The Switzerland Traveler

About 15 years ago, the Swiss discovered Halloween. They’d always had pumpkin displays, but generally small and tasteful.
But then the idea of an extra celebration caught the corporate retail imagination and we all went Kürbis Krazy. Kürbis being the German for Pumpkin, if you hadn’t twigged.
Two brothers have caught onto this trend and turned their beautiful farm, overlooking the Pfäffikersee (that’s a little visited lake near Zürich btw) into a full-blown Pumpkin Experience.
Obviously, there’s the "how big is the biggest pumpkin?" question; and since you are asking, 363kg (800lbs) is this year’s biggest, around 100kg down on last …read more

7 Comments

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

Comments Off

OK, I’ll admit that I couldn’t resist it. You all seem to love cows so much that I’m pandering to your wishes by telling you about the next bovine event in the calendar.
Each year various towns and villages in Switzerland celebrate the return of their beloved cows from the rich mountain pastures.
It gets a bit chilly up in the hills in winter, and the cows don’t like snow that much, so in the autumn the cows and farmers come down to the huts in the villages. The event is invariable celebrated by dressing up;  the farmers in traditional …read more

3 Comments

The Swiss like cranes. Or to be precise, they love them.
Wherever you go it seems there’s always at least one visible, but somehow it doesn’t seem to distract from the beauty of the place.
Obviously industrial building sites like this one are never going to be pretty, but somehow when used for domestic building work, cranes seem to blend into the Swiss landscape.
Swiss builders need no excuse to put up a small crane, I assume the logic is that their time is expensive and using a crane cuts the time taken to do any job. Having a new garden …read more

2 Comments

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

Comments Off

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

1 Comment