Name: I Spent $1,000 in World’s Most Expensive Country
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T11:10:07.000Z
Duration: 14 min 7 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The superlative

I have just arrived in Switzerland, the world's most expensive country, and I have a budget of $1,000.

Modal verbs - A2

I'm gonna see how fast I can spend it by doing normal activities.

Past simple

I just crossed the border through a long tunnel on beautiful Lake Lugano, and

I pulled over to this little gas station and I was told that I need to get a sticker to drive legally through the highways without paying fines.

And we are legal to drive in Switzerland.

I'm walking the streets of the Italian Swiss city of Lugano.

When you go to the Venetian Hotel and you see the shops, it looks almost fake.

Pretty trippy because people are all speaking Italian.

But you have to keep reminding yourself that you're not in Italy.

I mean, this is like the only other country in the world where you would hear Italian and you're not in Italy.

Well, its cities such as Zurich and Geneva rank among the highest quality of life in the world.

And with that comes a high cost of living.

A country famous for its milky chocolate, cheesy fondue, the beautiful Swiss Alps.

And claiming its own identity outside of the eu, Switzerland also has one of the world's smallest strongest currencies, called the franc.

The country has the world's eighth largest gdp.

So it should come as no surprise that the minimum wage is $23 an hour.

Real estate prices are out of this world.

Even still, two thirds of people choose to rent in Switzerland and then buy a house geographically.

Remember that Switzerland is a small landlocked country at the meeting point of western, central and southern Europe.

So although the location is ideal, most groceries have to be imported.

For starters, this means you can expect to pay double the price for meat than any other country in Europe.

That explains why many Swiss people will hop across a border just to go to the supermarket.

When a country knows they are a popular destination, why wouldn't they raise their prices knowing that tourists are more than willing to pay?

Well, all things considered, I am here to test the system.

I wonder if this fits in the thousand dollar budget.

Something that is free in Switzerland is the water.

I ordered a still water and it comes with this which you have to pay for even though they have, like, the best tap water in the world here.

We just had to move tables inside because it's raining so hard out there.

I can't eat any more croissants or pasta.

All right, that was 97 francs for two sandwiches and a platter of cheese and water.

And we're now gonna head out of the it am speaking part of Switzerland and head north to Lucerne.

Three continents, six, seven countries spoiled boy.

Eight bucks for an hour and a half of parking.

I fill up the car first and then I go pay after.

And it's 70 bucks for a half tank of gas.

Because we're in Switzerland, it's the shape of a mountain.

So my favorite chocolate growing up, and it comes from Switzerland.

It is now 9:07pm and it's still light outside.

And all the signs have switched to German.

So at some point in the last hour, we went from Italian speaking to German speaking.

It's literally 10:30pm and it feels like we're kind of music festival or something.