How do I say ‘I went to Switzerland’?

In German, there are lots of different ways to say ‘to’: ‘nach’, ‘zu’, ‘in’ etc. Unfortunately, you do just have to learn when to use each one by memorising the rules. Learning individual examples also helps a lot. So, which one should you pick here? The preposition ‘nach’ is only for countries, cities and when giving directions. For example, if someone asks you ‘Wo gehst du in Urlaub?’ (Where are you going on holiday?) your answer back should include the preposition ‘nach’ to say ‘to’. Here, you could reply back with ‘Ich gehe nach Deutschland’ or ‘nach Paris’ (I’m going to Germany/to Paris). However, there are a few countries which don’t take ‘nach’. These are the feminine countries, such as ‘die Schweiz’ and ‘die Türkei’. You need to use the preposition ‘in’ instead, so, going back to the previous example, your reply would be: ‘Ich gehe in die Schweiz/in die Türkei’ and not ‘nach…’. Now, you have to choose the correct past tense: the perfect, also known as the simple past, or the imperfect. Well, you need to ask yourself: has this action been completed? If the answer is yes, like in this case (because your holiday is sadly now over and you won’t be able to repeat the same one), you use the perfect tense. This means you will need an auxiliary verb (‘haben’ or ‘sein’) and a past participle (the past form of the verb you are using). In this sentence, as ‘gehen’ is a verb of movement, ‘sein’ is its auxiliary verb. You then should pick the right form of ‘sein’, in this case ‘ich’ (‘I’), so ‘bin’. So far, you have ‘Ich bin in die Schweiz…’. How should the sentence be finished? Think to yourself, what is the past participle of the verb ‘gehen’? Yes, it’s ‘gegangen’, which when added to the end, forms the complete sentence of ‘Ich bin in die Schweiz gegangen’.