Austria and Switzerland

With names of people, cities and most countries, the genitive is simply -s, placed before the noun: Wiens Cafés, Österreichs Hauptstadt. The noun after it has no article. You met this pattern with Evas Handy; here it describes places.

German does not use an apostrophe here: Wiens, not Wien's. Das Kaffeehaus is the Austrian word for café, die Hauptstadt is the capital and die Altstadt the old town.

The same -s works for people: Goethes Werke, Pauls Kollege. If a name already ends in -s, -ß, -x or -z, write an apostrophe instead of another s: Jonas' Freundin. In speech, many people use von instead: die Musik von Mozart.

Use only one form per noun: Mozarts Musik or die Musik von Mozart, never die Mozarts Musik. Schweizerdeutsch is the Swiss German that people speak in everyday life.

Feminine countries with an article, such as die Schweiz, do not take -s. Only the article changes in the genitive: die Schweiz becomes der Schweiz, so you say die Berge der Schweiz. Österreich has no article, so it takes -s: Österreichs Berge.

Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. In Switzerland people write ss instead of ß, for example Strasse instead of Straße. Grüezi is a Swiss greeting.