In the land of fondue and raclette

Switzerland is a fascinating country. Not very big but stunningly beautiful and with an intriguing mix of languages, religions, cultures and people. Spent our first night at Flims – a ski resort that turns into a bicycle Mecca in summer. At first we thought that we were bang in the middle of the Romansch speaking area. The team running the campsite spoke Romansch and German – but their first language was Romansch, and when we were going to order bread for the following day, the list was all in Romansch. But the host was nice enough to translate it all into English

But then we walked some three kilometres into the village, and apparently we crossed some kind of line, because now Swiss German was the first languagevery confusing. The waiter (himself of Dutch origin) at one of the cafés explained a bit about the language. In some schools Romansch is the main language of instruction, but not in Flims where the children are taught in German. However in Laax (less than ten kilometres away) they are taught in Romansch.

Now, Romansch is spoken by less than one per cent of the population, that is less than 800 000 people but they don’t speak the same dialect. There are in face twelve dialects – that they now try to get down to five.but it is not very easy, the waiter said, because some dialects are only spoken in isolated pockets of the canton of Grison.

Well we didn’t quite get it at the end so we decided that we must dig deeper into the Swiss soul – and started with the cheeses. Nothing beats and old and mature Gruyère

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~ by gorrelespelund on 27/07/2011.