Swiss Prices

Rugged rock faces, lush alms housing cows and their jingling bells, huge lakes and glaciers... Switzerland is beautiful. But if you plan to stay here for a little longer, you should bring a well-packed moneybag. Switzerland's living expenses are the tallest in all of Europe, only northern countries like Norway reach a similar level in some aspects. So I coudn't help but note down some of the food prices again, in order to compare them with the ones at home.

Currency of choice over here is the Swiss Franc. This is what it looks like, you can switch between front and back by mouseover or tapping::

The smaller unit is called "Rappen". Not written on the coins themselves,
probably because it's centimes/centesimi in the country's French/Italian speaking parts.

There's also a 1000 Franc note, the most valuable bank note in the world.
A new series will be replacing the current design soon.

Those metal buttons and paper slips are quite valuable indeed, you will notice for sure if you want to buy some food. When I stumbled upon a branch of a certain discounter again (well screw that, it's a Lidl), I had a look at what the prices are compared to the German subsidiaries.
The chart below shows respective prices in Swiss Francs (CHF), their equivalent in Euro at the time I was there and finally the German prices. Well, by now the column of converted prices is basically obsolete: The Swiss National Bank voided its fixed exchange rate between Franc and Euro in mid-January and at the moment (28th January 2015) the rate is nearly 1:1. For a foreigner this means everything got even more expensive, just mentally replace the "CHF" by an "€" and there you go.

Exchange rate (30th Aug 2014): CHF 1 = € 0.82912 € 1 = CHF 1.20609
Also: € 1 = $ 1,31 = £ 0,79 (Same Date)

Prices:	Switzerland	Conv.2014	Germany
Whole-grain bread roll	CHF 0.79	€ 0.66	€ 0.45
Nutella (450g)	CHF 3.09	€ 2.56	€ 2.49
Alternate nougat cream (400g)	CHF 1.79	€ 1.48	€ 1.15
Fruit yoghurt (250g)	CHF 0.69	€ 0.57	€ 0.29
Bananas (1kg)	CHF 1.49	€ 1.24	€ 1.15
Apples (1kg)	CHF 3.29	€ 2.73	€ 1.69
Oranges (1,5kg)	CHF 2.49	€ 2.06	€ 1.49
Chicken breast fillet (1kg)	CHF 14.98	€ 12.42	€ 5.99
Chicken drumstick (1kg)	CHF 7.19	€ 5.96	€ 2.79
Milk 1,5% fat (1l)	CHF 1.19	€ 0.99	€ 0.65
Milk 3,5% fat (1l)	CHF 1.19	€ 0.99	€ 0.69
Apple juice (1l)	CHF 1.09	€ 0.90	€ 0.75
Most expensive beer (0,5l)	CHF 1.66	€ 1.38	€ 0.79

So as you can see: Everything I had a look at is clearly and noticeably more expensive, colouring was easy this time. Especially (chicken) meat is standing out here. And take note: Those are prices of what is probably the cheapest discounter chain in the country, the difference to normal supermarkets is huge. You can easily double a lot of prices for them, a small pack of muesli for €5 is not uncommon.
Especially fierce are prices in takeaways and restaurant. Here you have pretzels for more than €3 for example, in Bavaria it was about 60-80 cents.
Have two sheets from a shop for pizza and kebab (= Döner):

How are Swiss people able to afford all this, you might ask? It's simple: They just earn a lot more. Our German minimum wage is €7,50 per hour - Switzerland once discussed a minimum of CHF17,50 per hour. So for them prices are quite okay, it's the foreigners who have a problem thanks to the exchange rate.

Bur still: Not everything is damn expensive in Switzerland. When having a look around in the electrical goods departments one might notice: Some reflex cameras are actually cheaper.