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There is a particular pleasure in visiting an exhibition that curators will never advertise: on occasion, the people are more interesting than the objects on display. This realisation dawned gradually during a visit to the Omega Museum in Switzerland’s bilingual city of Biel/Bienne, about 90 minutes from Zurich by train. Over the course of several hours, certain behaviours repeated themselves often enough to reveal three distinct tribes.

The first hovers over vitrines of early pocket watches, contemplating escapements and the finer points of calibre evolution with concentrated stillness and opinions their obliging companions may not entirely share. The second moves with purpose: efficient, methodical, and likely having completed the Einstein House or Klingende Sammlung (a temple to brass instruments where you can give the alphorn used for rounding up cattle a try) en route, working through the region’s cultural inventory with the brisk satisfaction of crossing items off a grocery list.