Tag: Switzerland
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THE CASTLE AT JUNCTION 36
Castello di Mesocco Padma and I were heading north on the A13, minding our own business and in no particular hurry to get anywhere. It was one of those unreliable Alpine mornings — the cloud that had filled the valley overnight was lifting off the forest in slow white ropes, thinning as it climbed, so that the mountains kept revealing themselves and then thinking better of it. We rounded a bend and got a Wow! moment. There, on a wooded hilltop hard against the motorway, was a castle. Not a picture-postcard…
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ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER VALLEY
Ticino is a canton of valleys. They come down out of the Lepontine Alps towards Lake Maggiore like the fingers of a spread hand – Bavona, Maggia, Verzasca, Leventina – each one within an hour of the next, and each one, somehow, its own small country. The day before, our friend Hans had driven us up the Bavona: a valley of stone, of hamlets wedged in behind boulders the size of houses, and a hundred metres of white water falling at Foroglio. On our second day in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton…
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THE SHUTTERED TERRE
The shutters were closed. Not broken, not hanging off their hinges, not weathered to bare grey — closed, and lately painted, and latched from the inside by somebody who had gone away and meant to come back. Padma, Hans and I walked through three villages in one long cloudy day and I do not think we saw more than a dozen people. Wood was stacked under the eaves. Geraniums were still in the window boxes. Everything was in order and nobody was home. I took it for abandonment. It isn’t, or…
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TWO STONES FROM ONE VALLEY
Padma and I have seen a lot of churches in Europe. Spectacular, yes – vaulted, gilded, hushed – but after a while they blur into one another. So when our Swiss host Hans suggested we visit a church, this one up a side valley in Ticino, we didn’t exactly leap for the car keys. Then we came around the bend at Mogno. At 7.15 on the morning of 25 April 1986, an avalanche came off the mountain above this alpine hamlet and took out a dozen houses and the parish church,…
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THE VALLEY BEFORE THE DROP
There’s a particular kind of friend who, when you turn up in his country, doesn’t ask what you’d like to see. He has already decided. I have known Hans Striker since 1981, when I met him on a train in Mexico. He was a medical student then, working his way through an extended holiday of the kind medical students used to be able to take. He’s a vascular specialist in Locarno now, and has lived at the top end of Lake Maggiore long enough to have walked most of what is…
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DROP IN IF YOU’RE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Just a few weeks ago I received an email from a genealogist in Switzerland. He found a 1928 photo I posted online of some distant cousins in Wisconsin and wanted some details. I sorted out his enquiries and he was most grateful. He said ‘If you’re ever in the Bernese Alps, drop in.’ I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the ‘if you’re ever in XYZ drop in’ invitation or how many times I’ve said it. I rarely take up the offer and people rarely take up my offer. But…
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SPRING INTO SWITZERLAND
Padma and I had a severe case of spring fever, so we drove to central Switzerland over the long May Day weekend for some hiking in the Schwyz Alps. The hike around Mount Rigi was really quite stunning and Spring really was showing off its true colours. The area around Lucerne is marked by numerous lakes which give the area a most special appeal.
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ESCAPE TO THE PENINNE ALPS
Winter in Bonn was getting a tad grey so Padma, Joseph and I packed up and headed to Switzerland for a white holiday. Along the way, we picked up one of Joe’s Aussie mates, Aidan. We found an isolated chalet via AirBnB on a dead-end road at 2,000 metres near the village of Arolla in the Peninne Alps. We were after snow and found it here high in the Alps. The road to our chalet was snowed in so we had to hike through the snow to find the front door.…
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