Mention skiing in late March and April and it is likely to draw blank expressions, or comments like: “It’s too late, there will be no snow”. While this is true for some resorts not all ski domains were created equal. A recent study shows that in 2015, snow came to the Swiss Alps 12 days […]
The Swiss franc hits its lowest since December
24 Heures. On Monday the franc went as low as 1.0825 to the euro, the lowest since early December last year. According to some experts, the weaker franc can be partly explained by the market activities of the Swiss National Bank (SNB). The cantonal bank of Thurgau said that the SNB appeared to be targeting […]
Swiss Post to start delivering with drones this summer
20 Minutes. Swiss post has said it will deliver the first packages by air this summer. The first deliveries will be made between two medical laboratories on the southern side of the Alps. Test flights were conducted in the canton of Bern last year. Now Swiss Post is ready to make commercial deliveries starting in […]
German plan to charge only foreigners for their roads judged discriminatory
20 Minutes. The German plan to charge foreign residents to use their motorways was judged discriminatory by EU officials because the charges would only be imposed on foreigners. This project “still contains elements that are contrary to european rights and violate fundamental principals of treaties, in particular discrimination based on nationality” voiced the European Parliament, which […]
Report shows risks of “low cost” terrorism in Switzerland
Tribune de Genève. The Swiss government recently published its third report on how to combat attacks by jihadists. The report, named TETRA, opens with a description of the terrorist attack in Berlin where a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market killing 12 people. It then set outs the concerns experts have about the emergence […]
Meet a man fascinated by people, culture, customs and habits: the director of Geneva’s MEG museum
Renu Chahil-Graf takes a Walk in the Park with Boris Wastiau, Director of the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (MEG) Only someone courageous and tough enough would agree to take a walk in a park in the coldest winter Geneva has had for years. Mid-January, minus 3 to minus 7 degrees celsius for most of the […]
Swiss road victims down overall but higher for cyclists
20 Minutes. In 2016, the number dying on Swiss roads dropped 15% compared with 2015. 216 people died, 37 less than the year before (-15%). While there were fewer car, motorcycle and pedestrian accident victims, the number of seriously injured cyclists climbed. Since records began in 1940, only 1945, when 211 died, has seen fewer […]
Vaud discusses extending winter school holiday to 2 weeks
Le Matin. In Switzerland, this ski season has been disappointing, particularly if you have school aged children. During the Vaud school holiday this season, the fourth week of February, there was limited snow. Even at high resorts like Verbier, snow conditions were fairly average across the week. The week before there was good snow. But then […]
Swiss women third latest to have first child
Le Matin. In 2015, the average age Swiss mothers had their first child was unchanged from 2014, according to recent Eurostat data. At a european level, only Italians and Spaniards left motherhood later than Swiss. In 2015, the average age of Swiss first-time mums was 30.6 years, slightly younger than Spanish first-time mothers (30.7). In Italy […]
Start-up ski airline announces bigger plane for flights to Sion
The new airline PowdAir, which plans to base itself at Sion airport in the canton of Valais in Switzerland and start flying in December 2017, recently announced plans to fly an Airbus A 319 instead of the smaller Fokker 100. According to Swiss broadcaster RTS, the new airline plans to use a single aircraft to […]
