Where the Aare begins

I've written often about the Aare as it flows near Villigen, on its way out of Switzerland. But this is the region where it begins, near the Grimsel Pass at the border of cantons Valais/Wallis and Bern. Over the next few days, I'll show some photos I took in that area.

20090816

Clique

The chess set from yesterday, from a different vantage point. Older posts about similar public sets in Villigen:

20070729 Oase
20070605 Waiting
20079604 The post office as seen from the hill

20090521

Stand off

One of the public chess sets in Bern. The cigarette stubs serve as an indication of scale.

20090521

Bern Heiliggeistkirche gutter spout detail

All these details on old buildings. I can spend long periods staring at them.

20090122

Bern Heiliggeistkirche cherub detail

A cherub on the Heiliggeistkirche in Bern.

20090122

Bern Heiliggeistkirche

The clock on the steeple of the Heiliggeistkirche (Holy Spirit church) as seen through the glass panels in the canopy.

20090122

Bern Bahnhofplatz glass canopy

I took this photo of the new Bern canopy (Baldachin) from the second level of the Hauptbahnhof (as seen in yesterday's photo), with a fiercely bright sun backlighting the scene. So again, not a very good photo. However, I'm quite enamoured of the construction and this is about the extent of what I could manage photographically. I hope you are not too bored as I document this for myself. A different photo is at my overflow blog (link here): please feel free to vote on your preferred one. I actually like the other one better, but I thought this would do better as a thumbnail.

combination of marchwell/BSR architekten/Atelier 5 projects chosen
2006 approval granted for the construction
January 2007 ground-breaking
400 construction workers involved
120 tonnes of glass in the canopy
2350m² glass surface
85m long, (11 to 41)m wide, and (3 to 10)m high framework
230 tonnes of steel
500 days for the entire project
2300m of replacement tram tracks
500 bicycle parking spots underground

Source: Ankommen in Bern, by Bernhard Giger and Hansueli Trachsel.
Additional photos and information at: bern.bahnhofplatz.ch (in German). Check out some of the movie clips, such as that of the glass installation (link here).

20090122

Bern Bahnhofplatz

From the left: the main University of Bern building, the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) and the newly made canopy over the tram stop.

20090122

On the train to Bern

Technically, on the train from Bern to Brugg. Looking south towards the Bernese Alps. The photo is nothing great, but it serves its documentary purpose. A few more photos from Bern will follow over the next few days.

20090122

Excursion: Bundesplatz in Bern

Enjoying the fountains at the Swiss parliament square (Bundesplatz) in Bern.

The building in the back is the parliament building and it has recently had all its renovation-related scaffolding removed. The square with the 26 fountains representing the 26 Swiss cantons is a big hit with children (and dogs) in the summer. In case you were wondering, the water is collected in an underground tank where it is cleaned before being recirculated (source).

To see a couple more photos that I took, visit my overflow blog.
Here are two old posts of mine about the parliament.
To see some pretty photos from the architects' website, go to Lee + Mundwiler.
To see movies of the fountains in action (Wasserspiel - water play), visit this Bern website (look in the red box on the right).

20080711

Asleep

I didn't plan it, but this seems to be turning into cat week.

20080309

Excursion: Bundeshaus in Bern

Bern is the capital of Switzerland, and lies upstream of Villigen on the river Aare. Quite far upstream. Here's one of my photos of the Bundeshaus (Parliament) I mentioned yesterday as having a lot of scaffolding, and in this case, cranes. I stood here to take this photo, the Bundeshaus is to the left. There's a lot to say about Bern, but I'll just send you to an active Bern blog by, surprise, yet another foreigner in CH! To be fair, since I look for blogs written in English, I'm trawling through a sample that must be heavily non-native-Swiss.

Back to the business at hand:

• 1959 was the year in which the 4 main political parties agreed to divide the Cabinet seats according to the public support for each party. This allocation is known as the Zauberformel = Magic Formula.
• 2 seats for the SP Social Democratic Party - left [had 26.3% of the votes then]
• 2 the number of seats held by FDP Free Democratic Party - center-right (radical) [23.7%]
• 2 the number of seats held by CVP Christian Democratic People's Party - center [23.3%]
• 1 the number of seats held by SVP Swiss People's Party - far right [had 11.6%]

Source: Der Bund kurz erklärt 2006

Sometime in the early 1990s, the far right SVP started to see a strong rise in voter support. See graphic from the Federal Statistics Office here. The distribution of seats in the Cabinet remained in place until the 1999 parliamentary elections when the far right SVP received 22.48% of the 2,005,449 valid votes cast. Note: the number of registered voters that year was 4,620,850 which means that 43% of the voters turned out. In 2003, 45% of the voting population cast their ballots. While keeping in mind that the Swiss have a multitude of elections or referenda thoughout the year so maybe there's some voter burn-out, it's interesting to compare that with the following countries at their last parliamentary or presidential elections:

• 85% in the first round of the 2007 presidential elections in France
• 83% in parliamentary elections 2006 in Italy
• 77% in the 2005 parliamentary elections in Germany
• 57% in the 2004 presidential elections in the US
  

Source: Silent majority always wins Swiss ballots at swissinfo.org.

In the minds of some, 2003 was the year the Magic Formula died as the continued popularity of the SVP among the voters called for a reorganization in the Cabinet:

• 23.3% of the votes for SP - 2 seats (no change)
• 17.9% of the votes for FDP - 2 (no change)
  
• 14.4% for the CVP - 1 (was 2)
  
• 26.6% for SVP - 2 seats (was 1)
  

Source: IFES Election Guide

The popularity of the SVP has caused much hand-wringing among the other parties, who have been unable to attract their voters back. Here's a swissinfo article about the shuffle after the 2003 elections. Tension between the SVP and the other groups is high and SVP is currently claiming that there's a conspiracy to drive them out of Parliament. The leader of the group, Christoph Blocher, is currently under investigation (swissinfo). More on that later.

20070715

Excursion: Blausee in the Bernese Oberland

The small Blausee (the English version of the website is a bit dodgy at the time I write this) is an interesting and quite beautiful place in the Bernese Oberland. This photo doesn't do justice to what it really looks like and I couldn't get the color of the water right, at least as far as it appears on my screen (Google map, notice the color of the lake in the hybrid, that's not right either).

There's a nature park incorporating the pond, with a restaurant, a hotel and an information center. We stopped there for lunch just as they were opening for the season earlier this year. It might interest some of you to know that the restaurant carries 14 Gault Millau points. I can't speak to that, but I can say that our dishes were very good. If you look near the bottom of the photo, you'll see fish in the water. They raise "organic" (Bio is the term used in Switzerland) trout for distribution all over the country.

Addendum: For a photo of the interior of the restaurant, go to the appendix to this blog that I'm going to try to maintain for the extras. Villigen overflow. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

20070325