I enjoyed my work trip to Basel. I find my work colleagues there to be cordial in personality and gentle on my German. This is my third trip to Basel and my fifth to Switzerland.
All things being held equal, ie:
-if my job wasn't in the Koeln/D'dorf/Leverkusen area
-if i was not spending all time outside of the office exposed to the German from this area
-if from a purely raw number perspective, if the German of Germany wasn't the largest group
I think I would have preferred to have learned something a little closer to one of the Swiss varieties. Specifically, in flipping through the TV at the hotel and landing on some of the Swiss stations interspersed with the Germany ones, as well as in the meetings with the Swiss the next day, I enjoy the soft, musical quality of the Swiss speakers. It seems so differently from what I am used to hearing all day in the office.
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I learned swabian first, then high German. Swabian isn't really much like Swiss-German, but there's definitely a song in it. Swabian doesn't grind, smack, cough and choke quite the way high-ish German spoken in your area does.
Even now that I've (mostly) purged my German of swabian grammar and vocab, the lilt is still distinct.
Beyond the formal aspects of the dialect, swabian has so many little expressions that make me laugh. "Wollschtde 'ne kloies Witzle verzelle?" (Some of them =are= really stupid, like "bischtdenn ah do?" If you see me standing here, just go with the possibility that I =am= standing here.)
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