 Kauai's law across the sea program. Today we're going across the sea to Europe and then across Europe to Zurich, Switzerland to meet with Urs Lustenberger. Urs is a very experienced and well traveled Swiss lawyer whose law practice includes Asia Pacific and international clients and issues. Most of us view Switzerland from far away. We don't go there. We don't get there. And it seems to be surrounded, but I know it has international relationships and connections. I've asked Urs to share his personal and professional views of life, law practice, and the world from Switzerland. From Switzerland. Welcome, Urs. It's good to see you. How are you? Thank you, Mark. Thank you for all the good words and the introductions. It's lovely to be on this show with you. And of course, Switzerland being small makes it being international because if we just deal with our local issues, we can go home very early in the day. And I guess, yeah. That's what I want to ask you about. First of all, I mean, I want to put up a couple images of Switzerland, a couple maps. The first shows Switzerland seems to be landlocked right in the middle of Europe and are grounded by the green. Well, there are two things. We are to the south kind of protected by the Alps, even though we have an Italian part that is south of the Alps. The country as such is kind of cut off by the Alps in the south. We have contacts to the major countries around us, which is the German speaking part to the north, Germany and Austria, the French speaking part to the west, which is France, and the Italian speaking part to the south. And just being nestled into the center of Europe makes us be interdependent with these countries. I think if we if we would not deal, let's say with the region of southern Germany, we would not exist. If we would not deal with the region of northern Italy, which is extremely busy economic commercial area, we would not exist. And if we would not interact with the French area around Geneva, we would not exist. So I think I think these are very crucial contact points for Switzerland. That's very interesting. So what you're telling me is that you have you have relationships. Is that what it's like with these other countries? So you don't feel intimidated or surrounded, but you have collegial relationships. Is that accurate? I think that's very accurate. If you look, for example, at the migration patterns, if somebody from Germany migrates to Switzerland, he could blend in very, very easily speaking generally the same language, even though not the same dialect, but but speaking the same language. Same is true for the French side there. I think from from a language point of view, they would blend in even easier because the dialect difference is not as big, same again with Italy. So there's a lot of daily travellers that come just for a job in Switzerland, from the French side, from the German side, from the Italian side, and keep the economies in the respective towns buzzing. And without them, there would be an incredible slowdown. So we're talking about kind of a personal relationships between people of different countries, but it is enhancing Switzerland's development. And how about, I mean, and commerce too? I mean, it helps business. Is that what you're telling me? Not just people to people, but business to business? Initially, actually, my comments were more about commerce, but then of course, people to people. It's a tradition in Switzerland to send the young men abroad to learn about how the world functions. So often, when they go abroad, they find their wives. So my mother, just to give you an example, my mother comes from northern Italy. I myself, I picked my wives from further away, but but I also found them whilst I was away because it's almost traditional that you go abroad. You do a stint of work for one year, two years, somewhere in a far, far away country, then you come home, start your family, and then you know about the world. Does that have anything to do with Switzerland's location and with that tradition of sending people out? Is that where it comes from? I would think so. It started that you would send the people within the country into another language region. You know, for example, that the German speakers, they go to the French-speaking prominent vice versa, because it just opens your horizon if you learn how to firstly communicate in a different language, and you see a different culture. And then, as the world started to become more global also for Switzerland, instead of just going to the French part of Switzerland, young men and women usually go further abroad. And for me, it happened to be America. For others, it might be even further away. It could be Australia. It could be Germany, whatever. But a lot of the young people do a year abroad just to broaden their mind. So that sounds like a philosophical position in Switzerland that I view as being part of the geographical location that came out of it. And that travel is good for the country, and it's good for the person. And I know that you have a lot of relationships with Asia, and that expands out in Asia too. Is that Switzerland people, they just keep moving out? No, it's absolutely correct. I think when you grow up in Switzerland, just imagine you grow up in Switzerland, you're kind of this unruly teenager or whatever. Switzerland is not fun to grow up with because it's very conservative, very quiet, nothing happens. Nothing changes. If you think in your head revolution, you can forget about it. It will never happen in Switzerland. So as a teen and tween, you often dream of going somewhere else where at least something is happening. And you think of the big towns of the world, the megalopolises, that could be Paris, Berlin, London, New York, or now maybe Shanghai, all the places that you can think of. But you cannot imagine that you will be spending the rest of your life in this quiet, peaceful surrounding that will never change. And when you then venture abroad, you usually find out that the grass is not so much greener across the fence. And you do your own little experiences. And you find that it's not so bad to go back to a peaceful country where everything is predictable. And all of a sudden, you start to like where you come from. And this process, I think is, or a lot of people go through this process. And it's part of Swissness to be very critical about the country when you're young, and to be very, very grateful about it when you get older. And all of it has to do with travel and meeting other countries, meeting other people from other countries and going out and seeing different cultures, I guess. Absolutely. It's crucial that you see the world in its various ways, in its various reflections, and that you experience it yourself, because if you just read about it or you hear about it, that's not the same. You have to experience it yourself. That's a great philosophy. I mean, that's a great way, in my view, for people to learn about other people and actually to make friends and make relationships, not just business, but learn about other cultures. I didn't know that was a Swiss philosophy or a Swiss way of thinking. That's really great. I really like that. And one of the great things, or one of the negative things, you can see it whichever way you want it. Switzerland was never a colonial power. We were never deeply entrenched with a foreign nation. So there are no fixed ties, but there's also no fixed enmities. So when we venture out into the world, we are always a minority. We always have to watch. We always have to be a little bit careful. And it makes us good observers, but it makes us also be accepted in wherever country we end up. So we will usually not encounter enmities from old colonial serves. We will not encounter whatever. But it also means that a typical Swiss doesn't have a deeply rooted nationalism or pride about the greatness of this fantastic kingdom or whatever it might be. We are not. We are just amalgamation in the center of Europe of various ethnicities. And we have to live with that to a certain extent. And we have to find our peace in comparison to these other, let's call them, fantastic nations, royals and whatever, who claim they are better than whoever. And we have to find our way into this world and see that maybe we're doing quite the right thing the way we are doing it. But you have to learn as you grow older. Okay, good. And in that regard, I mean, is there any special relationships that Switzerland has with any other countries around the world? Asia or the United States or Europe? Is there any, or is it more equal? Is it just well spread out? Well, it's very difficult to answer this question. I believe we have the strongest relationships always to our most important trading partners. So global trade plays a very important role. Right now, our strongest trading partner is the USA, which means they have a lot of sway over how things will work in Switzerland. Germany as such has an enormous economic importance for Switzerland. But Germany is culturally very close to Switzerland. So I would not say there is an enormous political influence. But currently the US, I think yields quite a big stick vis a vis Switzerland. You know, I've also heard that Switzerland is a neutral country. What does that mean from the Swiss point of view? Is that true? Is that a correct assumption that I have? Well, Switzerland used to be very neutral. In the medieval ages, Switzerland used to loan out mercenaries to all sorts of kings and kingdoms around us. So it happened that Switzerland loaned enormous amounts of mercenaries to the Pope, where they still are active now. But they also loaned out to the king of France or the king of Lombardia, etc. And then at some point, when all these forces around Switzerland were fighting wars, you had Swiss on both sides, you know, fighting in the in the first line of these of these fights. And there was one very devastating battle where on both sides enormous amounts of Swiss mercenaries died. And after that, Switzerland decided to withdraw to more or less the current borders. Switzerland at that time had also expansionary goals. All of northern Italy was once part of Switzerland. A part of of Eastern France was part of Switzerland. And at that point, Switzerland gave up all these all these fought over areas withdrew to the current borders and declared itself neutral. And initially, that meant we really did not take part in any battles whatsoever. We did not take part. We did not take sides in any of these European, mostly European clashes. And I think this neutrality was fine. Until I remember there was a boycott in South Africa. South Africa was being boycotted for being for the apartheid regime. And at that time, Switzerland developed its neutrality into taking advantage of it. We became a trading hub for trade with South Africa. And that was not really liked by the by the international community. And then it started to slowly redefine its neutrality. Then neutrality became not taking any commercial advantage, not interfering and not taking part in any block. And so and then it further developed. And the latest development now is we join all the sanctions that the Europeans do, which is not really neutral. And we take part in condemning Ukraine. And no, sorry, in condemning Russia, we even started to think about sending weapons to Ukraine. So neutrality has developed into something that is now very difficult to define if you use the word neutrality. I see. So you so there has been a reaction to the to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which I was not aware that Switzerland had taken that position. And that is not a not not really a neutral type of position. And so and is that is that feeling about it held by the populace by the Swiss people, they feel that way too that this is wrong, this should stop. I think there is a lot of discussion about it. And I think for many people, it would be much easier if we would be neutral, really neutral. But we are deeply embedded in Europe. And so if Europe sanctions something or somebody and we do not, and they can flee to our country because of because of that exception, we simply will not fit into Europe. So the there is a very clear explanation to the way this neutrality is working out right now. And there are very good explanations for it. But nevertheless, it would be much easier for us if we could remain neutral. Is there any way for Switzerland to be an intermediary to help bring peace? Is that a possibility? Has it ever been talked about or? Yeah, it has been talked about. But I think right now it's impossible. You know, we we in Switzerland, we loudly speak about collecting all the money of the oligarchs that is within the Swiss banks and use it to rebuild Ukraine. It's not being done yet, but there is talk about that. And you cannot be taken serious as a as a mediator if you start to entertain thoughts like that. So typically in the old style neutrality or where Europe is not so deeply involved. Yes, we would be the typical intermediary and we have been intermediaries. For example, with Iran, with Iraq in those wars, we were still very, very neutral and we could we could be a credible intermediary. Right now in this war, Russia would never accept it. And and and we would be we are tainted, so to speak. Okay. All right. I've learned a lot just from you, just from those points that you brought up. I want to ask you a few, few personal questions. You live in Zurich and like to flash a few photos of Zurich. Is that a nice place to live? Is it enjoyable? What's it like for, you know, is it a place for tourists? It's a lovely place. One of the great things is our largest city Zurich has maybe a population of 400,000, which is more or less a village in a big country. But we call ourselves or we call Zurich a little big city, which means we do quite a bit of business. We have a number of multinationals that are important in the world. But nevertheless, it's very easy to get out into nature, to swim in the lake, you know, the lake that is in Zurich. We swim in there every day when the weather is warm enough. We can go to the mountains and have access to relatively unspoiled nature very, very easily. That makes it very agreeable to live there. And you travel around a lot around the world. Any particular countries that you go to or is it multiple countries or just where you're asked to work or what does that work? Well, I have business interests, personal business interests in Germany. So I spend a lot of time in Germany. But for most people or for most Swiss, that would not be something worth mentioning because a lot of Swiss have some business interests in Germany. Other than that, the typical orientation of a Swiss and also of me would be towards the south. You know, you go to warmer countries like Italy or southern France. And these are absolutely wonderful places. But when I sit into a plane, it often is Asia, as you know. And currently, I just spent two months more or less in China. I went to Bhutan, to the Himalayas, to Nepal. And I must say, I'm very fascinated by Asia. And whatever country it might be, it's just interesting to see the speed of development in these countries. You know, in Switzerland, if you go through my hometown, you can still see the house where I was born. It's all still there, the schools that I went to, et cetera, et cetera. If you go to China, to the hometown of my wife, you will not recognize anything. Everything is different. And so that has pluses and minuses. It can be seen as a huge advantage that you still see your roots, but it also means that when you're young, you're kind of bored. They never change it. Let me ask you, you talked about climate a little bit. I want to ask about, you have the Swiss Elps, which everybody loves to view and think about. Is there such a thing as climate change in Switzerland? Does it affect the Swiss Elps? What's happening in that regard? Yeah. Well, there are two things where there is effect that you could feel. One is in tourism for the ski resorts. The ski resorts are not so high up. So it's not so easy to always have the snow everywhere that you would like to have it for a picturesque scene. Luckily, we have artificial snowing machines. I call them snowing machines, where you take water out of a pond at sub-zero temperatures, and you just let it snow onto the slope so you can ski. But this means that often slopes that used to be full of normal snow when I was young, they looked like highways on the mountain at certain times because they were just plastered with artificial snow. So that is one way we sometimes feel climate change affects us. And then the more important, more dangerous way is we have in the Alps areas that are covered by permafrost, permanent frost, where the rocks and the crystalline formations that we have, they are kind of glued together by frozen water. And if that starts to melt, we have landslides of an enormous extent that could even threaten public roads and so on and so forth. So we have landslides, we have retraction of the glaciers. So I hear you saying there is warm. I mean, it's getting warmer. It's getting warmer. It's clearly getting warmer. And you know, we measure all the movements of the glacier every year, they retract. You can tell. There are sticks on the ground where it was, I don't know, last year, and it moves not just in millimeters, it moves in meters and more. You know, I've learned already a lot about Switzerland through our conversation today. Is there something about Switzerland that you'd like the people to know? Is there something about living in Switzerland or the country of Switzerland that you'd like to tell people about? Well, first of all, I should, as a good patriot, I should only say good things. So common sea Switzerland, it's a beautiful country. I think most of the foreigners that set foot into Switzerland will love it if the weather is a little bit sunny, which is not always the case. But most of the visitors who do a quick stint through Switzerland will be amazed at what can be done. And I would want to leave it with that. We have, you know, we have challenges like every other country. We have challenges to motivate young people. We have challenges to keep the prosperity the way we would like to see it. You know, on the surface, Switzerland is very prosperous, but still there is a growing amount of people who have to work two jobs to make ends meet. We have that problem with the middle class that is getting poorer, even though it the middle class carries all the burden and paying taxes and so on and so forth. So we have all these issues, I think, that that we see in the Western world happening. We have them as well. We might have them at a slightly less intimidating scale, which is part of what makes Swiss people happy, because if they compare, let's say to the average German citizen, we can say we are doing better, but it's still, you know, there's a certain level of decline and these challenges we will have to face like everyone else. Yeah, okay, all right. I appreciate that insight also. Now, we've gone through our time limit, Urs, I want to thank you, but are there any Swiss words of wisdom that you'd like to leave with us at this time in the world where things are difficult all the way around? Okay, I would love the world to become peaceful again and think, and I would like humanity to think in terms of preserving life on the planet. And I think the first item of preserving life on the planet would be to live in peace. And the second thing would be to try to preserve what we have, but these are very wise words. It's not so easy to get there. Yeah, I appreciate that very much. Urs, Lustenberger, thank you very much for being my guest today. I appreciate your company, your views and learning about Switzerland. Aloha. Aloha, Mark. It was really a pleasure to talk to you today.