by Tom Koppel
At the inviting Swiss hamlet of Andeer, the upper Rhine, only 10 metres wide, cascades in waterfalls and rapids through a rocky gorge. Outside a cheese shop, a sign bears verses of folksy doggerel. Freely translated, it reads “ Milk, cheese, curds and cream, help our people get up steam.” The message is hardly surprising in a country known for its dairy products, but the language is unusual. It is Romansh, an ancient Latinate tongue now spoken by less than 1% of the Swiss population.
Nearby is tiny Zillis, noted for its 12th century Romanesque church. 153 painted wooden panels adorn the ceiling, each portraying supernatural creatures or scenes from the lives of Christ or Saint Martin. Zillis, too, was once a mainly Romansh-speaking settlement; an organization dedicated to preserving that heritage has its office just steps away from the church. With subsidies for its teaching and publication of school books, Romansh remains one of Switzerland’s four official languages and is still the primary school language for thousands of children in the sprawling southeastern canton of Graubuenden.
My wife Annie and I are enjoying an eye-opening Alpine sojourn as guests of dear old friends, Margit and Andres, health care professionals who live in Graubuenden but have stayed with us in Canada several times. When not having to work, they drive us around, and we make side trips on our own by train. We had expected beautiful mountain scenery, postcard-perfect towns and a prosperous land of clean efficiency, where the predominant German and French-speaking populations get along. But we had never imagined the full diversity of the rich Swiss cultural tapestry, the quirky and endearing coexistence of the traditional and modern, and the way history is cherished and kept alive.
In the vibrant, Italian-speaking southern canton of Ticino, we visit sultry, almost Mediterranean Lugano, on lovely Lake Lugano. Palm trees thrive and the Italian Renaissance architecture is entirely different from the more Germanic Swiss north. Cave-like grotto restaurants serve such traditional fare as liver, tripe and horse steaks. In the countryside, we see countless small backyard vineyards. At nearby Bellinzona, Julie, our personal guide, says that her brother-in-law is typical. He grows his own grapes, makes wine and has it distilled into about 30 litres of powerful grappa a year. Born in the US, Julie thinks Ticino offers the best of worlds, combining the zest and flair of Italian culture with Swiss order, competence and reliability.
She takes us to three impressive 13th to 15th century castles that dominate Bellinzona, built by the dukes of Milan to command a strategic river valley and to tax trade along the passes leading northward. Montebello castle, high on a slope, hosts an annual medieval festival, with jousting, period costumes, and roast pig eaten without cutlery from wooden bowls.
Another day, we ride the narrow-gauge Bernina Express train over the Alps, past glaciers and through tunnels blasted over 100 years ago. Some spiral like corkscrews deep within the rock and emerge to cross tongue-bitingly high viaducts. A marvel of Swiss engineering.
Our destination is Poschiavo, an enchanting village in another isolated Italian-speaking region that is part of Graubuenden itself. We stay at the historic Albrici hotel, built in the 17th century and run for 150 years by the same family. The 10 bedrooms feature antique furniture but no phones, TV or other electronics. We dine outside on the cobblestone piazza, which is bracketed by two ancient churches. The owner recommends some regional main dishes. I enjoy flavourful buckwheat noodles in a creamy sauce, garnished with a skewer of endive and slices of salami. Annie savours the tasty spinach dumplings (gnocchi) with melted cheese, similarly garnished.
Lingering over our wine, we absorb Italian village life on a warm evening. Fashionably dressed families stroll through the piazza, to see and be seen. They pause at the central fountain for the children to splash and carouse. Across the way, patrons sip drinks or espresso at a cafe. Suddenly, both church towers, plus a third just up the street, burst into a concert of pealing bells. The moment is romantic and sublime.
Even the larger central Swiss cities offer an intriguing mix of old and new. In Zurich, our hotel abuts the beautifully maintained old town. Its narrow streets are lined with medieval towers and intersect at ornate fountains featuring sculptures. We indulge in sweets at an elegant 19th century pastry shop but also take the funicular up to see the renowned technical institute just above, where Albert Einstein got his doctorate. In Lucerne, we walk the massive old city walls and cross the landmark 14th century covered bridge. But we also ride a spectacular cog railway (the world’s steepest) up 2,132 metre Mt. Pilatus, where an ultra-modern hotel adjoins a much older one, and watch a paraglider lift off and drift away on the thermals.
Even within the Swiss-German majority population, we discover, there are minority subcultures. Our friend Andres turns out to be a Walser, the proud member of an alpine tribe that numbers about 20,000 in Switzerland and has sizable communities in neighbouring Italy, Liechtenstein and Austria as well. They trace their history back to the south-central canton of Wallis and an outward migration that began in the 13th century. Historians debate whether the cause was overpopulation, or feudal politics, or possibly the plague. Those who moved northeastward into Graubuenden and beyond were attracted by empty high-elevation lands to settle and privileges offered to them by feudal lords in exchange for doing military service, notably patrolling and controlling the crucial mountain passes.
Unlike the mainly Romansh-speaking lowlanders in the valleys, who were serfs leading restricted lives, the tough Walsers were true pioneers, free to move, establish independent high-elevation villages, till the uplands and raise animals, and worship and marry as they pleased. (Most Romansh speakers have remained Roman Catholic to this day, while the Germanic Walsers became overwhelmingly Protestant during the Reformation.) And the Walsers still live their own unique way.
Andres regales us with stories of his upbringing in the 1960s and 1970s on a subsistence farm high in the Praettigau Valley, just east of Graubuenden’s charming capital city of Chur, where he now works. Like his neighbours, his family had only a few cows, which he helped to feed and milk in winter; in summer they were moved up to higher grazing pastures. A few men from the hamlet tended everyone’s cows, milking them collectively and making cheese every day. The cheese was brought down in autumn and divided up, a festive event that remains an annual celebration. Each family also had a vegetable garden and perhaps a pig, chickens and rabbits. Yet they eked out a livelihood. Andres hiked, or sledded in winter, down to school in the larger village below. He and Margit drive us up switchback roads to a scenic Walser village, Tenna, with a population of around 100 overlooking the Safien valley. There is a two-room school, a cheese-making shop, and a church dating to 1524. The gravestones record only a handful of family names, generation after generation. Houses have huge stacks of firewood and tiny outbuildings that are actually ovens for baking bread. Cows and sheep graze nearby; in May, they have not yet been moved to higher slopes. The weather is sunny and warm, perfect for lunch on an outdoor hotel terrace. We try the barley soup, grilled mushrooms on bread, and local hard cider. Andres greets an elderly couple, who immediately recognize his dialect. You must be from Praettigau, they say, and they are too. They even knew his late parents, but have retired to this distant, yet also Walser, village.
It is a highly traditional place, but so modern as well. Just above the hotel, the village has installed the world’s first solar powered ski lift, with photovoltaic panels strung out up the slope. In the snow-free season, excess power is sold to the national energy grid.
Another evening, Margit and Andres take us to a concert at a pub high in the Praettigau valley, where Andres grew up, in a village with stunning Alpine architecture where one of his sisters now lives. He is the only one of five siblings who has left the valley, although he has not moved very far. Between songs, the band tells jokes in Walser German. Andres laughs along, but Margit, who was raised in Germany and is totally familiar with mainstream Swiss German, can hardly make out a word. But if we were expecting Tirolean um-pa-pa tunes, we were mistaken. The popular local trio—they have performed 1000 times over 20 years—treats us to to an eclectic display of world music: klezmer, gypsy, tango, blues, Celtic, on a bevy of instruments. Andres’ sister tells us that she is leaving in the morning for a cycling trip in Ireland. Everyone is from the valley, but they all seem well educated and most speak remarkably good English. This is 21st century Switzerland. They may be locals, but they are by no means yokels.
Switzerland Travel Tips
All photographs are by Annie Palovcik
1. Lucerne
2. Lugano
3. Bernia Express
4. Poschiavo
5. Mt. Pilatus
6. Bellinzona
7. Chur
8. Tenna
About the author:
Tom Koppel is a veteran Canadian author, journalist and travel writer. His latest popular book on history, science and travel is Mystery Islands: Discovering the Ancient Pacific
Cistercian monks built the round chapel of Montesiepi around the “cross” in the stone. The domed roof is built of concentric circles of alternating white stone and terracotta and frescos by Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti decorate the walls. It has been claimed that the chapel itself is a “book in stone” hiding the location of The Holy Grail.
Italian scholars claim that Galgano’s Sword in The Stone precedes Arthurian legends and the original story may well be Italian. The first stories of King Arthur appear decades after Galgano’s canonization, in a poem by Burgundian poet Robert de Bron. It has been suggested tales of The Round Table may have been inspired by the round chapel and the name Galgano was altered to become Gawain. Claims that the Italian sword was a fake, made to echo Celtic legends of King Arthur, have been recently disproved. The skeletal arms in the chapel have been carbon-dated to the 12th Century, and metal dating research in 2001, by the University of Siena, indicates the Italian sword has medieval origins. Could it be that the stories of King Arthur are really based on Italian history?
Every summer the company Opera Festival Firenze holds classical music concerts and operas in this splendid setting. Performed annually, a spine-tingling rendition of “Carmina Burana “ under the Tuscan stars, is unforgettable. Other favourites include Vivaldi’s ”Four Seasons, “Swan Lake” and “La Traviata.”
Stuck in Glendalough, I grabbed a quick late lunch from a local food cart and set out for a late-afternoon five-mile hike on Miner’s Road. This route took me by the two lakes toward the ruins of an 18th century mining village that closed down in 1965. Rows of purple heather greeted me with pine trees serving as an umbrella to shade me from the sun. Finally I got to sample paradise almost all by myself.
The next morning stopped by the Glendalough Visitors Centre where I bought a 
After I climbed down, I stopped by a shack located at the foot of Upper Lake for a quick snack and then set off on the Green Road Walk. This flat mile long trail that meandered around the oak woodlands and then continued to the edge of Lower Lake. Along the way, I passed by the outskirts of Monastic City where I saw more busloads of tourists, most of whom seemed more intent on taking photographs of stones than actually walking on Kevin’s soil. Hopefully some of them will leave the city for the hills and have their own encounter with Kevin.
I’ve daydreamed about one day being able to scale a European mountaintop so I could sing that quintessential European classic pop song “Una Paloma Blanca.” It was in my grasp, but the Mt. Pilatus’ dragons and ghost of Pontius Pilate would not hear of it. Instead, they had a more memorable adventure in store for me. You see, I planned my day to go to the top of Mt. Pilatus via The Golden Round Trip. Mt. Pilatus is one of the Swiss Alps gateways that helped usher in Switzerland as a tourist hotspot in the late 19th century. I expected to do a good amount of hiking, but steady rainfall in the lower elevations of Luzern and reports of snow up the mountain before I even left Luzern appeared to hamper my day.
My second leg of the “Golden Round Trip” proceeded on the world’s steepest cogwheel railway from Alpnachstad, where us passengers experienced gradients as high as 48 per cent at speeds of about six to seven miles per hour. Going up, we were surrounded by thick evergreen forests being hammered by rain, then light snow, and then heavier snow as the visibility decreased. But I began to notice something on my ascent: I wasn’t feeling queasy anymore and my sinuses were clearing up as the 33 minute ride (that’s half price with a Swiss Pass) proceeded through several tunnels barely wide enough for the cog way carriages. The driver masterfully had to navigate the heavier snow amidst sudden jerks and stops. He laughed even though I was anxious (because there are three braking systems to prevent catastrophe).
The Entlebuch resides west of Luzern, about 35 minutes by train at the stop called Schupfheim. It’s made up of eight villages and spans some 154 square miles and contains many of the Alps’ rolling foothills: roughly one per cent of the total land area of Switzerland. One fourth of this area is now protected moors (highland marshlands), which exuded a pleasantly eerie feeling amidst the fog, making me wonder if any monsters were lurking there.
The town of Fluhi is on the other side of the Entlebuch, and provided me a great opportunity to see more breathtaking fall scenery in the Pre-Alps (foothills), ending at Cheesiloch, a canyon with a 130-plus foot drop. Prior to the path leading directly to the canyon, a 45 minute hike from town begins that has winding roads, cows who love being photographed (kept apart by a “fence” made of just one rope), and rolling meadows. The last 30 minutes to the canyon would be one of my most challenging hikes I’ve ever taken, and once again, my walking pole saved the day, for the narrow pathway was sharp and rocky, and drenched with wet maple leaves. Nature’s soundtrack included hearing the pleasant babbling of the Rotbach stream as I proceeded deeper into the dense evergreen forest with deep drops to the canyon below.
When I first approach, the exterior seems unremarkable, a rather austere, two-storey, peach-coloured building on the edge of a small square that serves mainly as a parking lot. This is the pride of Cesena? I can’t say I’m impressed so far. I enter a long, echoing hallway with a display of photos of brilliantly illuminated pages from Plutarch’s Lives. It feels so modern and barren. I wonder where the actual books are.
‘The elephant is the symbol of the Malatesta family,’ Alberto tells me, ‘because elephants are powerful and have good memories. The Malatestas haughtily regarded their enemies as merely annoying ‘mosquitoes’. They also were known for deformities of their heads and their very long noses. In fact, Malatesta means bad head. Portraits of them are always in profile to show their good side.’
The more I look around this hushed, ancient space, and the more Alberto tells me, the more awestruck I become. In the 15th century, one large book would have been worth about the same as a country home with all its livestock, and 343 manuscripts are kept here. All are hand-printed by the Franciscan monks on pages made of goat and sheep vellum. The covers are leather-bound wood, with metal studs so the leather doesn’t rub on the shelf. A perfect micro-climate, unheated and with air circulation from the vaulted ceiling, has protected the books. In fact, the Malatesta Library is recognized throughout the world as the only humanist library whose buildings, furnishings, and book collection are fully and perfectly preserved.
Because this library was so well lit, it was one of the first where books could be read in the same room in which they were shelved. The circular rosette window faces east and the sunlight pouring though is the main light source. Along the south and north walls are also numerous arched Venetian-style windows. The panes consist of many circular bottle bottoms tinged pink and green, which act as lens to magnify and radiate the light onto each row of desks. I squint my eyes and can imagine robed Franciscan monks toiling to copy manuscripts in fine, painstaking calligraphy, illuminating the margins with brilliant colours. As the sun and shadows shift, the monks pick up their pages and pens and follow the daylight around the room.
Numerous books are open and on display in glass cases. One, from 1444, is a book of legal trials and sentences from Florence. Another, from 1496, is a book of liturgies, a different one for each Sunday’s mass for a year. I’m especially drawn to seven huge choral books, made large enough for a whole choir to view. The capital letters and borders are amazingly intricate, illuminated with real gold leaf and brilliant green, pink, blue, red, and purple. Many also have postcard-sized illustrations, of strange beasts, birds, flowers. I even notice that pictured inside some of the capital letters are toiling monks.
