Room to grow: Zurich's citizen say it can go ahead with new runways and keep existing flight paths
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss voters were back at the ballot box Sunday 27 November, a month after parliamentary elections, to vote on a number of items that differed from one canton to the next.
Here are some of the highlights, as results flow in Sunday evening:
Swiss right loses most runoffs, Geneva rebuffs minimum wage
- The right-wing UDC lost heavily in cantonal runoffs for seats in the upper house of parliament
- Two key federal parliament upper house seats: in the closely watched key Zurich election Felix Gutzwiller and Verena Diener defeated Christoph Blocher; Blocher is a former federal councilor and led the UDC/SVP People’s Party to a dominant position in the last decade until he lost his seat in 2007, and in St Gallen UDC candidate and favourite to win, Tony Brunner, lost to Socialist Paul Rechsteiner
- Canton Geneva has voted against a minimum wage but Neuchatel has voted to include it in the canton’s constitution; Switzerland as a whole does not have a minimum wage
- Canton Vaud: Green Party’s Béatrice Métraux defeated UDC’s Pierre-Yves Rapaz for the cantonal upper house seat left vacant by the death of UDC councilor Jean-Claude Mermoud in September
In German-speaking ares: Zurich airport can grow, Zug taxes down and foreigners get mixed bag:
- Foreigners: they will not be given the right to vote at the communal level in Lucerne, but they were spared stiff requirements pushed by the UDC People’s Party in the city of Basel to require strong language skills in order to be naturalized, and Basel’s citizens also voted 3-1 to place the responsibility for naturalization in the hands of the local government rather than the parliament; in Schwyz, voters agreed, 2-1, to align its naturalization laws with federal law and put responsibility for this in the hands of communal commissions (TSR notes that this was necessary after a scandal in Emmen, Lucerne, where the communal council routinely turned down applications from foreigners from certain countries
- Zurich voted strongly against a motion that would have restricted the airport’s growth; it will now be able to add two new runways to and allow existing ones to be extended; the vote was a sharp rebuke to the officials from several communes who were behind a motion to limit flying over highly populated neighbourhoods and to restrict the airport’s growth
- Zug voted in a number of tax breaks, including doubling the reduction per child for families, from CHF9,000 to 18,000, and cutting the corporate tax rate to 5.75 percent from 6.5
- Lump-sum taxes for wealthy foreigners who reside in Switzerland will continue to be offered by cantons Glaris and St Gallen but the latter’s voters have chosen to tighten requirements.
- Smoking in Basel: voters rejected a proposal by restaurants to adopt less strict federal no smoking laws instead of the cantons, in a close vote with just 200 out of more than 23,000 deciding the issue.
The first Lucerne International Film Festival to take place at the Hotel Palace, Grand Casino, Hotel Schweizerhof and the Art Deco Montana Hotel.
Location: Lucerne
Link out: http://www.lucernefilmfestival.com/index_en.html
Start date: 19 Oct 2011
End date: 22 Oct 2011
Lausanne train station: more to look at, with new animated large ad screens coming Monday
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Travellers will find the relatively ads-free train stations in six main Swiss cities visually busier Monday 20 June when large-screen ad boards go up.
The 1.01 x 1.80 metre screens will show silent animated high-definition advertisements, similar to screens already operating in airports.
Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Lucerne and Zurich will have a total of 43 boards. The CFF says that 840,000 people pass through the six RailAway stations every day.
Ad sales will be handled by e-advertising, which belongs to SGA (APG in German), Switzerland’s largest “out of home” media advertising company.
The company has a new product that was developed with Coca-Cola and Volkswagen, an interactive billboard, on display at Zurich’s main station until the end of June: the display reacts to the movements of passersby.
China's Three Gorges dam in 2009
BERN, SWITZERLAND – China and Switzerland signed a letter of understanding Wednesday 1 June for the Alpine nation to provide monitoring services for Chinese dams.
Jiao Yong, China’s vice-minister for Water Resources, and Walter Steinmann, director of the Swiss Federal Energy Office, signed a letter of intent during the six-day meeting in Lucerne of nearly 1,000 of the world’s top specialists in hydraulic dams.
Switzerland has the world’s most dense system of dams, and it has the world’s highest in cement, the Grande-Dixence, 285 metres high. Switzerland relies heavily on hydraulic power, which supplies 55 percent of the country’s electricity, and dams play a crucial role in this system.
China’s construction of the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze in the past decade drew world attention, but the country’s growing dam system now includes some 26,000 dams that are more than 15 metres high.
International sports, football
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – FC Basel became Swiss football champions after the club smoothly ran over FC Luzern Wednesday 25 May. The Swiss title, its 14th, owed much to Alexander Frei’s early goal in front of the crowd of 38,500, which set the tone for the match.
Switzerland will be sending FC Basel into the qualifying rounds of the Uefa Champions League
Zurich defeated Thun 1-0 and will also go to the qualifying rounds, but its win wasn’t enough to give it the Swiss title.
Uefa in a statement Wednesday reminded fans not to travel to London for the finals without a ticket for the match in hand, noting that there will be no public viewing of the Champions League final. It will be played at the new Wembley Stadium for the first time, but the 90,000 seats were allocated in draws that took place between November 2010 and March 2011. Visit London offers a list of sports bars in the city where the match can be watched.
Links to other sites: Fifa, Reuters/Los Angeles Times, UEFA match results
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Samuel Koch, a 23-year-old student who was critically injured when he attempted a stunt over a car on the German television show “Wetten, dass…?” has been told by doctors in Lucerne, Switzerland, that he is tetraplegic, TSR public television reports. Spinal injuries have caused nervous damage to his four limbs and vertebrae. He was transferred from a hospital in Duesseldorf, Germany to the Swiss paraplegia centre in Nottwil, canton Lucerne, after emergency surgery followed by two days in artificial coma.
Koch had been attempting to jump over a car with springs attached to his legs, but he landed head first.
The show, hugely popular in Germany, has been on the air for 29 years.
Lucerne’s marathon and half-marathon.
Location: Lucerne, Switzerland
Link out: http://www.lucernemarathon.ch
Date: 31 Oct 2010
More electonic voting should make it easier for more Swiss abroad to have their say
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Five additional cantons will be able to offer electronic voting to their citizens in November 2010 federal elections, bringing the total number to 12 cantons, nearly half of the country. The Swiss federal electoral commission announced the decision 8 September. The November ballots take electronic voting, in which Switzerland is a world leader, a step further: this is the first time a popular initiative or citizens-created referendum item, will be voted on.
Some 190,000 voters abroad, or 4.1 percent of the voting population, will be able to vote electronically. Voting from abroad has long posed a problem for the nearly 700,00 (close to 10 percent of the total population) Swiss citizens abroad because ballots are mailed three weeks before votes, which in many cases does not allow enough time to forward the material and have the voter return it for the deadline.
The cantons with electronic voting options in November are:
Heavy rain falling on fields in Valais, taken through open window Sunday evening
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Château d’Oex, canton Vaud, was one of the worst hit areas Sunday evening 11 July, when thunderstorms broke out in the Bernese Oberland and other parts of Switzerland. High temperatures in recent days have resulted in early evening thundershowers, often with high winds that have caught sailors by surprise and interrupted train service in parts of German-speaking Switzerland. In Château d’Oex the Eau Froide river filled rapidly and spilled over its banks, causing a rockslide that carried away a car, with no one in it. The national weather service clocked 3,900 lightning bolts in Lucerne and 900 in Zurich. On Lake Zurich winds reached 155 kph.
Meteo Swiss offers a page of explanations and advice on how to behave in thunderstorms, in French but with easy-to-follow sketches of right and wrong behaviour.
More high temperatures, in the low- and mid-30s, with late afternoon thunderstorms are expected.
Note: GenevaLunch offers five-day forecasts provided by Meteo Swiss.
Links to other sites: Meteo Swiss, TSR
View from the train, Bern to Lausanne, April 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The long Ascension weekend, 13-16 May, where many people take Thursday and Friday off work, starts this evening. Expect heavy traffic and damp weather at the outset, but the rest of the week should show some improvement in western and southern Switzerland, but do carry your umbrellas.
Traffic forecast from the Swiss federal highway department, Ascension weekend
Title: Lucerne festival
Location: Lucerne
Link out: Click here
Description: This Swiss mardi-gras festival has plenty of brass and masks to keep you warm this winter.
Start Date: 2010-02-11
End Date: 2010-02-16
Image 2010: Bakbasel
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lech in Austria and Lucerne in Switzerland were the two most popular seasonal tourist destinations in the Alpine region in 2009: Lech in winter and Lucerne in summer. Switzerland has three destinations among the overall top 10 for the year: Lucerne, Zurich and Engelberg. But a report published 21 January on tourism in the region shows Austrian resorts well ahead of Swiss ones as popular winter resorts, taking the first seven places, with Zermatt in eighth. Zermatt gains ground as a year-round destination because it is also popular in summer.
WHAT’S ON / TOP EVENTS IN LAKE GENEVA REGION
Title: Steam trains in the middle of winter
Location: Lucerne
Link out: Click here
Description: Enjoy the charming landscapes and a breathtaking panoramic view from the top of Mt Rigi.
Start Date: 2010-01-30
End Date: 2010-01-31
State of national motorway network, 2009. Fedro
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A new 2.8km stretch of the national motorway network south of Zurich has opened, filling a gap that connects northeastern Switzerland with Lucerne. Lucerne is now 35 minutes by road from Zurich on a good day. The federal roads office (Fedro) says the new road through the region of Knonau, southwest of Zurich, will lighten traffic on the cantonal and local roads in that area, and generally make traffic between northeastern Switzerland and the southern parts of the country easier.
But it will also have a negative impact on some parts of the autoroute, with the new connection likely to attract more traffic on Zurich’s northern A1 bypass which will only later be widened to six lanes, as well as on access roads to Lucerne.
Western bypass of Zurich, recently opened. Fedro
Not jolly, Roger.
Lucerne and Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A husband and wife taxi driver team in Kriens, canton Lucerne, have received a notice from Billag demanding that they pay the television and radio license fee for the car radio installed in their taxi, reports Blick newspaper, 22 October.
Normally, a car radio is covered by the fee paid per household, however many radios or tvs the household owns. Unless, that is, the radio is used commercially. Then the license costs from CHF223.6o per year. That is Billag’s argument in this case.
Update 31 August 06:30 Martigny and Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The week’s end death and serious injury toll from non-road accidents in the Lake Geneva area in Switzerland was high, with 2 young men in critical condition after a swimming pool accident in Martigny and a diving accident in Prangins, and three people dead from mountain climbing accidents.
An American student, 20, is in critical condition, reports the Tribune de Geneve, following a diving accident Sunday afternoon at the Plage de Promenthoux in Prangins. Diving is banned along the lakefront in the area because of the shallow water. He was flown by a Rega helicopter to the Lucerne paraplegic trauma centre after receiving emergency treatment at the site of the accident.
A 23-year-old and two friends climbed the municipal pool fence at 05:00 Saturday, according to 24 Heures, and once in the pool two of them noticed that their friend was missing.
Storms have battered Switzerland in recent days
Hail balls hit orchards in Etoy, 23 July
Update 14:25 Bern and Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Heavy storms that crossed central Switzerland around 21.45 Monday night caused extensive damage, with firemen called to two houses in Bern that were struck by lightning, which also hit a swimming pool and electric line. Roads were closed and cellars flooded in canton Lucern. A pork house was hit by lightning on a Lucern farm, but the 200 pigs were saved, reports ats/romandie.
Damage from the 23 July hail storm that hit Vaud and central Switzerland is now estimated at CHF180 million, TSR reports.
St Gotthard tunnel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The road between Lucerne and Chiasso near and including the Gotthard tunnel is closed in both directions because of roadworks, during the nights of 15-19 June from 20:00 to 05:00. Trucks are being held on either side of the tunnel starting at 19:30 and cars are being sent on a detour over the pass.
Swiss road news updates:
Hans Erni, age 100, in front of earlier self-portrait
Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Articulate, still handsome, far more interested in debating the state of the world than in basking in the recognition that has at last come to him: this is Hans Erni at the ripe age of 100. Visitors tend to walk up to him, awestruck by his age, and walk away from him having forgotten his age because he gives them too many other things to think about.
A career spanning 80 years, the globe – with peace an enduring theme
Erni is one of Switzerland’s finest 20th (and 21st) century artists, but he has only relatively recently been acknowledged as fully as he deserves. His career, spanning nearly 80 years, was celebrated in February with a major retrospective in Martigny at the Gianadda Foundation. The Kunstmuseum in Lucerne 24 May opened the first public museum showing of his work since 1979 with a collection that traces the development of the artist.
Erni was honoured in Geneva Saturday 6 June: his most recent project, a 60-metre peace fresco at the entrance to the United Nations building, the Palais des Nations, was unveiled at an outdoor ceremony open to the public. The year 2009 is a series of such events, throughout Switzerland – and Erni finds the energy to travel and participate in several of them.
Politics took their toll
It is not that Erni is an unknown artist: quite the opposite. He has a large popular following, his work is housed in the Hans Erni museum in Lucerne (an extension of the country’s most popular museum, the Transportation Museum) since 1979, and for decades he has been the guest of governments around the world.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The official unveiling of a 60-metre long ceramic fresco, a wall mural by Swiss artist Hans Erni, takes place Saturday 6 June at the Palais des Nations, the United Nations building in Geneva. The public is invited to the 14:15 ceremony.
The artist, who celebrated his 100th birthday in February 2009, has been actively involved in the preparatory work for the mural. “I want all those people going in there to work every day to see it and think about peace,” he told a group of foreign journalists who recently visited him in his hometown of Lucerne. “I want them to be inspired.”
The mural covers what has been a plain concrete wall that was erected when security was tightened around the building after September 2001. Friday 5 June workers were busy putting finishing touches on the fresco as tents went up for the Saturday ceremony in front of the UN building. Some 1,000 people have been invited.
Geneva has had a long relationship with the artist, who has created artworks for several international organizations in the city.
The local government invited him to develop a project for his centenary and the fresco is the result. The city paid CHF150,000 of the total cost of CHF600,000, according to the Tribune de Geneve in early May, when work began to install the fresco.
The ceremony is the first official event presided over by the new mayor of Geneva, Rémy Pagani. The fresco, named Tu panta rei, was produced by François Ruegg with Sertam. The tiles are 50 cm x 1 metre and are placed on a curved surface, requiring special handling.
Related:
“Hans Erni named Swiss Personality of the Year by foreign correspondents,” GenevaLunch, 19 May 2009
“Portrait of the artist as an old man: Hans Erni at 100,” GenevaLunch, 7 June 2009
Lake Geneva, afternoon 26 May: storm lights warn sailors
Bern, Lucerne, Zurich, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Several areas in eastern Switzerland were hard hit by heavy thunderstorms and winds Tuesday afternoon 26 May. A man was killed when a tree blew down and landed on the car he was driving in Romanshorn, Thurgau and a woman is in stable condition at a Bern hospital after she was hit by a falling branch. Lucerne was hit by flash floods that swamped cellars and Zurich had several minutes of hail. Fribourg suffered heavy damage from falling trees.
The Lake Geneva area had gusting winds and rain, but was spared the strength of the storm that hit further east.
Hans Erni with Yolanda Rojal, president of the Swiss foreign press association in Lucerne 16 May 2009
Hans Erni
Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Hans Erni, Swiss artist who celebrated his 100th birthday in February, has been named Swiss Personality of the Year 2008-2009 by the Foreign Press Association, which is based in Geneva.
Erni Saturday evening 16 May welcomed a small group of journalists to his museum next to the Swiss Transportation Museum in Lucerne, his hometown. He spoke passionately for 30 minutes, focusing on his continuing work to promote peace.
The artist’s new wall fresco, a series of ceramic panels that plea for peace, is currently being installed to cover 60 metres of cement wall at the United Nations building in Geneva. It will be unveiled 6 June in a public ceremony.
Lake of the Four Cantons, Lucerne, one of Switzerland's most popular destinations
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss hotel industry can expect its worst year since 1982, according to a report prepared by consultants BAKBasel, and released 19 May by the Swiss Secretariat for the Economy, Seco. Overnight stays for the 2009 summer season (May to October) are expected to drop 7.2 percent compared to last summer. And things won’t be back to normal until 2011, the report says.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – In a lengthy, ongoing Swiss educational debate over which languages to learn at what stages of schooling, Swiss German cantons in the centre of the country now offer clear evidence that learning English in the third year of primary school helps with French when children take it up as a third language of study two years later.
Title: Lucerne city run
Location: Lucerne
Link out: Click here
Description: Once a year runners take to the pavement and give their best for the 31st Lucerne City Run through the Old Town with nearly 13,000 participants.
Date: 25 Apr 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Switzerland’s much-touted classical music festival in Lucerne has offered Geneva a first: one of its concerts live on a giant screen at Victoria Hall, home of the Suisse Romande Orchestra. The 18 August performance, sponsored by the city of Geneva and free of charge, will be Mahler’s Third Symphony, conducted by Claudio Abbado, with mezzo soprano Anna Larsson, Arnold Schoenberg’s Vienna Choir and Tölzer Knabenchor. The Lucerne Festival opens today and runs until 16 September.
Details on the free concert are not yet posted on the Geneva’s concerts site
