerland correspondent

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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sam Jones

From the floor above — all beautifully polished marble and modernist furniture — you can look out of the windows over the hedge surrounding the property. What you see is a sweeping panorama of Lake Zürich. The floor above that, reached by a grand staircase, is entirely occupied by the master suite.

Here, an enfilade of rooms stretches the length of the building, with the bedroom in its centre and a full complement of staff. Like a royal parade, everything is designed, Versailles-like, to turn around the life of its principal occupant.

Greghi, a Brazil-born 41-year-old, is the Kusnacht Practice’s driving force. He is not, by training, either a therapist or a clinician, but he exudes bonhomie. He talks about his clients, even those with serious problems, as if they were friends. From all that he describes — the regular phone calls, the knowledge of their idiosyncrasies and of their families — it sounds like many are.

“Our clients are complex,” says Prof Georg Schulthess, chief medical officer at the Kusnacht Practice. “They come from an environment where things are not clear, where their lifestyle, their psychology, their work or their public profile complicates diagnosis and treatment. They have to be taken out of that situation.”

During their stay, clients must give up whatever substance or behaviour they are addicted to, or leave. Kusnacht will not take patients who are still going through the initial shock of withdrawal. But, if patients seek urgent help, they will secure a place in a top local hospital for treatment before being brought to a villa.

The Kusnacht treatment is all-encompassing. Dr Antoinette Sarasin Gianduzzo oversees the clinic’s nutrition programme, which micro-manages every meal (cooked by each villa’s live-in chef). Dr László Ürögi oversees a team of psychotherapists and psychiatrists (each villa also has a live-in counsellor). There are personal trainers, masseurs, nurses and specialists in alternative therapies.

“When they come to us, they are usually desperate for help, having tried almost everything else,” says Schulthess. Wealth has, if anything, been as much a cause of their unshakeable addictions and misery as it might be a ticket to curing them.

“Unlimited resources, unlimited options — that is not always supportive for a healthy mind or for a personal development,” says Ürögi. Among the clients, he notes, are children of the super-rich. Growing up with often-absent parents, in a world of staff and material plenty can obliterate a developing mind’s sense of self. Substances can become the only escape.

Unlimited resources, unlimited options — that is not always supportive for a healthy mind or for a personal development

Sometimes, a client’s public standing complicates their ability to tackle addiction, because the problem must remain hidden. Schulthess recounts the case of a prominent politician: “They had reached a point of total exhaustion. From taking one pill one day to cope with the stress they were under, it had just got more and more in secret.”

One of the Kusnacht Practice’s more unusual approaches is that it offers “whole family” treatments. The roots of many addictions are in clients’ relationships with their families, notes Ürögi, and sometimes it is the family that needs to go through a therapeutic process too. “When families come here, they are not judged,” he says. Wealth and power can do strange things to family dynamics.

When clients leave Kusnacht, they can expect the clinic to stay in touch with them for months, or years, until they are better — or indeed, until they next check in. It is a “psychological concierge” service, says Greghi.

Are there contradictions in running a business that makes its money — presumably a lot of money — from addiction treatments?

In 2018, the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper said in an investigation that the Kusnacht Practice had, in the past, been paying psychiatrists and therapists in London tens of thousands of pounds for each client they referred.

According to Greghi, since he became chief executive in 2018, all such payments have stopped. He declines to comment on what happened before he was chief executive, when he was already a shareholder and a director. “I can guarantee that since I have been CEO, we do not pay commissions or referral fees or kickbacks or whatever you want to call it. People send us clients from all over the world because we are the best,” he says. “We perform miracles here.”

Greghi was born into a humble background in Brazil, but the Kusnacht Practice has made him wealthy. He owns seven horses in Zürich and is a regular on the city’s polo circuit. I ask him about how his made it to this point, but his answers are somewhat elliptical. The only prior entrepreneurial success he names is an Italian restaurant in Zürich, Ristorante Positano.

He began working for the Kusnacht Practice’s founder, Lowell Monkhouse, in about 2013, he says, and helped expand the business significantly. In 2015, he and a partner bought Monkhouse out. And in 2018, he in turn bought his partner out. He declines to discuss the shareholder structure, though he says he is now “the sole controlling owner” and that Swiss bank UBS had been a key lender for him.

People send us clients from all over the world because we are the best. We perform miracles here

He emphasises that the practice is not primarily about making money but helping people. “Money, power and possessions are like sand,” he says. “The minute you try to grasp them, they run out of your hands.”

Googling “luxury rehab” is quite an eye-opener: there are reviews that read almost like travel articles. The Kusnacht Practice, though the most expensive, is not unique. In Zürich alone, for example there is also the Paracelsus Clinic. Mallorca’s Balance clinic, meanwhile, offers a slightly sunnier locale for treatment.

Later, I speak with the London-based psychotherapist Nicholas Blackburn and ask what he makes of wealth and its peculiar effects on addiction. “It’s such an evocative scene,” he says, after I describe my trip to one of the Kusnacht villas. “Someone very rich, isolated there and perhaps hanging on to all the material things that reinforce their boredom and loneliness.” And all those shoes . . .

This article is part of FT Wealth, a section providing in-depth coverage of philanthropy, entrepreneurs, family offices, as well as alternative and impact investment

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sam Jones