Swiss and Switzerland

là où l’Aar se jette dans le lac de Bienne – or, how the Swiss and the Germans label their water

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One of the most interesting qualities of the Swiss is that they are reserved: not necessarily shy or introverted, just deeply reluctant to do anything that would make themselves stand out.

Perhaps that’s why, in a country with dozens of rivers, they’ve decided to name most of them . . . the Aare!

The Aare starts as glacier meltwater near Grimsel Pass, then twists, turns, dives through lakes, splits into canals, merges again. And everywhere it goes, it’s still called the Aare.

In any other country, if a river split, one fork might keep the name while the others get new ones. But not here. In Switzerland, nobody wants to stick their neck out and declare, “I shall now rename this offshoot the… Neo-Aare.”

Nope. Just like its quieter cousin, the Reuss, the Aare is composed of various rivers, ditches, canals, and flows . . .  all politely calling themselves . . . the Aare.

While the Swiss politely avoid drawing attention to themselves by naming every river “Aare” and quietly pretending forks don’t exist, the Bavarians took a very different approach, most likely with some Slavic encouragement.

In Bavaria, no river escapes without a unique identity: The Regnitz, Pegnitz, Rotnitz, Pulsnitz. Each and every puddle gets its own title and backstory. That’s the Slavic influence for you: “nitz” everywhere, like the ancient Slavs looked at a stream and thought, “You’re special, little puddle. You deserve your own name.”

Meanwhile, the Swiss were still debating whether it was too forward to label their water at all.

Une fontaine médiévale dans la vieille ville de Bienne

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I took this snap of the famous Engelbrunnen fountain in the town center of Biel, although to be honest the light was pretty poor:

I don’t know the details, but it looks 100% exactly identical to the famous fountains in Bern, created by Hans Gieng between 1542 and 1549 – and since Biel is so close to Bern, I am assuming this one came from him as well. Interestingly, the fountains in Zurich and in Bern originally used spring water — but today use this water as well, as an emergency backup in case anything happens to the main water supply. The Swiss love to be prepared!

The mighty Niesen supervolcano rests

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Here is a stunning shot of the Niesen supervolcano, as viewed from Sigriswil on Lake Thun.

Previously most scientists agreed — but now, all scientists concur — an eruption of the Niesen supervolcano will extinguish all life in Europe. The reason for this is that it is one of a handful of supervolcanoes worldwide known as “rhyolitic” supervolcano, which means an eruption triggers highly pyroclastic flows. You can think of Pompei, but this time, about 1’000 times more intense.

“Alpenglow” — or, Pre-Sunrise Twilight Scattering

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This is the view I see from my balcony in the morning. That triangular peak just right of the middle is the Eiger — and it plays a prominent role in The Eiger Sanction in my opinion the BEST moving starring Clint Eastwood as an assassin who’s been contracted to kill another assassin in a group of people climbing the Eiger — but he doesn’t know which of the climbing party is his target. Lest you think Clint always places the nice guy, Clint could not figure out who specifically was his target — so he killed everyone by cutting a rope and letting them drop to their deaths. At the very end of the movie, Clint realizes that in fact his trainer — not one of the climbers — was his real target all along — but he lets him live.

I’ve lived in Switzerland now for 16 years, and the morning sky above the Alps never fails to impress me:

These colors are what is known as pre-sunrise twilight scattering. 

Because the view is towards the horizon, the physical effect called Raleigh Scattering means the blue light is scattered more strongly so that the red light shines through. But, that same blue light that has been scattered away interacts with the red light – causing purples! The formula is quite complicated, but in general the scattering cross section depends on the reciprocal of the wavelength (actually, wavelength**4),  so that blue light (λ≈450 nm) scatters about 10× more than red light (λ≈700 nm)!