by Diccon Bewes
In December 2016 the new Gotthard Base Tunnel, flatter and deeper than the original, is scheduled to open. At 57.1km, it will be world’s longest rail tunnel. Switzerland no longer needs Britain for its railways, except for providing customers, but there is one lasting link to the past that has yet to be broken. Swiss trains run on the left, just as British ones do, whereas on Swiss roads you have to drive on the right. I only hope the train drivers don’t get confused when they switch to a car.
None of that was important to the now-Cookless group. They were more than content to enjoy a train ride after all that walking, even if the line only ran for 18 miles, ending at Sion, although it was planned to go further. As Miss Jemima said, it was a line “that is to be, when completed, the wonder of Northern Italy and the triumph of modern engineering”. That was true enough once the tunnel under the Simplon Pass to Italy opened in 1906. At almost 20km long, it was for many years the longest rail tunnel in the world, a record the Swiss will soon reclaim under the Gotthard.
In the mid-1860s Switzerland only had 650km of railways compared to 5000km today
At this point in its lengthy journey towards the Mediterranean, the River Rhone meanders through a broad valley running east to west and framed on either side by steep, stark mountains. The Swiss part of the Rhone is 264km long, making it Switzerland’s third-longest river after the Rhine and the Aare. Upstream, to the east, the river has not long stopped being a fast-flowing torrent; a few miles downstream, its muddy waters disperse into the blue expanse of Lake Geneva, only to re-emerge in Geneva itself. To the north lie the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, to the south are the 4000m summits that line the border with Italy. In effect, the Rhone is one long cleft in an endless parade of mountains, and one giant funnel for all the water coming down.
That funnel sometimes fills to overflowing. Disastrous floods once used to devastate the Rhone valley, twice almost washing Martigny away in 1595 and 1818, leaving the Swiss no choice but to try to control the river. While two attempts at correcting its course and flow have already been made, they haven’t been enough. More floods in October 2000 prompted the approval of a third 30-year programme, at a cost of 1.6 billion francs. That’s expensive but essential, not only to protect the population but to make more land usable and productive.
This is how the valley around Martigny was described before the first correction, which started in 1863:
a flat swamp, rendered desolate and unwholesome by the overflowings of the Rhone and its tributaries, which, not being carried off by a sufficient declivity in their beds, stagnate, and exhale an injurious malaria under the rays of a burning sun, and generate gnats not much inferior to mosquitoes.
Things have improved somewhat since then and there’s no sign of much swampiness in the fields and farms. Valais, Switzerland’s third-largest canton, is the nation’s fruit basket, with orchards full of apples and pears but also cherries, plums, quince and, most famously, apricots. When they come into season, supermarkets across the country are piled high with the plump little furry fruit from Valais, always more expensive than imported ones and always more popular. They even achieve immortality in the form of Abricotine liqueur, an AOC-protected apricot brandy (minimum 40 per cent proof) that is only made here. Valais also produces over a third of all Swiss wine, more than any other canton. All in all, it’s quite a fruity place to be, and it makes for rather a pleasant train ride past gravity-defying vineyards on the south-facing slopes and fruit trees marshalled in rows along the valley floor.
In the centre of it all are the twin peaks of Sion, the cantonal capital and the sunniest town in Switzerland (though there are a few other claimants to that title). Sion is one of those towns that should really only exist in fairytales or fantasy films. Bang in the middle of a valley that is otherwise as flat as the proverbial pancake stand two mini-mountains right beside the river. They can be seen from miles away because, although much smaller than nearby peaks, these two pointy hills are stranded almost midstream, surrounded by the flood plain of the Rhone. One is slightly higher but both are crowned with fortifications, and together they overshadow the town clustered around the base. In the fading light they even start to seem faintly menacing and more than a little spooky the closer we get. I half expect to hear of a dragon living under one hill or for the castles to be inhabited by warring brothers, who periodically lob missiles and fireballs across the gap.
Sion’s twin peaks crowned with castles dominate the flat Rhone valley
Let’s hope the hotels are more welcoming, although Miss Jemima described hers (Lion d’Or) as “a grimmish, granite, prison-looking building”, and Murray notes that at the Hotel Poste, “landlord very civil and attentive; head-waiter much the contrary”.
As it turns out, neither hotel exists any more, so we end up at the modern Hotel Elite. It’s not the town’s most beautiful building by any stretch, but it’s not a prison, and the staff are far friendlier than most Swiss hotel workers (or jailers). That seems true of Sion itself. On this warm Friday evening the town centre is buzzing and pavement cafés are packed, everyone indulging in some thank-goodness-it’s-the-weekend merry-making. It’s a splendid welcome back to Switzerland, so we join the crowds for a while, but certainly don’t have the stamina of our predecessors: even after their 25-mile hike, they still had the energy for a “short stroll” at 10pm to see the castles. Our stroll through the old town can wait until the morning.
We have a small moment of celebration the following day: breakfast is finally included in the room price. Not only that, but it’s not a bad spread. Swiss hotel breakfasts are generally a buffet offering bread, croissants, cereals, yoghurt, cold meats, cheese and boiled eggs. Cooked food – sausages, scrambled eggs and what the Swiss think of as bacon – rarely makes an appearance except in posher places. But Birchermüesli, essentially cold porridge with yoghurt, fruit and nuts (far nicer than it sounds), is usually offered.
Although the rest of the world dismisses muesli as something for birds and hippies, in Switzerland it’s a popular dish at any time of day (partly because the Swiss know how to make it properly). Sadly, whoever made ours today needs to go to muesli school, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s closer to the original recipe from Dr Bircher-Benner of Aarau. Back in 1900, he created a healthy meal for his patients by mixing oats with water, condensed milk, lemon juice and grated apple, so the result was sweet yet watery at the same time. Muesli is one of the few Swiss German words to have crept into English, although Miss Jemima wouldn’t have had a clue what it meant: she was here 37 years before the dish was invented.
No breakfast buffet in Valais would be complete without the local sourdough rye bread. Cunningly disguised as a rock, the hard dark-brown round could probably kill someone from 30 paces if thrown the right way. It carries the AOC seal of approval, but did not get one from Miss Jemima:
“the bread in this district was of a character highly calculated to embitter a dyspeptic, and any who hold to the anxious … ‘Waste not, want not’ would see a prospective hungry pauper in every tourist as he excavates a four inch cube of bread from an unbeatable thick wall of crust. Query – are the dentists in league with the bakers?”
Miss Jemima’s Swiss Journal is full of her pen-and-ink illustrations
With a population of 30,000 Sion isn’t huge, but it’s been around for quite some time. It claims to be Switzerland’s oldest town (7000 years and counting) and at its heart is a compact warren of cobbled streets and handsome stone buildings radiating out from the cathedral. The chunky square belfry would dominate any other town, but in Sion it doesn’t stand a chance against the two hill-top castles, one or other of which seems to pop up at the end of every street and around every corner.
The one closer to town, Château de Valère, is actually an eleventh-century church, albeit a very robust, fortified one surrounded by curtain walls. It is suitably medieval inside – that is, minimalist with delicate faded murals – and is home to the world’s oldest playable organ
(dating from 1431). On the opposite, higher hill, Château de Tourbillon is most definitely a castle, though it was partially ruined by a disastrous fire in 1788 that destroyed most of Sion. The steep climb up to either summit is rewarded with extensive views of the whole valley.
With the long, wide exception of the Rhone valley, most of Valais is mountainous, with many peaks breaking the 4000m mark, including the Matterhorn and Switzerland’s highest point, Dufourspitze. Its rugged landscape is also home to the Aletsch Glacier, Europe’s longest, and this challenging topography meant that for centuries the canton was isolated from the rest of Switzerland, accessible only via the Rhone or one of the high passes. So in winter many parts were largely cut off from the outside world, and even in summer some of the more remote valleys and villages could only be reached by mule. It is that very remoteness and the unspoilt scenery that have made Valais so attractive. Once it was mountaineers who came to conquer its peaks; now skiers, hikers, bathers, bird- and trainspotters also arrive, together with millionaires.
It wasn’t always like that. Murray is less than complimentary about the canton of Valais, calling it “One of the most miserable and melancholy districts in northern Europe”, a description that is hard to relate to when looking out of a train window at vineyards basking in the sun. But the book continues in the same vein:
At present, with the exception of the hotels, nothing appears prosperous in the Valais itself or in the numerous lateral valleys, and the race of man seems to have deteriorated.
In its semi-isolated state, Valais was indeed a poor rural corner of the country, where the people still scraped a living off the land. In the 1880s, 76 per cent of the local population were still farmers, almost twice the national average, and Valais was bottom of the cantonal school rankings. The terrible transport links (the train did not reach Zermatt until 1891) meant that the crops were grown not for selling but for survival. Throw in periodic floods, fires and failed harvests, and it’s no surprise to learn that even the rest of the country looked down on Valais, or the “Kashmir of Europe”, as one Swiss magazine called it in 1800. However, it wasn’t only the poverty that Victorian visitors found alarming, it was the prevalence of goitres and cretinism, two medical afflictions that were once very common in this part of Switzerland.
A goitre is a swelling of the thyroid gland, which in some cases takes the form of a huge mass of tissue that all but obscures the person’s neck. Cretinism results from a severe deficiency of thyroid hormones during pregnancy, and manifests itself from birth through stunted mental and physical growth. The sufferer can be severely handicapped, or as Murray put it, “The cretin is an idiot – a melancholy spectacle – a creature who may almost be said to rank a step below a human being.”
The book devotes two pages to the ailments, detailing the latest scientific knowledge. In the mid-nineteenth century both conditions were thought to be caused by something in the water, genetic defects from inbreeding, low-lying fog, carrying heavy weights on the head, or a mixture of every sin known to man. “Superstition, ignorance, poverty and the dirty habits of the people, combined with the unhealthiness of a close low valley, are said to be the causes of this visible wretchedness” is how Miss Jemima put it.
However, it is now known that it was the absence of iodine in the soil, and therefore in the food, that was the root cause, and Valais was badly affected, not least because the local people could not afford to import food. A Napoleonic census in 1800 found 4000 cretins in the canton (out of a population of 70,000), with “scarcely a woman free from [goitre], and it is said that those who have no swelling are laughed at and called goose-necked”. Miss Jemima contrasts the “luxuriant” vegetation and “exquisite” views with the “many poor miserable cretins and goitres”.
Once it was realised that iodine, or a lack thereof, was the problem, it was a matter of finding the most effective way of administering it. In the end it was the Swiss themselves who instituted the simplest of ideas: adding iodine to salt. The village of Grachen, near Zermatt, was the site of the first mass trial in 1918, partly because it was so isolated and also because most of the children had goitres. The idea worked, and in 1922 the federal government recommended the iodisation of Swiss salt. This being Switzerland, where each canton is responsible for its own affairs, the take-up was initially patchy. Appenzell Ausserrhoden was the first canton to introduce iodised salt, but it did eventually happen nationwide. Today over 90 per cent of Swiss table salt, and around three-quarters of industrial cooking salt, is iodised, although legally non-iodised salt must still be available. Ironically, Valais has one of Switzerland’s largest salt mines at Bex (pronounced with a typically silent French x, just like Chamonix). The solution was on its doorstep the whole time.
Valais today is a different world, home to some of the ritziest ski resorts, such as Verbier and Saas-Fee, and no longer the poor man of Switzerland. Its transformation came about thanks to trains and tourists, which travelled hand in hand. Visitors had always found their way into the valleys of Valais, mostly mad Englishmen climbing the mountains, but the advent of the railway made it less of an adventure to see the Matterhorn. The train lines opened up both the countryside and the minds of the locals, who were renowned for their mistrust of strangers. One book on the history of Valais quotes a man from Solothurn (in northern Switzerland) who visited in 1830, only for an old lady to cross herself and run away at the mere sight of him.
Tourism meant money coming in and hotels going up. Zermatt once had a single hotel with three beds; by 1881, there were 490 beds (not all in one hotel) and in 1914 there were 2235. On the eve of the First World War, the 321 hotels in Valais employed over 5000 people. Living off the land(scape) had taken on a whole new meaning. However, the railways also brought industry in their wake, as cement, paper and hat factories could at last be built in the Rhone valley, whereas before it had been too distant and thus not economically viable to do so. The industrial revolution arrived in Valais about half a century late, but it made up for lost time: the cantonal total of only 9 factories (with 374 workers) in 1884 rose to 80 (with 2700 workers) in 1910. All those apricots and bottles of wine could finally reach a national market.
From Sion eastwards to Leuk is only a matter of a few miles, and a few minutes in the train, but it passes over a significant boundary: the watershed between French and German. Looking at a map, you might think it logical if, for example, French was spoken on the south bank of the Rhone and German on the north. But this imaginary line runs north–south, dividing the canton between the French-speaking Lower Valais to the west and the German-speaking Upper Valais to the east. And it is immediate: Miège and Venthône couldn’t look more French as names and yet they are almost next door to Salgesch and Pfyn.
This division is the last section of what is known as the Röstigraben, the invisible linguistic barrier that cuts across Switzerland. Its name (literally “fried-potato trench”) refers to the fact that the German-speaking Swiss eat Rösti at any time of day or night, while the French speakers stick to fondue. Of course that’s a huge oversimplification – both sides eat both dishes – but the term has become Swiss shorthand for the separation of the French-speaking part (20.4 per cent of the population) from the German (63.7 per cent). Switzerland is in fact quadrilingual, with Italian (6.5 per cent) and Romansh (0.5 per cent) the other two national languages, but it is the French–German divide that figures most strongly in the national psyche. It isn’t merely linguistic but political and cultural as well; both sides see the other as something different, as if they aren’t really members of the same clan. In essence, though, both sides are Swiss.
In bilingual Valais, the different languages are immediately apparent in the place names. As is often the case in Switzerland, many places have two names, so the canton itself is Wallis in German, while the French Sion, Loèche and Cervin are the German Sitten, Leuk and Matterhorn respectively. It doesn’t matter that Sion is 82 per cent French speaking and Leuk 92 per cent German speaking, they b
oth have two names. While this could have been confusing for visitors, English tourists pragmatically used whatever they heard in the place itself. So Miss Jemima only ever refers to Sion and Leuk, although the spelling of such foreign names often caused problems, as we have seen with Montenvers/Montanvert and Chamonix/Chamouni. Naturally it’s not always that simple, so Valais is the usual “English” name for the canton, rather than Wallis, while it’s Lucerne in English as in French, not Luzern. Things do change, nevertheless: using French names for German-speaking areas is a tad old-fashioned, almost on a par with still talking of Ceylon or Peking. So Bâle, Argovia and Grisons have long since given way in English to Basel, Aargau and Graubünden.
On the train it’s usually easy to tell when you’ve crossed the border, and not only because the station names change. The bilingual announcements reverse their order: Prochain arrêt before Nächster Halt in the French-speaking part and vice versa once over the Röstigraben. On long-distance trains, English is often thrown in as well, while trains heading towards Italy obviously include Italian. Travellers can pick whichever suits them from this multilingual buffet. At least the German bits are in High German, the official formal language, rather than one of the many Swiss German dialects. In Valais that would flummox even some Swiss visitors, as the canton is renowned for its strong accent and Walliserdeutsch dialect, where, for example, the Rhone becomes the Rotten.
Once off the train – reaching the spas of Leukerbad requires an uphill bus journey – bilingualism gets left behind. No doubt the driver speaks French, but he greets everyone with a Swiss German Grüezi miteinand as he boards the bus and we (or at least the Swiss on board) respond with the same. It’s all very polite.