The Switzerland Traveler

When I was a child, Father Christmas, or Santa if you prefer, used to come on the night between 24th and 25th December.
But in Europe, things aren’t the same everywhere. Many countries celebrate during the evening of the 24th, and the Spanish (amongst others) celebrate the 6th of January as the day when the kings arrive.
In Switzerland, 6th December is the day that the man in red turns up.
Bearing gifts for the Children, he doesn’t sneak down the chimney, but comes through the front door. Or maybe to school.
And he doesn’t come alone. His sidekick, Schmutzli, leaves no doubt …read more

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I’m British and love cars, so no surprise then that I’m plugging the Swiss Classic British Car Meeting.
It takes place this weekend down at Morges on Lake Geneva, and should provide hours of fun.
Being centrally located, Switzerland is ideally located for foreign enthusiasts to drive their classic cars to, and the mountain roads are always fun, especially at the sort of speeds a classic car will achieve, as there’s plenty of time to look out of the window.
Last year there were over 1500 cars on show, and 25,000 visitors. And it’s all free!
Expect to see Bentleys, Jaguars and lots of …read more

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When I was a child, I used to see adverts for “The Ideal Home” exhibition held annually in London. To me it was quite obvious what that meant, a racetrack in the garden, a very large garage, probably a football (it’s not called soccer!) pitch in the garden.
In later years, I discovered that it was more about furniture, bathrooms and kitchens than about the merits of a long straight following a slow corner.
Anyway, the Swiss version is nearly upon us, running from 21-30 September. It’s held in the main Zürich exhibition centre at the end of the 11 tram line, …read more

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Next weekend sees another big party come to Zürich. Freestyle.ch is Europe’s biggest freestyle sports event. Covering snowboard, free-style skiing, skateboards and FMX (I assume that’s something to do with little bikes) the top stars from each sport will be competing for the top USD 100,000 prize.The action all takes place at Landiwiese, on the south side of the lake. I caught part of the action last year, by accident(!) and everything takes place in a relaxed party atmosphere, especially if the weather is behaving itself. Currently the forecast doesn’t look too bad, although we aren’t expecting blazing sunshine.Nightime sees …read more

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Hot on the heels of the Badenfahrt (and I can’t tell you how gutted I am that this blog came into existence too late to tell you about that) comes Fantoche.
Re-using some of the infrastructure from the 10-day street party, Fantoche is a bi-annual celebration of animated film. And it’s not just about audio-visual experiences, the centre of the festival also features a restaurant based on a couple of old cargo containers. Sounds a bit weird, but trust me on this one.

Baden may not have the cachet of Cannes, or even the more local annual film festival in Locarno, but …read more

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Those of you that know me will not be surprised just how soon I managed to mention motor racing in a blog about Switzerland, even though it has been banned here since 1955.
Last held in 1971, this retrospective celebrates the ten years when the hillclimb counted towards the European mountain Championship. It started in 1953, so you can expect to see exotic historics from the 50s, 60s and 70s taking part.
Classic Ferrari, Maserati and Mercedes sports cars will be there, alongside single seater racing cars which will undoubtedly set the faster times. It could probably be quite noisy, so maybe …read more

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