Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern, where after King Roger’s 41st birthday made the headline (of this briefing) yesterday, today it’s the turn of another national symbol to blow out the candles – the railways. This and the rest of Tuesday’s news and updates in today’s briefing.

Keystone/Marco Schmidt

In the news: shortage of teachers, no shortage of wolves.

• The Swiss teachers’ association has warned of a decline in teaching quality at schools due to a lack of certified staff. As schools in certain regions start back this week, and others in the coming weeks, the association said an increasing number of primary schools have had to resort to personnel who lack a professional qualification. It reiterated its demand for higher salaries to ensure the job of teacher remains attractive.
• The number of wolves in the Swiss Alps will keep growing, even if hunting regulations are eased, according to experts. The Wolf Switzerland group said more than 250 wolf packs were living in Europe’s Alpine environment last year, while there is natural space – taking into account what a pack needs to survive – for a population of max. 800. “Given the present growth rate this will be the case in about five years,” the group said.
• In its weekly update, the Federal Office of Public Health said new Covid-19 infections fell 6.6% in the past week to 21,817, while 25 deaths were reported. After some months of rising figures, the numbers have been dropping again in recent weeks. There are currently no public health measures in force in Switzerland, though over-80-year-olds and vulnerable people have been advised to get a second booster jab.

Keystone / Str

Faster, cheaper, (a lot) more frequent: trains now and then.

175 years ago today, the first time-tabled rail route in Switzerland began operating. Between Baden in canton Aargau (see drawing, above) and Zurich, the line ran four times daily in each direction, took 45 minutes, and cost the equivalent of four hours average wage for a third-class ticket; first class, with its plush seating, cost double this. The train was known as the “Spanish roll train”, since it was often used by servants from Zurich households who travelled to Baden to collect gourmet pastries. It puffed along at around 40kmph.

And although the line was not profit-making, public broadcaster SRF writes, it wasn’t long before rail travel exploded in the Alpine Nation, with private companies competing to build lines, the network rapidly expanding in all directions (SRF has created a nice map hereExternal link with the growth over time) and incredibly ambitious tunnels being bored; the Gotthard was completed in 1882, after ten years of digging and sometimes violent worker strikes. The Swiss Federal Railways was meanwhile created in 1902 to bring some order to the chaotic private scene, after it had been accepted in a public vote in 1898.

And one-and-three-quarter centuries later? The line between Baden and Zurich, which was travelled today by Transport Minister Simonetta Sommaruga and other dignitaries to celebrate the occasion, is still a key node in the Swiss network – but its 23 km are only a fraction of the 5,317 km of lines which cross the country. The 45 minutes of the Spanish bread train have dwindled to 16; the number of connections has climbed from four per day to eight per hour(!); and the price of a second-class ticket, at CHF13.40, has sunk to around a third of an average hourly wage.

Keystone / Franco Silvi

Coming soon: Swiss won’t have to go to Italy on holidays.

Good news from the Swiss Foundation for Landscape Protection! Switzerland is becoming more and more like the Italian region of Tuscany, the foundation said this week: thanks to climate change, the green plains of central Switzerland are gradually becoming more yellow and brown – just like in the beautiful valleys around Siena and Florence! Swiss forests, meanwhile, desiccated by heat and drought, will increasingly resemble the late-summer golds of the Chianti region… And even in the mountains, the piles of scree left behind by melting glaciers are increasingly more reminiscent of the stony Italian Alps than the verdant Swiss mountains we know and love, said the foundation. It didn’t specify whether or not the Swiss cuisine and lifestyle could become a bit more Tuscan too, but we can hope.