Schynige Platte

I rectified an oversight this past weekend and need to bring it up now so that no one else makes the same horrible mistake.  Saturday, ten years after moving here, I hiked on Schynige Platte for the first time.   If you haven’t done this yet, do it.  Now.  You can read the rest of this later.   I had thought that the Stoos ridge hike was the best in Switzerland but I was wrong.  Granted, it’s a very good hike.  A great one even, but I have to give the nod to Schynige Platte, if for no other reason than that the hikes there can be tailored to every level of difficulty and length, all without having to backtrack.    You can make a loop as short as an hour or as long as three and if that’s not enough you can just head towards Grindelwald and turn it into an all-day trek.  The surface options are flat gravel, rocky mountain paths or staircases built into the side of a cliff.  Again, up to you to mix and match as you like.  And since it’s a panoramic ridge hike your head will swivel like Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist as you try to take it all in.  Look to the southeast and you’re staring at the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, so close you want to reach out to touch them.  Shift your gaze westward and the glistening water of the Thunersee stretches out before you.  Continue turning your head to the right and your view passes over Interlaken before resting upon the Brienzersee and its aqua blueness.    And that’s not all.  For your time and sweat, your rewards continue to mount.  Alpine flowers?  Check.  Meadows full of more than you can imagine and if you stroll through the Alpen garden they’re even labelled.   Wildlife?  Check.  Marmots, perhaps an Ibex and, of course, Swiss mountain cows clanging their bells.   Hungry?  Check.  A lovely restaurant with a terrace looking out at the big three and more other +3500 meter “Horns” than you can count.  The only down side is that for tourists (i.e. those without a half fare card) the round trip fare for the cog train up the mountain is a bit pricey but it’s a steal compared to Jungfraujoch and its crush of tourists.   If you are a tourist, you’re there to see the mountains anyway and you’ll get no better mountain to Swiss franc ratio anywhere else.  On the off chance that you have a UBS account, wave that card before October 31^st and all of this will be yours for only CHF 10.  Really incredible.   Like I said.  Go.  Now.

Brunnen

The other day, while biking home after work, I stopped to get a drink of water (fountain pictured below top) and it hit me.  I left fountains off my top 10 list last year.  What an omission!  Understandable only in the context of the overflowing abundance that is Switzerland.  Too many things to like and ten is such a small number.   So, list be damned.  The fountains of Switzerland cry out for recognition and I will respond.  Let’s start with the basics, the water itself.  Simply nothing better.  Cool, fresh and free.  Also, the fountains are everywhere.    Hiking, running or biking, I’ve filled my bottle in every corner of this beautiful country.  I especially like that many incorporate a nice little perpetually refilling bowl for dogs.   Equally entrancing is their varied and charming appearance as well as the Swiss culture they represent.  Far from mere public bubblers, they’re art, crafted from stone, bronze and cast iron, many with gilded figurines.  They’re also a walk through history.  Bern, which calls itself the “City of Fountains”, boasts over 100, including 11 classics from the 16^th century.   Their most notorious may be the Kindlifresserbrunnen  (child eater fountain), starring an ogre with a bag of squirming babies, devouring them as if they’re candy.  Hans Gieng, the 16^th century Fribourg artist responsible for most of these, may have had a good explanation for this one but, alas, it was lost to posterity.  In Basel, Pascal Hess and Martin Stauffiger developed a terrific website for their 2002 Maturarbeit project (http://www.brunnenfuehrer.ch/) which catalogs Basel’s 231 fountains, a tool begging for use in the creation of a treasure hunt.  Standing out among many, Basel’s most famous has to be the ornate Fischmarktbrunnen (pictured below bottom), Switzerland’s oldest, believed to be in operation since 1390.   Not to be outdone, as usual, Zürich offers guides for ten tours covering the 1,224 fountains https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/dib/de/index/wasserversorgung/brunnen.html  scattered throughout the city.  Number 1 on their list is the  Amazonenbrunnen which was the first supplied from spring water and dates back to 1430.   As I reflect on what I learned while conducting this little bit of research, it’s clear, in both villages and cities there’s a great deal of pride and affection felt by the country’s citizens for their fountains.   Well deserved, too, as this network of structures brings together elements of culture, art, history, environment and economics while offering the opportunity to stroll through the centuries in the community of your choice, slaking your thirst when necessary.  And rest assured, while they may be old, they’re subject to typical Swiss quality standards, meeting the same contemporary ISO 9001:2000 certified test requirements as the water flowing from the household tap.    Drink up!

What is home?

I’ve heard some people respond to this question by saying, “Wherever the toothbrush is”.  I don’t see it that way though.  For me, home is where Lisa is.  And the dog.  It’s important that I list them in that order as Lisa reads this blog but I can’t neglect the dog.  Lisa and I in a hotel room is not home.  Throw in the dog, however, and it’s getting pretty close.  This makes it sound like the dog is more important than Paige which is mostly not true but Paige’s influence is diminished by the reality that someday, as her siblings have done, she will fly the coop.  But not Lisa.  Lisa = Home.  Why do I raise this now?  In August, we mark ten years of living here and when I mention this to people the first thing they say is usually, “When do you plan to move back”?  The unstated word they leave out is “home”.   As adults we’ve lived many places in the US but never once did someone ask me when I planned to return to Rhode Island or Lisa, to Miami.  But here people assume that we’re biding our time until we can move back “home”.   Our family, as defined by next generation up and next generation down, is extremely important to us but does not and could not define home.  With two daughters in San Diego, a son in Houston and parents in Rhode Island and Florida, we’re too spread out.  Visiting them wouldn’t be significantly easier if we lived stateside anyway.  Cheaper, certainly, but still requiring airports.  Fortunately, in addition to holidays, both Lisa and I have been able to tag on days to business trips so the opportunities to see family hasn’t been as infrequent as one might think.  The end result, in fact, is that we’ve seen our parents more often while living here than we did when living in Chicago, St. Louis, Kentucky or Pennsylvania.   It’s a matter of making it a priority.  So, if you want to ask us when we’re going to return home we’ll probably say we’re already home but that next week or next month or this fall, we’re going to San Diego or Florida or Houston or Rhode Island.  Because we don’t need to move to those places.  We just need to visit some people who happen to live there.    

Trump’s NATO ignorance

I’m going to stray a bit off the path I set when initiating this blog a year ago.  While I never committed to avoid politics I implied that I would stick to Swiss issues.  Or at least issues affecting Americans living in Switzerland.  But I never anticipated Trump.  Now some may ask how he’s impacting us over here but this question would betray a basic ignorance regarding the role and responsibility the U.S. plays throughout the world, including Switzerland.    The U.S., for good or bad, is the key to global stability.  Our foreign policy matters.  As we go so does the rest of world and history has shown that a policy of isolation doesn’t work.  That was the case in 1918.  It was so in 1939 and it’s been true ever since.  What’s frightening and deeply troubling now is that Trump is completely unaware of this.  His foreign policy knowledge (and appreciation of the value thereof) is non-existent.  Last week’s statement implying that the U.S. might reconsider our NATO obligations to help protect our allies was the latest evidence of this ignorance.  He really isn’t cognizant of the role NATO has played in the stability and relative peace that Europe has enjoyed since the dark days following WWII.   It seems he thinks that nearly seventy years of peace in a region whose previous record was maybe ten minutes has been luck.  Who knows, maybe he hasn’t noticed.   He also probably doesn’t know that NATO’s Article 5 (the collective defense article) has been invoked only once and this was after the 9/11 attacks when NATO led troops were deployed to Afghanistan, in our defense.    

Did I ask you what you think?

I got barked at today.  By an old Swiss guy.  It reminded me of the time not long after we arrived when Lisa and Paige were on the tram with one of Paige’s friends and her mother.  The two girls were standing on the spot between the cars that swivels when the tram takes a corner and being kids, were swaying with the motion.   After a bit, an old guy stood up to leave.  At the door, he paused then turned to bark at Lisa and the other mom.  Lisa understood nothing of what he said but smiled, nodding politely.   After he was gone, her Swiss friend said that they’d just been told what awful mothers they were.   This kind of interaction isn’t terribly uncommon here and is unrelated to our status as foreigners.  Generally, in fact, the complainer doesn’t even realize this.   It seems that these unhappy people are surprisingly self-aware but they simply cannot help themselves (or don’t care).   Paige and her friends were recently scolded on the bus by a woman who continued at the conclusion of her admonition to remark that they probably just thought she was an unpleasant old lady.  They were too polite to confirm her suspicion but they didn’t deny it either.

Schwingen

One of the elements of the Swiss experience that I regrettably left off my Top 10 list was tradition.  Switzerland is full of fun and interesting traditions, some observed across the country and some locally.  We try to experience as many of these as possible, for example the cow fighting I posted about in April.  In 2013 we attended Das Eidgenössische Schwing und Älplerfest (sorry, no translation possible).   A Swiss colleague encouraged me to go, telling me that for pure, concentrated Swissness this is ground zero.    It’s a sort of Swiss Olympic Games that’s held every three years, each time in a different location.   The sites are just vast open fields so for each Games an enormous temporary arena capable of seating roughly 50,000 fans is constructed.  Since considerably more than 50,000 people show up, several enormous screens are also set up in the grounds surrounding the arena.   The competition is comprised of three different events, the main being a form of wrestling called Schwingen, which takes place in a 12 meter diameter ring covered with saw dust.   The other two are  Steinstossen  and Hornussen.  Steinstossen involves the throwing of a small boulder weighing 83.5 kg, which is a bit more than I weigh.  The winner generally manages a hernia popping distance of about four meters.  Hornussen is difficult to describe so I won’t even try.  Imagine Quiddich without the brooms or flying.  Checkout this website if you’re interested (http://www.myswitzerland.com/en-ch/hornussen-where-the-nouss-flies-from-the-ramp-and-into-the-playing-field.html).   The main event, however, is clearly Schwingen.  As with cow fighting, the winner receives no cash.  Just more glory than you can shake an alpenhorn at and a giant pile of dry goods donated by sponsors who are nevertheless not permitted to advertise.  Washing machines.  Lawnmowers.  Furniture.  Tools.  Livestock.  Sort of like the winners of 70’s game shows in the US (plus farm animals).  The event will be held this summer so make your plans to attend.  Pure, distilled Swissness taking place in Estavayer (Canton Fribourg) from August 26^th to 28^th.  Don’t miss it.