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Pastimes : Where the GIT's are going -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (172603)	1/9/2009 1:01:14 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 225578

I bet the lights of Brig are very pretty. (I just love the internet!)

To: Neeka who wrote (172603)	1/10/2009 11:05:42 AM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 225578

I bet the lights of Brig are very pretty. I just spoke with Kelsey on Skype, and she remarked that the city lights are really pretty at night. There are what she described as "bunkers" on the mountain that are all lit up and very beautiful. I wondered about the reference to "bunkers" and found this: The camouflaged opening for a 10.5cm artillery cannon in the Swiss mountains. For Swiss generals, defending Switzerland always was a problem. In a country with only 7 millions inhabitants Switzerland is surrounded by big weapon totting nations like France, Germany and Italy. In World War II the threat increased exponentially and the Swiss generals decided to fortify the mountains even more in order to create a “Réduit”, a mountain fortress that would give shelter to the army (but not the inhabitants). The Réduit would have been the base for attacks against enemy invaders, very similar to what Al Qaeda did in Afghanistan. For over 50 years thousands of such bunkers and forts were built and most of them are nowadays open to the public. I recently visited such a bunker by the name of Crestawald, high up in the Graubünden Mountains near the San Bernardino Pass. The bunker is home to two 10.5cm artillery cannons that could fire as far as 20km up to the Flüela Pass. The bunker is cleverly camouflaged and almost 10,000 rounds were fired from its cannon- for exercise that is. The bunker is very well maintained and sits in a beautiful valley. My travel-companion remarked in awe: the Swiss were really sneaky! easteatswest.typepad.com