With an area of just 15,940 sq mi, Switzerland ranks near the bottom at 135th in the world for size.  However, on a Mercator projection map, like google maps, it appears much larger than it really is, due to its distance from the equator. To get a better sense of its size there is a cool website called “The True size of…” that lets you compare any country’s size directly with another’s in the Mercator projection.   My cover picture is from this website, with Switzerland overlaid upon Minnesota.

Even though it is a small country, it can take a long time to get places, especially if the places are on opposite sides of the Alps.  As an example, in the cover photo, look at two Minnesota towns that lie on the edge of the Swtizerland outline – Pipestone and Albert Lea. The distance from Pipestone to Albert Lea is 148 miles, as the crow flies, and according to Google maps it takes about two and a half hours to drive between the two towns.

Again looking at the outline of Switzerland on the cover photo map, Albert Lea nearly lines up with the Swiss city of Lugano, while Pipestone matches up with Geneva, which makes Geneva and Lugano just 135 miles apart as the crow flies.  Because traveling between these two towns requires winding through steep Alpine river valleys and burrowing through miles-long tunnels,  Google estimates it takes about four hours by car.  While much of the midwest is written off as flat fly-over land, we take for granted just how asscessible and fast the roadways truely are!

Another comparison I found interesting is that it only takes the five largest counties in Minnesota to have a larger land area than Switzerland.  Minnesota’s five largest counties are St. Louis at 6225 sq mi, Koochiching  at 3102 sq mi, Itasca  at 2665 sq mi, Beltrami at 2505 sq mi, and Lake at 2099 sq mi.  Together these counties have a land area of 16596 sq mi, 656 sq mi larger than Switzerland’s.  Below is a map of Minnesota with the counties highlighted.

Minnesota map by David Benbennick [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons