One of the nice things about living here in Appenzell, is the fact that it is so central.

A drive of twenty minutes will get me to Austria, Thirty minutes and I'm in Germany and - depending which direction I set off in - two hours will see me in France or Italy.

Last weekend I drove south, crossed the Splügen pass and had a plate of Spaghetti with mussels and a glass of red wine in a village on the shores of Comer lake. The weather was marvellous, just like the sunburn afterwards!

The Splügen pass is a narrow road just wide enough to let two cars pass. It is closed in winter because it is just too expensive to move the two to three meters of snow - especially as someone was kind enough to drill a hole through the mountains. The hole is now called the St.Bernhard Tunnel.

The pass winds its way up one side of the mountain in numerous extremely tight bends and down the other side in a similar fashion. It is an adventurous drive because the Italian drivers think nothing at all of taking the bends as wide (read 'fast') as possible, forcing oncoming traffic to brake hard and sometimes even, to reverse!

The spectacular thing about the drive this time, was the fact that the dam on the Italian side was still frozen in places. With temperatures around 24° Centigrade, there were still stretches of water with 30 cm of ice on them!



So what do you do, when you encounter a sight like this?
You buy italian ice cream, pretend to be on holiday and take photographs just like any other tourists.

I'm off to France today (Elsass, to be more precise) for Tarte Flambée and Pinot Noir.
I hope the weather bucks up - it's raining right now!