In mid September Blair and I went to Bellinzona with Brody. It was supposed to be a school trip but no students signed up for the half-hour drive to this historic town. We strolled through the streets as Brody looked for a nice gift for his wife Joanna. We climbed up the castle tower and looked up to the two castles situated above us up the east side of the valley. The castles were used for protection against Swiss confederate armies from the North. In the early 1500s, this castle was captured by the invaders from the North and the Ticino became part of the Swiss confederation. 500 years later, this Italian speaking region remains the southernmost canton of Switzerland. About 7.6 percent of the Swiss population speaks Italian. The Ticino is very unlike the rest of Switzerland due to its Italian heritage. Besides the language, one encounters a different type of architecture. The cozy brown wooden hut with the red or green shutters and steep roofs are not found in the Ticino. Ticino architecture contains colors that are more Mediterranean with pinks and yellows and oranges. The weather is a lot milder as well. Last year Lugano did not get any snow. Fall comes a lot later which allows for a lot more outdoor activity well into November. Even the landscape is different. One does not find the deciduous tree life to be nearly as prevalent in southern Switzerland. Passing north underneath the Gottard Pass and then coming into the Swiss German canton of Uri is like coming into another country except that you do not need to bring your passport.
Bellinzona is the capital of the Ticino canton. There are 26 Swiss cantons and they are democratically run. Each little village that one comes across has quite a bit of autonomy. I had to laugh when I heard one of the Republican presidential candidates for the American presidency say in regards to a bilingual society that democracy cannot work if there is more than one working language. Well Switzerland has four (German, French, Italian, Romanche) and they make it work pretty well. The Swiss are known for their efficiency. Sometimes the quiet and rigid character of the Swiss can be a bit too much; like the 10 o’clock quiet hours in Montagnola or the hoses that clean off the tires of trucks before they leave a construction site. (Wouldn’t want to get the road dirty, now would we?) But it sure is nice to be able to rely on trains that are on time and a tunnel system that might be second to none in the world.
But I digress…
Bellinzona is a very nice town. It comes across as a bit quainter and a little less touristy than Lugano. (There seems to be more Swiss visitors in Bellinzona than German or Italian visitors.) We had lunch in the plaza and Blair and I listened as Brody went on about stories of him and his wife Joanna and of his previous life before Joanna which consisted of an eight year old son who he sees very little of these days. Brody is tall and skinny but not lanky because he is strong. Brody is a no bull, happy-go-lucky, sometimes in your face type of guy who will talk to most anyone who will listen. He tells it how he sees it without any editing and he is easy to trust because of this quality. He is in his mid thirties and so far loves his new life in Switzerland.
Everywhere one goes in Europe it seems there are remnants of the past and I imagined the sounds of a horse drawn buggy clip clopping its way down these streets centuries before in the very place we were eating. The brightly colored plaza caught my attention as we nibbled at the last of our lunch and talked away the early afternoon. The shadows blanketed the surrounding Ticino architecture in the early autumn sunshine and cast a late afternoon darkness over a significant section of the otherwise sunlit cobblestone streets.
The next day Blair and I went to Lago Maggiore with John Erwin. John is another one of my favorites here at TASIS. His former job carried him to Uzbekistan where he worked for the American government in the secret service. He speaks Russian and also spent three years in Prague. He wears suspenders to school every day which have given him his own distinct identity around campus. When he is on his free time, life is full of fun. He laughs at his own jokes and also at most anything else. Blair and I both have spent many hours alone separately in his company. He likes to play around with people and get them riled up. But it is all in good fun. John also has a serious side too. But our day to Lago Maggiore was full of laughs. We spent very little time in Locarno, only enough to jump out of the car and get some gelato and then walk back to the vehicle to make sure we hadn’t gotten a parking ticket. We went on to Ascona where we were tempted to join some young kids in some fun on a trampoline. They were strapped into bungee chords and jumping up and down. But we would have been the oldest people on the trampoline by about 20 years and we decided to skip it, if only to avoid the strange looks we would have gotten from the on looking parents surrounding us. So Ascona was also a short visit. Just enough time to look at a few watches that cost a few thousand francs (one franc = 85 American cents). I sat in the front seat as Blair drove the car that the school provided her for her commute to school every day. John was in the back. We climbed up from the valley and looked down to the right at the views before they vanished behind a grove of trees and then we were on our way back to campus to get ready for another week of teaching.
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