Are the swiss ready for wild Bears?

Are the swiss ready for wild Bears? Theis SwissINFO article highlights Swiss issues of living in the mountains.  Thanks SwissINFO!

Hydropower vs healthy rivers

Sad loss of a fish in an area where they are protected.  This SwissINFO article highlights the struggle between hydropower and healthy rivers. 

Swiss eating habits are changing.

Swissinfo article about the change in Swiss eating habits.

Swiss Parliament subsidises land use over livestock

Here is an interesting article about how swiss had and will value farming and the production of dairy products. 

Signs

Standard colors and symbols helped us navigate the thousands of trails we found in Switzerland. The government and tourism lobby felt it was important to pay for standardization of the signs for the benefit of the tourists. These would be great in Washington what do you think?

Ultimate Bicycle Stop

This canal on the Aare River was a perfect swimming spot for these touring cyclist. Switzerland has lots of informal swimming holes that make a great place to take a break.

Swiss Day: 1 August

The Swiss like to see and shoot off fireworks. We saw some amazing fireworks in Ascona, Ticino (southern CH). No matter what you are doing it is important to show your pride. It reminds me of the USA.

August 1st: Reminders

You can't forget where you are at this picnic table.  

Swiss Clean

It is common to find a well used bike cleaning station at the bottom of popular Mtn Bike Flowride trails.

Copper Pots

For this month's Swiss culture, I have notice this style of copper pots hanging outside of homes.  I thought it must mean something.  Is it a home of a cook?  A place where you can get a bowl of risotto?  Well, the truth is it has a lots of uses:  Cheese making (the old fashioned way), making  Gluhwien and  risotto, displaying flowers, and as a display for chocolate bars.

Switzerland in the Backyard.

Our friends gave us a real treat. We were invited over for lovely dinner (Thanks Dagmar) and to see one of the greatest models of Swiss trains possible. Werner (pictured above with Ruth), started making train models in his basement. After his basement was filled with tracks, forests and two towns, he began on a new venture in their backyard (pictured below). It is 1.4 meters high and 12 meters long with 4 interlooping tracks. Dagmar and Werner made extremely life-like Swiss villages, dorfli, camping platz, a carousel, and even a mountain top restaurant. Dagmar planted a miniature (bonzi-style) garden with trees and shrubs from different parts of Switzerland. All the trains I recognized from my extensive travel in Switzerland... and why not? They are some of the classiest engines around. We could tell they really enjoyed designing the model and the attention to detail. Very Swiss. Very Cool.

Shooting Range and Roads

I have become used to seeing firing ranges. By law, every town must have one so reserve soldiers can practice shooting. Twice now, I have found that firing range is place above a road. To my alarm, you can hear high powered shots being fired over traffic, aimed at the target on the hillside above (see the gray flat wall, between two trees in this photo). What if they sneeze as the fire. The land of William Tell is different than what I am used to.

Switzerland's Covered Bridges

While we bike the back roads of Switzerland, we occasionally  come across a welcome surprise -.  beautiful wooden bridges.   Switzerland has about two hundred and the oldest was built in 1514, with 26 being built since 2000 .  We hope to see more of these works of art.

Swiss Happiness

One of my girlfriends in the US sent me a chapter from a book called “The Geography of Bliss” by Eric Weiner. The second chapter is about the Swiss and discusses what makes them happy. I read the chapter and can say it rings true for 99% of what Weiner says. For example, early in the chapter, a Swiss man is asked what makes the Swiss happy, he replies "Cleanliness. Have you seen our public toilets? They are very clean."

Wow - just to show how right he is (and how the non-Swiss learn to become part of the clean toilet system), I took a picture of one of the signs in the bathroom stall at Eawag. Every toilet I've been in (anywhere in Switzerland) has a toilet brush prominently displayed and ready for use. In the sign above, there are instructions for what to do what not to do with the
toilet brush. It makes me happy :)

Cheese: Morges

One thing is the same in both the USA and Switzerland. Blooming flower gardens = pictures. While we were in Morges, Vaud Canton, we enjoyed watching young lovers, new families, and dressed up teens all picking their favorite hybrid (or the one the best matched their shirt) and then taking their photo in front of them. A favorite pose was a person sitting by the flowers, sniffing one of them...

Kyburg WyStubi: Making Friends

Just about every town in the Zurich Oberland has a small public building, close to the town square. At one time the one pictured here housed the communal milk house, as was typical. This building was fixed up and made into a wine tasting room. Michel and his wife put out a bench once a month and allow the public to try their Lac Leman wines. It made a great stop on our local bicycle ride.

Easter in Our Part of Europe

Easter is an important holiday here in Switzerland. I have a 4 day weekend because of it. This feels very unusual since we don't get any time off at my U.S. University for this weekend. Chocolate Easter candy started showing up in the stores as soon as Carnival was over. We had fun looking at the chocolate and cake displays in Switzerland and France - everyone does it a little differently, but all are colorful and artistic. There is one odd picture in the above collage (upper rightmost picture). On my bike ride to work, there is a wooden carved rabbit in the woods just off of the road. As Easter got closer someone added a big ribbon to his neck - honestly I found it a little creepy...

One display really stood out though because it combined the Swiss tradition of butter zopf - that yummy Sunday bread - with an Easter display. Usually the zopf is in a straight braid, but here it has been braided into a large basket filled with Easter eggs and surrounded by chocolate bunnies.

Happy Easter,

RMS

Sechseläuten: Böögg predicts a super summer.

So far we have had a warm, sunny, and dry April. Monday’s Sechseläuten festival, was all about ushering out winter and welcoming the summer here in Zurich. The festival included a parade with floats, bands, gussied up horses, fair maidens, etc. The period costumes were grand. Parade goers were given flowers by their admirers. The main attraction was a explosive stuffed snowman, named Böögg, standing atop a 10 meter high pile a brush with well placed explosives on his body.

At six o'clock (pm) the brush is set a blaze and horsemen begin running around the smokey mass. Overtime the flames climb up the pile while the crowd watches on. This year a dancing flame caught Böögg's pants on fire. And with little warning he began to explode (yes, the horsemen were still running around).

According to tradition, the faster his head explodes, the better the summer will be. The Böögg’s head exploded in just under 11 minutes on Monday – well under the 14-minute average. Amazingly no one was injured. Just how the insurance man likes it.

Beautiful Brots on Uetlilberg

Reto's fine slicing technique on display that make for beautiful brots. On Darrell's birthday last week, we met him after a mountain bike ride in the hills near Zurich (Uetliberg). We hiked up to a plateau with views of the Alps and a grill.

This was our first real experience with this common Swiss tradition. We had everything you needed to grill Swiss Style. Friends, grill, meat, fire, chips (to eat while you eat), mustards, brots, views, nearby Brunnen (fountain), and a Swiss Army Knife. FYI: You can wash your hands with fountain water, keep your drinks cold, and put out a fire. Also note my town (Fehraltorf) issued knife in the left-hand picture.

Bomb Shelter now Wine storage.

Every house/apartment built between1968-2001 in Switzerland has a bomb shelter able to withstand a blast from a 50 megatonne explosion at a distance of 700 meters. I have read the Swiss have the highest ratio of shelter space to national population of any country.

With the cold war over and the added cost of constructing and stocking a bomb shelter, the rule was repealed. Now most bomb shelters have been converted to new spaces. Our apartment building has one (pictured). Wooden storage lockers were constructed inside (one for each tenant) - and serve dual purposes. For emergencies, ours has the emergency blankets for all of the building. They also make nice ski lockers and storage bins for Swiss who have gone 'ubershopping' at a Costco-like store across the border in Germany. I personally think that a wine cellar makes the most sense for new uses.