Review

‘The great affection which is penned so effectively into this walking guide to one mountain district … reveals the work of a specialist.’ (Van Greaves, High) ‘Another Cicerone Press walking guide from the tried and trusted Kev Reynolds stable. The format is familiar, user friendly and crammed with useful and essential information about the geography, places to stay, how to get there and of course 120 route descriptions in the eleven areas that make up the Valais region of Switzerland. … Mouth watering colour photos illustrate the descriptions.’ (Richard Ayres, The Leader)

Product Description

The Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, Zinarothorn, Ober Gabelhorn, Dent Blanche, Weisshorn, Bietschhorn, Grand Combin – these are some of the most dramatic mountains in Europe. Here, they form a backdrop to a series of routes that should answer the dreams of any keen mountain walker. Best known, perhaps, for the resorts of Zermatt and Saas Fee, the Valais district of Switzerland is also the location of the Lotschental and Turtmanntal, the Vals d’Anniviers, Herens, Bagnes and Ferret – valleys in which there are numerous alp hamlets nestling among the pastures. There are also dozens of small lakes, the longest glacier in the Alps, pristine snowfields, meadows full of flowers, marmots that will eat out of your hand, and no shortage of accommodation, ranging from low-cost dormitories and campsites to the grandest of hotels. In this, the third edition of his popular guide, Kev Reynolds has selected and described 120 routes that represent the very best of this magical region. Rewritten and with a new design, fresh maps and colour photos throughout, “Walking in the Valais” is your passport to some memorable walking holidays in this Alpine wonderland.

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Review

‘An interesting long circular walk for those who have done the Tour of Mont Blanc and want to find a route that is less crowded. There are bad-weather alternatives, and shortside walks. As always with Kev Reynolds, the introduction is comprehensive. This route (or part of it) could, I think, be used for an Alpine debut.’ Irish Mountain Log Magazine, Summer 2006

Product Description

Making a horsehoe loop among some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in all the Swiss Alps, the brand new “Tour of the Jungfrau Region” is destined to become one of the classic walks of Europe. In a journey of 9-10 days the walker visits pastures, ridges, summits and passes, skirts exquisite mountain lakes, and gazes on waterfalls, gorges and glaciers – all in the shadow of such iconic peaks as Wetterhorn, Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. Accommodation is both plentiful and atmospheric, and the route has lots of bad-weather alternatives. Despite the nearby presence of popular resorts like Grindelwald, Wengen, Lauterbrunnen and Murren, “The Tour of the Jungfrau Region” explores some suprisingly remote landscapes, including part of a World Natural Heritage site.

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From Library Journal

This welcome addition to the well-respected “Travel Survival Kit” series offers more up-to-date, practical information for arrange-it-yourself travelers than any other guidebook presently available. The work is broken into chapters covering Switzerland’s 12 tourist regions and Liechtenstein. In Joe Friday-style factual prose, Honan adequately covers places to stay and eat, but the value of his guide lies in its coverage of Swiss attractions, including their hours of operation, costs, and how to get there. The 52 maps should prove invaluable in planning itineraries and orienting oneself on arrival. This volume offers a short, factual introduction to the country, an amazing three pages on health concerns, sidebars giving interesting historical details, and a unique “dangers and annoyances” section for major cities. Highly recommended for all travel collections.
William R. Smith, Johns Hopkins Univ. Lib., Baltimore, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Switzerland offers beautiful countryside – lakes with endless vistas of mountains and forests are found throughout the country. The cities and towns, such as Bern, Geneva, Zurich, St Gallen and Lucerne, offer ample diversions. For outdoor enthusiasts, the resorts offer a choice of sports away from the snow-fields. This guide shows how to avoid the crowds and the costs while not missing out on the best Switzerland has to offer.

Product Description

Vegetable gardens for rent by the square meter. Daredevil sledding in the shadow of the Matterhorn. A plot of woods named “Amerika.” A secret passage in a centuries-old barn. These are some of the images Mary Ann Miller uncovers in this fresh collection of travel writing. Fluent in German and armed with a brand new B.A. degree in International Studies and English Literature, Miller embarks on a quest to discover Switzerland and share her adventures through a weekly newspaper column. Once she arrives in the “Confederatio Helvetica” she faces indecipherable local dialects and Bern’s inexplicable obsession with bears. Her camera lens zooms from the precision-stacked woodpiles lining mountain chalets to graffiti sprayed on train station walls. She juxtaposes visits to the hideouts and prison chambers of the ancestors of the Amish and Mennonites with descriptions of an annual festival dedicated to consuming 45 tons of onions. Drinking straight from the city fountains of Bern, Miller weaves a picture of Switzerland more vibrant than simple postcard snapshots.

About the Author

After graduating from Denison University, Mary Ann Miller received a Fulbright Fellowship to spend an academic year researching the historical context of early Swiss Anabaptism in Bern. “CH is for Chocolate” is a collection of the columns she wrote for the delightfully unique U.S. newspaper, “The Budget.” She currently works as an English teacher in Amman, Jordan, with her husband.

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INTRODUCTION

“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Orson Welles as Harry Lime, in The Third Man (1949)

Never has one throwaway movie line done so much to damage the reputation of a whole country. Even now, despite being one of the most visited countries in Europe, Switzerland remains one of the least understood. The facts are that until national reconciliation in 1848, Switzerland was the most consistently turbulent, war-torn area of Europe (so much for brotherly love), and yet, both before and after it found stability, it brought forth such literary and artistic pioneers as Hans Holbein, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paul Klee, Hermann Hesse and Alberto Giacometti (so much for the cuckoo clock ? a Bavarian invention, anyway).

But two centuries of tourism have left their mark: faced by an ever-increasing onslaught of visitors, these days the Swiss are content to abide by a quaint stereotype of Switzerland that?s easily packaged and sold ? the familiar Alpine idyll of cheese and chocolate, Heidi and the Matterhorn ? while keeping the best bits for themselves. Come for a “Lakes and Mountains” package, or a week of skiing, or a short city-break, and you?ll get all the pristine beauty, genteel calm and well-oiled efficiency of the Switzerland that the locals deem suitable for public consumption. The other Switzerland ? the one the Swiss inhabit ? needs time and patience to winkle out of its shell, but can be an infinitely more rewarding place to explore.

Within this rugged environment, community spirit is perhaps stronger than anywhere else in Europe. Since the country is not an ethnic, linguistic or religious unity, it has survived ? so the Swiss are fond of saying ? simply through the will of its people to resolve their differences. Today, a unique style of “bottom-up” democracy ensures real power still rests with the people, who seem to vote almost monthly on a series of referenda affecting all aspects of life from local recycling projects to national economic policy. The constitution devolves power upwards from the people to municipal governments and up again to the regions (known as cantons), only as a last resort granting certain powers to the federal government.

This kind of decentralized structure means that the cantons ? which are, in essence, tiny self-governing republics who have volunteered to join together ? have mostly held onto their own, unique flavours. Although Swiss people value their shared Swissness above all, they also cherish their own home-town identity and their differences from their neighbours.

Tensions exist between the four language communities, as they do between Catholic and Protestant, or between urban and rural areas, while regional characteristics remain sharply defined and diverse. Local pride is fuelled by a range of traditional folkloric customs, most of which stem from pagan or medieval Christian festivals. Most prominent of these is carnival, held around the country on or around Mardi Gras, the last day before Lent. The most exuberant celebrations, held in Luzern, Bern and Basel, feature bands, masked parades, street dancing and spontaneous partying that belie the stereotype of a placid, unadventurous Switzerland. A host of smaller events fills out the calendar and it?s still easily possible to stumble on village festivals that have been staged by local people for centuries past.

This sense of cultural continuity sits oddly with the fact that Switzerland has grown into one of the world?s richest countries. Its economy is small-scale but thoroughly modern: traditional industries such as watchmaking and textiles now thrive by focusing closely on the luxury end of the market and have ceded prime position to engineering, pharmaceuticals and service industries galore. Tourism has been a high earner since the mid-nineteenth century, when the Alps became both a fashionable destination for wealthy travellers and a prescribed retreat for sufferers from respiratory diseases needing curative sunshine and fresh mountain air. And yet the country, seized by an increasingly anachronistic national Kantönligeist, still stands alone. In the 1940s, Switzerland was surrounded by hostile Axis powers; these days, it?s encircled by the “friendly” EU. With the end of the Cold War, recent damaging revelations of Swiss collaboration with the Nazi Third Reich, and increasingly close ties amongst Western European nations, Swiss neutrality rings ever more hollow ? and yet, far from embracing a wider perspective, the country has collectively taken a step into conservatism. Commentators are noting sadly that Switzerland is only now embarking on the kind of multiethnic social integration that its neighbours began in the 1950s.

Having taken centuries to bolt their country together from diverse elements, the Swiss seem instinctively to return to their sense of community spirit, expressed most tangibly in the order and cleanliness you?ll see on show everywhere. Yet the sterility so decried by Graham Greene (who wrote Harry Lime?s jibe about brotherly love), if it characterizes any part of the country, applies only to the glossy, neatly packaged tourist idyll of lakes and mountains. The three great Swiss cities of Geneva, Zürich and Basel are crammed with world-class museums and galleries. In Zürich and Lausanne, there?s a humming arts scene and underground club culture that feeds nightlife as vibrant as anything you?ll find in much larger European cities.

The landscapes are dominated by the Alps and their foothills, but mountains aren?t the only story. In the north and centre are lush, rolling grasslands epitomized by the velvety green hills of the Emmental, traditional dairy-farming country. Vineyards rise tiered above Lake Geneva, the Rhône valley and the Rhine. The fairytale southeast is cut through by wild, high-sided valleys, lonely, dark and thickly forested. Most surprisingly of all, bordering Italy in the south you?ll find subtropical Mediterranean-style flower gardens, sugarloaf hills and sunny, palm-fringed lakes. For a small, little-regarded mid-continental country with a profound image problem, Switzerland has plenty more to offer than most visitors suspect.

About the Author

Matthew Teller is an experienced and accomplished travel writer. He is also the author of the Rough Guide to Jordan.

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Review

Steves preaches a low-cost, low-to-the-ground style that not only saves money, but gets you closer to the real Europe, the way Europeans experience it.

Product Description

Who but Rick Steves can tell you the best way to visit Zürich, Gimmelwald, the Berner Oberlander, Interlaken, Bern, Murten, Lake Geneva, and French Switzerland? With Rick Steves’ Switzerland 2005, you can experience everything Switzerland has to offer?economically and hassle-free. Rick Steves’ Switzerland 2005 includes color maps and photos, opinionated coverage of both famous and lesser-known sights; friendly places to eat and sleep; suggested day plans; walking tours and trip itineraries; clear instructions for smooth travel anywhere by car, train, or foot; and Rick’s newest “back door” discoveries. America’s number one authority on travel to Europe, Rick’s time-tested recommendations for safe and enjoyable travel in Switzerland have been used by millions of Americans in search of their own unique travel experience.

Product Description

The Rough Guide to Switzerland tells you all there is to know about this beautiful and varied country. The 36-page, full-colour section introduces all of Switzerland”s highlights, from snowboarding in the Alps and sampling swiss wine to the country”s Gothic cathedrals and medieval castles. The guide includes extensive listings of the all the top places to eat, drink and stay, whatever your budget, plus brand-new ”author picks” to highlight the very best. There is plenty of practical advice on outdoor pursuits, including where to find the best mountain walks and most scenic ski resorts. The guide takes a detailed look at Switzerland”s history, wildlife and culture and comes complete with maps and plans for every region.

About the Author

Matthew Teller is an experienced and accomplished travel writer. He is also the author of the Rough Guide to Jordan.

Matthew Teller is an experienced and accomplished travel writer. He is also the author of the Rough Guide to Jordan.

Product Description

This guide includes a section detailing Switzerland’s history, nine features covering aspects of the country’s life and culture, ranging from its rich artistic heritage to its Alpine activities, a region by region visitor’s guide to the sights, and a comprehensive travel tips section packed with essential contact addresses and numbers. It also includes hundreds of photographs and 20 maps.

Review

“… what differentiates Rivoli’s book are the extra details, like comparison charts of different airlines and cruise lines.” — The Oakland Tribune

“This guide is chock full of useful tips for traveling with babies and toddlers, what gear to bring (including specifics about car seats and a travel kit for carry-on), childproofing your accommodations, healthy travels, managing baggage on trains, and more.” — Travel for Kids

“Travels with Baby by Shelly Rivoli… is a valuable book for families.” — The Mercury News

“Travels with Baby by Shelly Rivoli… is a valuable book for families.” — The San Jose Mercury News

“Travels with Baby is an indispensable guide for parents wandering the world with kids, from infants to preschoolers. Its comprehensive advice on useful gear and different modes of transportation (car, taxi, train, plane, ship) will smooth the way on any trip, and I especially liked the insightful advice on matching your travel plans to your child’s individual temperament.” — Cynthia Harriman, author of Take Your Kids to Europe

From the Publisher

Winner of the NAPPA Gold Award for Parenting Resources from the National Parenting Publications Awards

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Product Description

This title in the acclaimed Michelin Green Guide series is your indispensable guide to the cultural and natural highlights of Switzerland: cosmopolitan cities with their international institutions, famous museums brimming with art treasures, elegant ski resorts, charming villages, spectacular mountain scenery, snowy peaks, sparkling blue lakes, breathtaking views and the delicate beauty of rare alpine flowers.
–This text refers to the

Paperback
edition.


Language Notes

Text: French
–This text refers to the

Paperback
edition.