Above is a picture of the Swiss Alps which we had to go over on our journey to Muistair today, which is close to the Italian border. I took this picture at the Ofenpass. Everything is quite beautiful. I also took a picture of Swiss cyclists which is above. It is quite strange, but there it is. There are a lot of people who go cycling through the Alps - even a handful of people pedaling actual bicycles (Fahradden). Some of the curves in the mountain road are literally LESS than 45 degrees. When I saw the first one, I thought, "No, that's another road connecting to ours - like an entrance ramp. Then we will both proceed forward past that part of mountain obscuring the road." But I was wrong. Think of an inverted "v" of a little two lane road, and that is the sort of turn "Koort" the bus driver had to take more than once. He did it well.
We stopped at a rest stop just before the Alps. Understand that a Swiss "rest stop" -in addition to gas- has a book store, and a grocery store with fresh fruit. There was one "fast food" place, but it was closer to "Panera Bread" than McDonald's. Gas, however, is the equivalent of $8 per gallon.
Finally, a sign along the way which has the elusive "Romansh" language on it. The top line is Italian. The second line is German. Both mean "camping forbidden"- although I am told that "campieren" is a fabricated German verb. The third line is the Romansh. German, again, for the last line. These final two lines mean "is totally forbidden for the territory of the community of Susch." Notice the Romansh "tuot" is from "totus" (all, completely) and "cumun" is from the Latin "communio" (community). Of course, Romance languages like French, Italian, Spanish derive from Latin so you can see root words in common as well. It is just that Romansh is supposed to be a direct historical survival of the "vulgar Latin" of the 8th century and then, before that, of the Latin dialect of the people of the Helvetica* region which would have been harsher, rougher - more German, and less refined than, say, the Latin of Cicero.
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*"Helvetica" is the Latin word for the modern region of Switzerland. You will still see the Swiss use the abreviation "CH" for their country which means "Confederatio Helvetica."
5 comments:
Hi Kurt!
I'm enjoying your posts!
A little about the fabricated German verb you mention:
"Campieren" would seem to be a Swiss German fabrication. In Germany they would be more likely to say "zelten" (tenting) or just say "camping," taking it directly from English.
Hi Arlene!
Thanks for the info, that's very interesting.
Kurt
I'm fascinated by the Romansh bit. It really looks like a 50/50 splicing of Italian and German--very intriguing. Thanks for all the background.
Why don't we have rest stops like that here? Of course, it's probably just as well for someone like me. I'd never get back on the road if rest stops included bookstores. :)
The bookstore was called "Ex Libris" which is apparently a chain bookstore in Switzerland if not all of Europe. To be honest it was not quite as good as it sounds. It was mainly a collection of recent movies (dubbed into German) and CD's of popular music. The books included foreign language dictionaries, books like "The DaVinci Code" and some classics - I believe Jane Austen. It was rather small, but still an interesting idea.
Incidentally, I now have an English-Romansh and an Italian-Romansh dictionary. They were very small and inexpensive. The point was to check how far words in each language deviated from Latin root words.
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