The new Lamborghini dealer in Lugano - Photo Lamborghini
CADENAZZO, SWITZERLAND – Italian luxury automaker Lamborghini has opened its fifth store in Switzerland saying it is another step in its “plan for strengthening the Lamborghini sales network” around the country.
Stephan Winkelman, President and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini, inaugurated the store, run by auto dealer Tarcisio Pasta SA, located in Cadenazzo, near Lugano.
“For us Switzerland is a strategic market as it is within our 10 most important worldwide,” said Winkelman.
The new dealership showroom carries its V10 and V12 product lines, the Gallardo, and its latest Aventador LP 700-4.
The other four Lamborghini showrooms in Switzerland are located in Geneva, Porrentruy, St Gallen and Zurich.
Forecast is for more of the same
Update 14 July 10:00 ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Thunderstorms and heavy rains are taking their toll in central and eastern Switzerland, with emergency services taking calls for pleasure craft in trouble on the lakes, trees down on roads, cellars flooded.
Torrential rains in parts of Valais are prompting fears of flooding in Zermatt (video, 20 Minutes) and the A2 autoroute in Ticino was cut off between Lugano and Mendrisio by a mudslide late Wednesday.
In the Bernese Oberland the Schynige Platte rail line was cut off by fallen trees and 64 passengers had to be evacuated by helicopters.
Zurich has had the most rain, according to TSR, with 40cm/m2 at the airport.
MeteoSwiss is predicting more of the same until at least mid-day Thursday in western Switzerland and Saturday in the central and eastern parts of the country.
Photos below, taken from the same spot in Valais during one hour, show the rapidly changing weather in the Alps. Click on images to view larger.
Swiss Alpine storm pummels garden 13 July
Heavy sheets of rain swept across the Alps Wednesday
Val d'Anniviers, storms come to an end
Val d'Anniviers, end of storm 13 July 2011
Not a cloud in the sky - storms have moved on to eastern Switzerland
The clouds are not quite ready to call it a day! Hikers, beware.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The 2011 measles epidemic that spiked in Basel, Geneva and Lausanne in the first four months of the year is moving on to eastern Switzerland, figures published Monday by the Federal Public Health Office show, with 515 cases throughout the country from 1 January to 24 May.
The 2011 epidemic appears to have reached its peak in western Switzerland, but numbers are now dropping. By mid-May, Geneva (110 cases) and Vaud (93) had felt the impact of a major epidemic in France, while Basel, with 57 cases, was affected mainly by a group that is reluctant to vaccinate its children.
Cantons Aargau, Saint Gall, Thurgau, Zurich, but also Neuchatel and Ticino are now seeing a rapid increase in cases.
Outbreaks in 2009 and 2010 prompted large vaccination programmes in the Swiss Army and at EPFL in Lausanne, after cases of the highly contagious disease developed. Geneva schools sent letters in April 2011 alerting parents to the need to vaccinate and follow up with a second vaccination, as the disease spread.
Public health authorities are again urging people to make sure they have had a followup vaccination if they had only one, and to be vaccinated if they were not. The disease, also called rubeola, is a respiratory tract infection that requires being quarantined. Complications can be more severe in adults: 41 percent of the Swiss cases since December 2010 have been adults over the age of 20. In 88 percent of the cases, the patients were not vaccinated at all and in 7 percent they were not sufficiently covered.
France sends 81,000 people to work in the Lake Geneva region
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Lake Geneva region remains by far the largest in Switzerland for workers from across the border, des frontaliers, with a significant jump in numbers in the first three months of 2011. The number of workers from France rose to 81,619 by the end of March, an all-time high and up from 77,235 at the end of December.
Switzerland by the end of March had over 243,000 people crossing into the country to work, compared to 143,000 in 2000, figures released 26 by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office show.
Geneva had an increase of about 3,000 and canton Vaud about 1,000, during the first three months of 2011.
The Basel area in northwest Switzerland has the second-largest number of border-crossers, 63,995 at the end of Q3 2011, an increase of about 2,000 since the end of 2010. Ticino has just over 50,000.
Geneva’s border-crossers account for more than one-third of workers who cross into Switzerland.
Some 4,000 more women from across the border were working by the end of March, compared to December 2010, and about 6,000 more men.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - One of the two Swiss women critically injured in the blast a week earlier in Marrakesh, Morocco, has died, Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey announced late Friday afternoon 7 May. She expressed her sadness and distress at the “brutal disappearance” of those killed by the “senseless and ugly act of violence”, the bomb that exploded at a cafe popular with tourists, in the town centre 28 April.
The two men who were with the Ticino woman and another female companion, were killed in the explosion. The other woman remains hospitalized.
Police in Marrakesh have arrested three suspects.
Swiss forest fires: prevention is the best solution (shown: history of fire hydrants, Zurich, ©2011 Ellen Wallace)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A dozen bush fires have been sparked in canton Vaud in the past week, mostly started by negligence, from cigarette butts and cooking fires not put out properly, police warn.
The canton has had a ban since 15 April on lighting fires closer than 10 metres from forests, woods, hedges, grasslands and reedbeds. Small amounts of rain fell over the weekend in some areas, but the largest amount recorded was only 10 cm, far short of what is needed to end the record April dry spell.
Cantons Graubuenden and Ticino both had sizeable forest fires in the past few days, reports TSR, with 2,000m2 burning under a ski lift in the commune of Celerina and 3,000m2 burning in the area of Maggia, in Ticino.
In the first case a discarded cigarette butt is suspected of causing the fire that took several hours to put out, using three helicopters, with 60 firefighters involved.
Fire warnings issued in canton Vaud due to dryness
Farmers are watering fields early as animals are put out to pasture in Switzerland, in fields with slow growth due to dryness
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Temperature extremes are normal in April in Switzerland, with cool nights and warm days, but the week of 18 April promises to show off the phenomenon at its best, with cold and even frost in some parts of Switzerland early Monday, then temperatures rising to 22C.
Expect sunshine, with occasional clouds that won’t do more than provide a whiff of shade, throughout the week. Temperatures are expected to slowly climb, continuing Switzerland’s unususally dry and balmy month of April.
A few drops of rain are forecast in canton Valais starting Thursday, with expected highs of 24-25C, according to MeteoSwiss, the national weather service. Ed. note: keep abreast of forecasts on GenevaLunch’s MeteoSwiss weather pages.
Authorities in canton Vaud issued a rare spring public fire aert Friday, due to excessive dryness: it is now illegal to light a fire unless you are at least 10 metres from a wooded stretch. Valais has had an open-air fire ban since mid-March and Ticino has now banned open fires, with canton Graubuenden having a ban on fires near forests.
The national weather service notes that 2011 could well bypass 1976 as the driest year since records were started in 1870: Geneva will need more than 34cm of rain and Sion 44cm to avoid this.
Seat of Swiss federal government in Bern
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The neutral Swiss had a very rare glimpse of a foreign military power on home territory Monday 21 March, as 20 British military vehicles, escorted by the Swiss army, crossed the country from Basel to Chiasso in canton Ticino.
The passage, details and the path of which were not divulged by the federal government, would only have appeared remarkable to those who spotted the soldiers because of the type and markings of the vehicles: Swiss military vehicles and soldiers from the citizen militia are a common sight in Switzerland.
The British government requested the right of passage of aeronautic equipment as part of its commitment to prevent the Qaddafi regime in Libya from using force against the civilian population there.
Gotthard tunnel works, above ground 2010 (photo, Alp Transit)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The TV cameras will be whirring away as a group of men shake hands and probably wipe away tears nearly two kilometres below ground, but the event this time is not trapped miners, it’s a celebration as the final bit of Switzerland’s Gotthard base rail tunnel is bored early Friday afternoon. The world’s longest rail tunnel, 57 km, will be pierced early in the afternoon 15 October, the culmination of 17 years of tunneling work.
Drillers from Sedrun in canton Graubuenden will meet those from Faido, Ticino, completing the drilling of 151.4 km in total (roads in both directions and galleries). The workers from Ticino will climb through the manhole once the final boring is done.
TSR will cover it live in French: 6.5 km long fiberglass cables had to be laid to make the live broadcasts possible.
The tunnel itself will not open until 2017, with construction and safety work inside the tunnel remaining a major project.
Once completed, the Gotthard tunnel will be a key part of the European rail system’s transalpine line, linking northern and southern Europe with high-speed trains.
"Clean Hands" - Photo, Migros Contemporary Art Museum
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Migros Contemporary Arts Museum in Zurich says an “unimposing bar of soap” currently on display is made of fat removed from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during a liposuction procedure in Switzerland.
Swiss-Italian artist Gianni Motti, 52, allegedly got the fat from an unidentified Ticino clinic where Berlusconi underwent cosmetic surgery in 2004 to remove abdominal fat. The AFP news agency says the clinic vehemently denies the artist’s claims.
Motti’s 2005 work called Mani Pulite or “Clean Hands,” makes reference to Italy’s “Clean Hands campaign,” a judicial investigation into political corruption in the 1990s.
According to the exhibit’s curator: “Mani Pulite is an ironic commentary about a tragi-comical political figure who ‘milked’ the story of his cosmetic surgery for publicity. [Someone] vain enough to buy photographs from press agencies in order to prevent them from reaching the public.”
This is the first public display of the object since it was purchased by a private collector in 2005.
The off-white soap, which is the size of a conventional bar, will be exhibited until 28 November.
Title: Exhibit: Robert Mapplethorpe photographs
Location: Lugano
Link out: Click here
Description: The exhibition, organised in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York and the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, illustrates his quest for perfection in form.
Start Date: 2010-04-02
End Date: 2010-06-13
Grandson, canton Vaud and Glattfelden, canton Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Three pedestrians have died in separate incidents on Swiss roads, two of them on autoroutes. A young man walking on the Basel-bound A50 autoroute near Glattfelden, canton Zurich died instantly when he was hit by a car at around 04:00 Sunday 21 February.
A similar case cost the life of a 20-year-old man from Romania who was struck by a car on the A5 between Grandson, canton Vaud and Vaumarcus, canton Neuchatel early Sunday. The car’s passenger was slightly hurt in the accident.
In Rivera, canton Ticino, a third person was killed crossing a cantonal route.
Details from police about the circumstances surrounding the accidents are not yet available.
Links to other sites: Blick (Ger), Romandie News, TSR
Switzerland's autoroute stops are heavily used by truck drivers taking their legally required breaks. Here: above Montreux, Vaud
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A truck driver from one of the former Yugoslavia regions, stopped Monday 15 February near Gentilino on the A2 autoroute for speeding, ate his tachometre, say cantonal police in Ticino. The man was stopped for speeding, but it was discovered that he had driven 1,054 kilometres without pausing for a break over the course of 18 hours. Truck drivers are legally required to take regular breaks, and Ticino police, at the border with Italy, say they have noticed a growing lack of respect for the rule, so they’ve stepped up controls.
An ambulance had to be called for the 34-year-old man, who was later released from hospital but had to pay CHF2,000 in bail pending charges.
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Rosa Rein, who would have turned 113 in March, has died in a nursing home in canton Ticino. She was Switzerland’s oldest person and, according to wikipedia, one of the 15 oldest “verified” people in the world. When she celebrated her birthday in 2009 she was still able to walk, although she had some vision and hearing loss.
Rosa Rein was born in 1897 in Dzietzkowitz, now part of Poland, the daughter of relatively comfortable farmers, according to RTI, Swiss Italian radio. She married for the first time in 1935, at age 38, after running a textile business, but the young Jewish woman and her German husband fled to Brazil at the time of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom.
Avalanches in several cantons catch snowboarders, hikers, skiers Sunday 31 January
Grimentz is in the Val d'Anniviers, Valais
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 24-year-old Vaud man was killed by an avalanche Sunday 31 January while snowboarding off-piste in Grimentz with three friends. They were just 100 metres from a groomed piste when the avalanche caught and buried him. The other three were not hit by the avalanche.
Surprise at Italy's actions
Lugano, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Italian tax authorities raided 76 branches of Swiss banks in 22 cities around Italy, 27 October, ostensibly checking to see whether the institutions were in compliance with reporting requirements on bank operations. Federal Counsellor Pascal Couchepin said on national radio that they “were desperate measures” and suggested that the social contract between the Italian government and its citizens was in “bad shape”.
Italians who travel to Switzerland overland have been subjected to unprecedented border checks, with closed circuit cameras and police dogs at the border. The Italian finance and economy minister, Giulio Tremonti, has said that he wants to “dry up” the banks in Ticino, where it is estimated that most Italians have deposited their money.
Title: Ascona chestnut festival
Location: Ascona, Ticino
Link out: Click here
Description: Day-long food, music, markets, entertainment to celebrate autumn, chestnut harvest
Start Time: 10:00
Date: 10 Oct 2009
Mendrisio, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Olympic and world champion Fabian Cancellara took gold in stunning fashion in the time trial of the world cycling championships in Ticino. He dominated the field to win the 49.8 km race by almost one and a half minutes. The Bern-based rider also won the race in the 2006 and 2007 championships, as well as taking Olympic gold in Beijing in 2008. He took bronze in the Olympic road race and is hoping to do even better in the 262.2 km race on Sunday.
Details: Swissinfo
Getting harder to find housing in Switzerland
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Housing in Switzerland was even scarcer as of 30 June 2009, with six percent fewer available housing units than a year earlier. Countrywide, there were only 34,760 available units, or 2,360 fewer, and the vacancy rate fell to less than one percent (0.9 percent).
The Zurich metropolitan area and Ticino were the only regions where the housing supply increased. Geneva continues to have the tightest market, 0.22 percent.
George Clooney alive and well in Switzerland - Photo Laila Rodriguez
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - American actor and activist George Clooney was treated at a Swiss hospital following a mishap in his car which resulted in a broken hand.
Title: Men’s European waterpolo championship
Location: Lugano, Ticino
Link out: Click here
Description: Free entrance to all the competitions.
Start Date: 05 Sep 2009
End Date: 13 Sep 2009
Crowd at the Piazza Grande - Photo ©Locarno Film Festival
Locarno, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Leopard is alive and well, thank you very much. The 62nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival got off to a great start this week in southeastern Switzerland. Almost 400 films (180 feature and 210 shorts) are on the agenda for the 10-day extravaganza in Locarno, canton Ticino, from 5-15 August.
According to its director, Marco Solari, this is the “edgiest” film festival in the world and it is keeping its cool by shying away from more “mainstream, commercial films.” Thus the movies competing for the Golden Leopard promise to keep the jury and the expected 180,000 spectators busy.
This year, a special Japanese animation retrospective has been scheduled as well as a Swiss films day. The festival’s Open Door Factory event is dedicated to Chinese films from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Gall flies larvae found in Switzerland - Photo ©Swiss Federal Administration
Canton Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – They are devastating, undesired, feared and unwelcome but they’re in Switzerland! We are talking about a wasp no more than 2.5 cm in length with a black body and yellow legs which has been causing damage to chestnut trees in the Piedmont region of northern Italy and which has, unfortunately, finally arrived in canton Ticino in southeast Switzerland.
Title: Locarno film festival
Location: Locarno, Ticino
Link out: Click here
Description: The Locarno film festival is a great “Festa del Cinema” now in its 62nd year. The festival is particularly interesting because during the day it showcases cool and independent movies indoors, and over large screens and outdoors at night.
Start Date: 05 Aug 2009
End Date: 15 Aug 2009
Bern with Geneva, La Sarraz, and St Gotthard, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Three Swiss sites have been declared European Heritage sites by the Swiss cultural affairs office, the country’s contribution to a French initiative signed by 18 European countries to designate an initial group of 60 sites which are important to European culture and heritage. The three are:
Saint Peter’s (St Pierre) cathedral in Geneva, for its links to religious reformer Jean Calvin
La Sarraz chateau in Vaud for its role as home to the International Congress for Modern Architecture from its founding in 1928 to 1959: the congress is considered the pioneer of modern urbanism in Europe
St Gotthard hospice in Ticino, on the mountain pass at 2,100 metres, which has for centuries served as a link and symbol of ties between northern and southern Europe.
Bellinzona, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Criminal Court, based in Bellinzona, handed down a surprise verdict Wednesday by acquitting seven people accused of belonging to criminal organizations and money-laundering linked to trafficking in contraband cigarettes. It gave suspended sentences to two others but only for aiding a criminal organization. The case brought by the Swiss attorney general had argued that the nine people, from Italy, France, Ticino and Jura, organized the Swiss part of a contraband network that involved the Italian Mafia, among other groups, but the federal court refused to accept most of the arguments.
The Swiss know about this and anyone spending six months or more in the country should as well: over a million people hold the Swiss Museums Passport and they make more than half a million visits to the country’s museums with it. The cost is CHF144 a year for an adult or CHF177 for an adult-plus pass that allows you to take up to five children. A family pass is CHF225. The passes are good for 440 museums and as of 1 January 2009 you can also get into the hugely popular (and excellent) Swiss Transport Museum for half-price. Do check the list of museums, as a couple that have very large, major exhibits are not covered. July 2009 example: the Lake Maggiore tourism office features the passport.
Celebrations after boring through to link 2 tunnels, St Gotthard new rail line (photo: AlpTransit)
St Gotthard rail tunnel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The miners digging the new St Gotthard train tunnel, which at 57 km will be the longest in the world, Tuesday 16 June celebrated the final boring of the 7.5 km Erstfeld-Amsteg leg, completing the eastern side of the tunneling project.
Staefa, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Bernese cyclist Fabian Cancellara had to give up his first place position to Slovene Tadej Valjavec in the fourth stage of the Tour de Suisse cycling race 16 June. The 196km stage from Biasca, Ticino to Staefa, canton Zurich, was won by Cancellara’s Saxo Bank teammate Matti Breschel, but the best time overall so far in the race went to Vlajavec, 20 seconds ahead of Cancellara. Wednesday 17 June takes the race 201 km to Serfaus in the Austrian alps, over the 1,793m high Arlberg pass.
Title: Lugano estival jazz
Location: Medrisio and Lugano, Canton Ticino
Link out: Click here
Description: All concerts in this open-air festival are free. Among the artists to perform in 2009 are bands from Cuba, jazz bands from the US and contemporary European artists.
Start Date: 26 Jun 2009
End Date: 04 Jul 2009
