Switzerland

For most people, Switzerland has been neutral for as long as they can remember and that would be about right. But for a country that is all about neutrality, not get involved in other people s problems, and saying no to the huge amount of global firepower that they could get their hands on, Switzerland is a very militarised country. They have what many European countries think is the most powerful army in the world, helped presumably by their amazing knives. There is compulsory military service in Switzerland, with all men having to take part and women getting to choose which some would call unfair. But the fact that made us rub our eyes in shock when we read it is that after a person has gone through the training regime of the strongest military in the world, citizens are sent back home with their own weapons! Don t worry if you need to read that sentence again: it did not make any sense to us when we read it. In fact, until 2007 men and women were coming home with the actual bullets that their weapons would carry! Now, Switzerland is all about being about to protect itself if the strongest armies in the world ganged up on it, but eventually even they realised that that was a tad extreme. So now, they just get to take their guns home.