Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern!

Deafening waterfalls, Hells Angels, Metallica – it’s all going on in Switzerland (actually it’s not in Metallica’s case…).

© Keystone / Ennio Leanza

In the news:  The seven cabinet ministers and the federal chancellor chose a good day to go on its annual meet, greet and eat.

• Today’s sunny “school trip” was to the Rhine Falls in northern Switzerland and then down south to canton Ticino, home of Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis (pictured), who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year. “The first half of the year was as lively for the government as the water hereExternal link,” Cassis said at the waterfalls, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
• A trial into a violent clash between the Hells Angels and Bandidos biker gangs outside the Swiss capital in 2019 has resulted in prison sentences of varying lengths. One of the main defendants was today given eight years for premeditated attempted murder.
• The bad luck continues for fans of live music in Switzerland. Ten days after the Rolling Stones had to cancel their first performance in Bern since 1973 because Mick Jagger had Covid, US heavy metal band Metallica had to pull out of the Out in the Green FestivalExternal link in Frauenfeld because of a positive Covid test among the “Metallica family”. About a third of the 36,000 ticket holders asked for their money back (and got it), and as a result the event’s organisers are worried about their finances.

Feuz Family

Shari Zisk-Feuz’s great-grandfather, Walter Feuz, was one of the famous Swiss mountain guides in the Canadian Rockies, hired around 1900 to attract tourists to Canada. In a three-part blog series she will share her search for her roots in the Swiss Alps.

“I was born in the picturesque mountain town of Golden, British Columbia,” Zisk-Feuz writes in her first blog. “I grew up surrounded by the snow-covered peaks of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Little did I know that my love for mountains and the story of how my childhood home nestled among some of the world’s grandest peaks have their roots in the Swiss Alps.”

“In the fifth grade, aged about 12, I first read The Guiding Spirit by Andrew Kauffman and William Putnam. The book recounts the lives and works of the early Swiss Mountain Guides who made their way to Western Canada, starting in 1899. Through this book I learned of my great-grandfather’s magnificent journey to Canada and his essential contribution to the origins of mountain culture in Western Canada.”

“After hearing the stories of the guides and their original mountain home in Switzerland, it has always been a childhood dream to visit the mystical far-away land of peaks, valleys, and waterfalls. Join me now as I venture to the land of fondue and cows to experience Swiss Alpine culture, to ascend the mountains that called to the hearts of my ancestors, and relive the long cultural journey from deep in the heart of Switzerland to the “new Switzerland” of Western Canada.”

Over the coming months Shari Zisk-Feuz will write about her trip to Switzerland. SWI swissinfo.ch will meet her in Interlaken in July.