Catholic Holiday? I’m outta here!

The great solitude of hiking in the Alps.

When your regular day off coincides with a catholic holiday, you might want to consider escaping if you live in a protestant area. I call it the catholic shoppers’ invasion which is most likely very non pc. So let me rephrase it to “it’s a day when people living in a historically catholic area take full advantage of their extra day off and flock to protestant areas – usually the ones closest to them – to go shopping”.

I might also have previously called catholic holidays “Maria something” holidays. I think at least half of them are. Maybe I should stop doing that too. But seriously who can keep up with everything Maria did or didn’t do. She was all over the place.

The key to your escape is to go to a deeply catholic region. Nobody will be there. Counter intuitive? Possibly. Does it work like a charm? It did for me. Except for one tiny little detail at the train station in Arth-Goldau where I wanted to pop into the small supermarket at the station. Yeah, me and 1000 other people. That’s what happens when nowhere else is open.

Anyway … my day started at 5 AM. Why this early? Well, I don’t like people and people tend to not take the very first train. And also this early because I couldn’t be bothered getting my things ready last night. So, on the 5.50 bus I went and then took the slower connection to Airolo, but the one where I could be on the same train the longest. It left Olten at 6.30 and I arrived in Airolo at 9.01. Yes, it was precisely 9.01! Are you new here? This is Switzerland 😉.

From my Switzerland Mobility App I knew that route 7 was being diverted. That’s part of the reason I’d put off continuing my walk. That and the weather was awful most weekends. I wanted to do it a couple of weeks ago, but it had been raining that entire week and it was such a good call not to do it. Even today when it had been sunny all week, some parts were still wet and slippery. Like that wooden bridge. I held on for dear life crossing that. Super slippery.

I managed to find my way thanks to said app it would have been more difficult without. In Ticino they have the nice weather, but their signposting could be improved ever so slightly. I found my way and was soon back on the regular route. It was just a matter of going way up a hill and then back down. It’s what we call a “flat” hike in Switzerland.

I walked along the River Ticino. We have a thing for naming our valleys after the river or stream that flows through them. In this case the entire canton is named after it too.

Bonus question: What river do you think flows through the Emmental (tal = valley)? Please note that German sometimes requires an extra letter to connect two words and you’re there.

For quite a bit of my hike I walked right beside the freeway. Traffic seemed to be backed up for a good mile or so. I think it was because they had traffic lights in use and only let a certain number of cars through at a time. Turns out that non-moving traffic is less noisy but the exhaust fumes are still very much there.

I was glad when the route took me up a hill and I walked on a small path in the forest overlooking the valley. This part was truly stunning. I loved the fall colors. There were little waterfalls too. You could hear the traffic down below. It didn’t bother me much, I was too focused on enjoying the walk - just look at the colors!

I had checked buses beforehand and knew there would be one at 13.09. Buses don’t run as frequently in those small villages. When I got there it was shortly before 1 PM and I decided to stop hiking at that point. My official next stop would have been an hour away but the sun was already disappearing behind the hills. If you thought other areas of Switzerland were hilly, wait till you visit Ticino. It’s insanely hilly. The part I walked in today was still mountainous as it’s just down from the Gotthard Pass.

“Sunset” in Quinto at around 1 PM.

I didn’t see much wildlife today. Only some cats (very wild, I know), cows, sheep and butterflies. Butterflies are not wild you say? Well, I got caught in a cloud of them. There were dozens. That was pretty wild.

I stopped in a small town called Quinto that has an amazing church. If you’d like to read more about it – I found this. Now, what it says is that the church was restored in the 17^th century based on a previous Romanesque church from the 12^th century. They found even earlier remains in the 20^th century that pre-dated the earlier church by four centuries. Fascinating stuff. The text also says that the interior of the church is Baroque.

I love that my Italian is good enough to read and understand a text like that. Too bad I still don’t speak it. Anyway, a lovely hike today. If you’d like to watch a little video of it - here it is.

The bus that picked my up was just a little baby bus. It was super cute. I totally loved it. I was the only passenger for the entire trip back up to Airolo. I could see most of the route I walked the entire bus ride back. It felt like a pretty cool achievement.

You know what it said on the bus as the destination? It was Airolo FFS. I did not manage to take a picture of that, but I thought it was funny. Can you guess what it stands for in Italian??

Well, the official logo of the Swiss Federal Railways has SBB CFF FFS in it. Those stand for Schweizerische Bundesbahnen; Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses; Ferrovie federali svizzere. Everything has to be in three languages as you know. Now, there’s a fourth one too and it would be Viefiers federalas svizras VFF in Romansh.

What I found funny was that on my hike, even when you meet a fellow Swiss German-speaker everybody tries to be super friendly and goes for “Buongiorno”, “Salve” or “Ciao”. I like that about us. I mean saying hi in what you think might be the language the person you’re crossing paths with is speaking is the least we can do. Of course, when they start talking to you in Italian, it gets more complicated.

On the train back, I noticed that the screens on board showed ads and newspaper headlines in Italian and it switched to German in the middle of the tunnel between Airolo and Göschenen. Never noticed that before. That was amazing. Also, the language of the announcements changed or at least the order of languages did. It’s little things like that, that make Switzerland special.

I hope you had a great day today, wherever you are – whatever you did.

Night all.