&gt; Does the author even know that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn&#x27;t feel like an &quot;immigrant&quot; there?<p>That&#x27;s not <i>precisely</i> true. Zurich speaks German, true, but it&#x27;s Schweizerdeutsch --- it&#x27;s a quite different dialect to the Hochdeutsch they speak in Germany. I live in Zurich; a German-born work colleague is actually taking formal lessons in it so he can understand what the locals say. It&#x27;s that different.<p>Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too, or at least does now, so Einstein would probably have gotten along fine, but he most likely wouldn&#x27;t be feeling like he was at home.