Thursday, September 6, 2007

Hello from Switzerland again,
It is day 4 . The first days were wonderful.. Day one was in Chamonix where we took a fantabulous cable car ride up to see the Mt. Blanc Massif beautiful day seeing this from every direction... Chamonix is a wonderful resort town tucked in the French Alps-- skiing and hiking and mtn climbing abound
Day 2 we took a lift ride up about 1000 feet and hiked to a small very adorable village of Argentiere- still in France it was another 1500 feet of elevation gain and 2500 feet down 8 miles altogether over rocky and tree root filled terrain.. beautiful though exhausting through the valleys and passes of the alps .Our hotel was Hotel Montana and it was charming. Dinner and a bed were a welcome site.

There are 10 guys on this trip with 10 different personalities but I really like them all. a terrific bunch. 3 of us from Mpls try to team up against the St.Paul seven but its no use.

Day 3 took a van 3-5 miles up past Trient and over the Swiss boarder.. It is a small road but there was no guard at the boarder station Our driver just sluffed it off as though it is a regular occurrence. It made me think about the enormous effort the US now goes through to protect its boarders-- fences, security --on and on and here they are very lax-- It was similar on the bus trip from Geneva Switz to Chamonix France.

This was a very challenging day of hiking 10 miles over 7 hrs and lots of footing challenges over boulder fields--but magnificent scenery. we went up 4500 feet and down 5500 feet to the village of Champeax and a less wonderful hotel. Belvediere

The next day looked to challenging for me after my bicycle accident of 14 months ago so I went with the baggage to the next hotel in the van.

Let me tell you a bit of hist of Switzerland--- I has 4, yes 4 official languages, Italian, French, German and Romanch. Romanch is spoken in very few small villages. but official non the less.
Switz has always done its best to be neutral.. thus they were the original home of the League of Nations, and even though they have chosen a limited form of membership in the UN, Geneva is home to the European HQ of the UN.

Neutrality also motivated the founding of the Red Cross here in Switz. The symbol and name come from here. The red cross is the reverse of the Swiss Flag (white cross on red flag).

They did not join the EU and subsequently their Swiss Frank goes up and down with the US dollar.. The vote to not join was close, but one motivation was the secret Swiss banking system
The EU was going to make them disclose everything.... terrorist money is so important that they are losing their grip on that too. Might joining the EU be long off?
Well, more later.

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