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Garik Israelian is an astrophysicist and a musician. Brian May is a musician and an astrophysicist. Together, the two friends created the Starmusexteal link Festival, five days during which spi...

Once an ordinary mountain village, an Egyptian billionaire’s vision to construct Switzerland’s largest tourist resort changed the landscape of the central Swiss town of Andermatt and the l...

Jalal did not want to have his identity disclosed out of security conces for relatives who arestill in Syria. (swissinfo.ch) Jalal last saw his youngest son was when the boy was a baby. Now H...

Around 170 workers are being drafted in to the central Swiss village of Göschenen to build the new Gotthard road tuel, but there's controversy over where they should stay. (SRF/swissinfo.ch)The Swiss Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) wants to build a container village to house them, but many locals would prefer to see old hotels renovated, thus breathing new lifeinto thevillage in canton Uri that has seen better days.Just under 450 people live here,compared to 1,300, 50 years ago.In 2016, votersbacked theplan to build the secondroad tuel through the central Swiss Alps, one of Europe’s main north-south links for cars, buses and trucks. The tuel will endinAirolo in the southe Swiss canton of Ticino...

Claude Nobs plays harmonica on stage with Solomon Burke at the 39th Montreux Jazz Festival in July 2005 (Keystone) It is five years ago today that Claude Nobs, founder of Switzerland’s famous Montreux Jazz Festival, died suddenly at age 76. In this 2013 article, swissinfo.ch reported on his death, his life and the legacy of the man who, in the words of the current Swiss President Alain Berset "helped Switzerland discover jazz". Claude Nobs Founder of Montreux Jazz Festival dies Claude Nobs, the founder and director of the Montreux Jazz Festival, has died. He was 76. Nobs died on Thursday after sustaining injuries from a ... . Neuer Inhalt Horizontal Line subscription...

Gondo used to be frequented by gold miners and cross-border smugglers, as immortalised by thestatue in the foreground. (Keystone) A new kind of mine is providing hope for a Swiss mountain village that has seen its share of misfortune over the years. Gondo, with 40 inhabitants, is no longer mining for gold, but for cryptocurrencies. On the face of it, Gondo - an isolated community on the Swiss-Italian border - is hardly the most likely location for such a cutting-edge, disruptive and divisive technology. It has nevertheless been chosen as the venue for a cryptocurrency mine by start-up Alpine Mining. Bitcoin’s inexorable rise in value has attracted more and more people worldwide to the ...

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Embed code Thomas Amsler, who now lives in the US,first visited Corippo while hiking with his parents in the region in the 1950s. He was so enchanted that he and three architect colleagues produced a book about it in 1959. They were astounded at the amount of stone used, as he recently told swissinfo.chexteal link during a visit to Be. Hisbest known creation, perhaps, is the high control tower at Logan airportexteal link in Boston.Amsler was interested in Corippo partly due to it being the smallest municipality in Switzerland with just 13permanent residents. To prevent the v...

The River Uerke in its narrow bed(Stephanie Hess) A thin red line marks the extent of the damage. Painted on the rough exterior wall of the small village shop, it shows how high the waters of the nearby River Uerke rose in the summer of 2017: 1.87 metres over the normal level.In July, the river rose so high that the village suffered the biggest flood in its history.SilenceIn the village shop, a machine to dry out the freshly poured concrete floor is humming away. There are no groceries here anymore, but a few steps further they are on offer in a white construction container. It’s an interim solution.The woman who runs the shop wi...

The history of mechanical tower clocks goes back to the 14th century. One of the first Swiss movements was assembled in Lucee in 1385 by Heinrich Halder, a watchmaker from Basel. In 1408, the same clock was moved to the Musegg clock tower, allowin...

Beginers are getting thechance to discover traditional Swiss sports this week at the Unspuen festival in the Alpine resort of Interlaken. The week is dedicated to introducing folklore activities such as stone throwing, houssen (which looks like a mixture of golf and baseball), schwingen (Swiss wrestling), flag throwing and shooting. About a thousand school children signed up for various spo...

This content was published on August 22, 2017 5:00 PMAug 22, 2017 - 17:00The ten-day Badenfahrt festival happens just once every ten years – transforming the spa town of Baden into a party animal’s playground. The theme for 2017 is “opposites” and the festival features various purpose-built structures to highlight that concept. Food, drink, music and a fun fair draw a million people to Baden, which has a population of 19,000. Located along the River Limmat, Baden is a 15-minute train ride from Zurich. Established in 1923, the Badenfahrt festivalexteal link is an example of intangible cultura...

The classic Swiss Unspuen Festival retus after a gap of 12 years (Keystone) Here's a selection of the stories we will be bringing you in the upcoming week. (Patrick Lo Giudice/Wikipedia) Monday It’s been more than 200 years since Europe’s “last witch”, Aa Göldi, was executed in Switzerland. She was officially exonerated in 2008 and her name lives on with a new museum in canton Glarus and a musical to remember the injustice she endured. (Keystone) Tuesday-Friday On September 24, Swiss voters will decide on another batch of initiatives, ranging from food security, reform...

This content was published on August 12, 2017 11:00 AMAug 12, 2017 - 11:00The 70th Locao Film Festival is coming to a close. For ten days, the compact city in Italian-speaking Switzerland has been transformed into a place of pilgrimage for film-lovers, actors and directors. Here are some of the hi...

(Keystone) Here's a selection of the stories we will be bringing you in the upcoming week. (Atelier Bassi) Monday Availability, quality and price makeIndian hair the ideal choice for wig makers worldwide, including one based in Switzerland. But changes in grooming habits among Indian w...

Jun 20, 2017 - 16:51Ayma, a Syrian refugee, deftly flips his opponent into the sawdust. But the opponent just manages to tu and land on his stomach rather than his back, which would have meant losing. Urged on by the audience, Ayma tries to tu him over but can’t. Both begin to laugh. They st...

Flying taxi: the electric powered vertical take-off aircraft called 'Volocopter', created by a German start-up, has been given the go-ahead to begin trials fromnext year (Keystone) Tiny all-electric planes that can take off and land vertically - this sci-fi future is not that far away, and So...

Dec 24, 2016 - 11:00The city of Geneva is being shown off in a new contemporary light thanks to original art installations and projections alongside the traditional Christmas decorations.A Colombian jaguar and snake, flying saucers and a lighthouse are just a few of the illuminated themes which are drawing ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from locals and visitors to the city. The third edition of the Geneva Lux light art festival, which runs until the end of January, features 17 light installations by Swiss and inteational artists dotted across the centralGeneva area on both sides of the lake. The contemporary set pieces ado the city’s walls, rooftops, trees and bridges. Suspended in mid-air they illuminat...

Gruyère may be renowned for its cheese, but its double cream is also highly prized. It was presented in all its variations at the region's first festival dedicated to the dairy product. Rain didn’t deter the many foreign and local tourists who gathered at the event in the town of Gruyères. Equipped with umbrellas, they patiently waited in long queues in front of each stand to sample the sweet and savoury versions of double cream. On offer: the equivalent of 300 metres (984 feet) worth of meringues, 40 litres of double cream, 1,000 strawberries and 1,000 raspberries. Double cream is a local flagship product, and contains at least 45% fat. It is in fact the fat from milk that artisan dairies r...

The idyllic communes Arth-Goldau in canton Schwyz (RDB) Nestled between deep blue Lake Zug, majestic Mount Rigi and the greenery of farmland and forests, the villages of Goldau, Oberarth and Arth in canton Schwyz look typically Swiss. Yet their citizens have a hybrid form of democracy that is almost unique within Switzerland. Rather than voting with a show of hands, the archetype of democracy and method used in many of the nation’s over 2,350 municipalities, the people here vote by secret ballot. This is the case in nearly all 30 municipalities in canton Schwyz. While larger municipalities usually have a parliament, most small and medium-sized ones hold public meetings twice a year so th...