Swiss Pride

"Swiss people are 'very special'," said Mercel with a grin. He is the owner of our favorite neighborhood café, "Lass uns Freunde bleiben", in Berlin. His words sounded a bit ironic as he described Swiss pride.

During our 8 days in Basel and Buchs, a small town bordering Liechtenstein, we felt the sense that Swiss people are indeed special. But there was no irony in what we felt.

Switzerland is home to an absolutely beautiful landscape that is known and loved throughout the world. Besides from this stunning scenery, they have no other natural resources to speak of.

I imagine that for centuries they have known that this land might be best preserved for their own future benefit. With love, care and education of conservation they have developed a deep pride in their only natural resource, the land.

Sure, they have also won world acclaim for their precision and their respect for privacy; for their Swiss watches and their Swiss banks, respectively. However, these are skills that have been honed by a serious attention to detail that their leaders with fantastic foresights have strategically promoted, and are different from a natural resource.

Buchs is one of those picturesque Swiss towns surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The air is delicious. People drink water directly from the small fountains scattered throughout the town. The water is pure, cold and refreshing.

The purpose of our visit to Buchs was to collaborate with photographer/printmaker Jacques Lecoultre. This was the first of several collaborative art projects scheduled throughout the year. Jacques was eager to take us out of his atelier and into the hills for hiking when the collaboration needed a break. He drove us to one of his favorite spots, twice, as it was only a short half hour drive from his atelier.

What a breathtakingly beautiful place it was, with rolling green pasture land studded with wildflowers and capped in snowy peaks. In the center of this emerald alpine valley sits a small pristine lake, reflecting the surrounding in its icy blue water.

This land is open to the public for day use and overnight camping is forbidden. It's a place where locals come to enjoy their enormous love for the outdoors. Jacques grew up visiting here, and he now shares this nature with his young son, Yannick, who has also developed a deep appreciation for the environment.

The reasons we felt "Swiss are special" are that their love for their land and its nature seem to be synonymous to their patriotism. They continue to work to keep the land pure and untouched, and in some sense, keep themselves that way, too.

Swiss are extremely sensitive to the news reports on energy resources and the related geopolitical activities, as well as environmental phenomena such as global warming. Jacques said, with a concerned expression, " If the oil reserve run out after fifty years, what would we do then? That's the question I have been asking to myself these days."