One blog, 150 posts & 100,000 visitors

April 28, 2011, 4 Comments

I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried. This is the 150th post on this blog, and at 22.42 last night the number of visitors passed the 100,000 mark. Perfect timing. And a look back at the posts you’ve liked the most.

The blog came after the book, and I started writing the former once I’d finished writing the latter. I’m not sure who read it at first, given that Swiss Watching wouldn’t be published for another seven months, and the readership grew very slowly to begin with. You can see from the first post on 9 December 2009 that back then I hadn’t discovered pictures or video, and didn’t write very much. How things have moved on!

13 April 2010 was the single busiest day, when 5696 visitors landed here, all thanks to Heidi. I’d written about Johanna Spyri possibly having taken the idea of Heidi from an older (German) work, and the post got picked up by Yahoo in Japan. Apart from the two permanent pages About Me and About the book (both of which have tabs at the top right of the page), that Heidi post remains the most visited one.  Rather fitting for a blog about Switzerland.

Late last year I added the Flag Counter, which I love. It’s rather geeky but I think it’s amazing to be able to see where all the readers are: of course Switzerland is number one but in total it’s 140 different countries so far and all 50 US states (plus DC). I only wish I’d had it there since the beginning.

Other than Heidi, here are the ten most visited posts on here:

• A beginner’s guide to Swissness Ten ways to understand what Swissness means. 4 June 2010
• Dead famous in Switzerland Celebrity graves in Swiss cemeteries. 15 September 2010
• Tears of outgoing Bundesrat minister Merz Video of laughing politician. 20 September 2010
• Switzerland from A to Z Everything from apples to Zurich. 5 October 2010
• Is this the world’s best public transport? Bern’s great trams. 11 April 2011
• 10 trivial facts about Switzerland Plugs, Rivella & names. 2 September 2010
• Kiss me, I’m Swiss The right way to kiss a Swiss. 6 July 2010
• Summer in the city means swimming in Bern A dip in the Aare. 30 June 2010
• Is Switzerland the black sheep of Europe? Dirty politics. 17 November 2010
• Kambly: Switzerland’s best biscuits Need I say more? 27 September 2010

Of course, there have been 139 other posts that have (hopefully) kept you entertained and informed over the past 17 months or so. Politics, trivia, food, customs, and travel – anything and everything to do with Switzerland. I love finding new topics to write about, spotting things on my Swiss travels that I can use. That’s what makes this fun for me. And for you all, I hope.

So here’s to the next 150 posts and 100,000 more visitors!