Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Some good news from Canada! Edelweiss Village, the historic home of Swiss mountain guides, has been secured, having previously been put up for sale.
“An incredibly unique opportunity to own Canadian history” was how the real estate agency described the six historic chalets in the Canadian village of Golden, British Columbia, last year. All six were on sale for CAD2.3 million (CHF1.6 million).
What was being praised as Canadian history is in fact also part of Swiss history, as the chalets are part of the legacy of Swiss Alpine guides in the Rocky Mountains. Around 1900, the Swiss were hired by the Canadian Pacific Railway to help tourists wend their way up the many challenging mountain peaks in the region.
Faced with the loss of Edelweiss Village – as the homes are known collectively – two Swiss Abroad, Johann Roduit and Ilona Spaar, launched a rescue operation, the Swiss Edelweiss Village FoundationExternal link. “As a Swiss living in Canada, I think we have a moral responsibility to preserve this unique cultural heritage,” Roduit told us last year.
Today the foundation announced that the village had been secured. “In July 2022, a non-refundable deposit of CAD100,000 (CHF65,500) was paid to the owners of the village in partnership with a for-profit organisation from the area. The property has since been taken off the market,” it said in its newsletter.
The sale for CAD2.3 million is expected to be finalised in July, it said, adding that the foundation was currently working out the details of the partnership.
- Chalet stay or chalet go? Preserving Swiss heritage in Canada – SWI swissinfo.ch
- Iconic ‘Swiss village’ in the Rocky Mountains goes on sale – SWI swissinfo.ch
Racket sport padel is apparently booming in Switzerland – with even Roger Federer having a go. What’s all the fuss about?
“It bangs and echoes when the balls are hit and fly against the windows. There’s shouting and swearing, cheering and encouraging,” the Tages-Anzeigerexplained breathlesslyExternal link today. “It’s become noisy in the industrial quarter of Rüti, canton Zurich, full of craft workshops and where work is usually the main focus. For a few weeks now, a trendy sport has been attracting people to the village in the Zurich Oberland: padel.”
Padel (pronounced pa-DEL to rhyme with Adele) was actually invented in Mexico more than 50 years ago and is a mixture of tennis and squash. Check out this one-minute explainerExternal link. As the Tages-Anzeiger noted, the sport is booming in Switzerland, with even tennis legend Roger Federer, who has a bit more time on his hands now he’s retired, having a bashExternal link. He took to a court in Dubai in January with his former coach Severin Lüthi (pictured).
“At one point I thought I was a future champion, but I quickly realised that you don’t stand a chance against the really good players,” Lüthi said. Federer played well straight away, he added. “He covers the net well. It would be interesting to see how good he could get – and how quickly – if his knee held up and he dedicated himself to this sport. The understanding of the game from tennis certainly helps, even if the rallies are different.”
In Switzerland, padel courts are springing up like mushrooms. The first one was built in Unterengstringen, outside Zurich, in 2010, and there are now over 100. However, in international comparison Switzerland is still in its infancy. More than a million Swedes have played a game on one of the country’s more than 4,000 courts. Mind you, Spain is the clear leader with more than 14,000 courts (74 of the world’s top 100 men come from Spain, and 77 of the top 100 women).
What do you reckon? Does padel appeal to you? I think I’m going to give it a go. I used to play tennis and squash and even dabbled in real tennisExternal link and racketsExternal link in my schooldays (and once you’ve played rackets, everything else seems like it’s in slow motion!).
- This racket sport is booming, but what makes it so fascinating?External link – Tages-Anzeiger
- Trend sport padel – now also in SwitzerlandExternal link – Swiss public television, SRF
Swiss mountaineer Erhard Loretan, the third person to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre peaks, was born today in 1959. He also died today, in 2011. Are the chances of dying on your birthday really greater than on other days of the year, as some studies claim?
“Birthdays […] appear to end up in a lethal way more frequently than expected,” was the sobering conclusion of a Swiss study published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology.
The 2012 studyExternal link analysed almost 2.5 million deaths in Switzerland and found that the number of birthday deaths between 1969-2008 was almost 14% above the statistically expected number (18% for those over 60). The deaths were mainly due to heart attacks and strokes (more women than in men) as well as suicides and accidents (in particular, men falling).
Theories to explain this “birthday effect” include “hanging in there” to reach another milestone, birthday-related stress (causing strokes and heart attacks) and alcohol-related accidents. However, David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, suggested that some of the death records used by the researchers in 2012 were simply inaccurate.
“The Swiss are, I’m sure, very precise bookkeepers. But it’s possible that someone could have a matching birth date and death date in their record when that wasn’t actually the case,” he said. Apart from people accidentally filling in the wrong box, if a dead person’s birth date isn’t known, an official – needing to write in something – might simply use the death date twice.
Whatever the explanation, and focusing on life rather than death, here’s a celebration of some notable Swiss who joined and left the party on the same day, including chemist and high-altitude balloonist Jean Piccard and anarchist-turned-star chef Joseph Favre.
- The famous Swiss who died on their birthday – SWI swissinfo.ch
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