Swiss firm Stadler gets CHF 1 billion order Ed. note: train photos to follow BERN, SWITZERLAND – The SBB/CFF rail company has ordered 29 new trains for the St Gotthard line, which currently has 9,000 passengers a day, with 15,000 expected by 2020 and more than 18,000 by 2025. Swiss firm Stadler was given the […]
Archives for May 2014
Recommending: Brussels is a good wine competition
I very much like this reflective post by British writer Louise Hurren on her recent experience as a judge at the Brussels wine competition, one of the major ones. It’s not just for wine professionals, but for anyone who wonders how some wines end being selected as winners. I like her attitude, the way she […]
Love a mountain hut? Tell Google
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Google Street View and the Club Alpin Suisse (CAS) are working together to film the routes up to a number of Swiss Alpine huts. If you have a favourite, you have until the end of May to tell them: the hut voted the most popular will be the first one filmed and […]
Swiss economy: jobless rate down, tourism and consumer mood stable
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss unemployment rate fell from 3.3 to 3.2 percent in April, compared to March, although it was marginally higher, 0.9 percent, than in April 2013. The jobless rate for Swiss workers was 2.3 percent and for foreigners 6.5 percent in March, the most recent month for calculations. The federal government’s regular […]
Mondial du Merlot in red?
I was sitting in a peaceful room a couple weeks ago, old paintings on the walls, high ceilings, a view of the Alps outside. I was blind tasting Merlot wine as one of the judges at the Mondial des Merlots. But what, if an Oxford professor suggests, we had opera playing in the background, or […]