Money does indeed make the world go round, and Zürich is here to prove it. It's a sober, responsible, business-oriented town, but despite rumors to the contrary is not just for the boringly wealthy. It's Switzerland's most populous city and offers plenty of cultural diversions. Chocolate bars will battle gold bars for your attention, the town boasts free bicycle loans, and a varied cycle of festivals keeps the people hopping. Visitors - not all of them wearing neckties - can explore galleries, the pedestrian streets of the old town and Zürich's lakeside setting.

Goethe described Switzerland as a combination of 'the colossal and the well-ordered,' and Zürich, like the country's other towns and cities, runs on minute-perfect time. That doesn't mean it's predictable: Its people did, after all, spawn Dadaism, that anti-art art movement, which goes to show that even cities bubbling over with affluence hold some unexpected surprises.