In the interests of learning about mountain survival (and because they
are cute), I paid a visit to the Museé et Chiens du Saint-Bernard in
Martigny, in French speaking Valais.
The Museé is the winter home to a number of St Bernard dogs, who go
up to the Col du Grand-St-Bernard between June and September. Le Col is the
oldest Alpine pass and the dogs live at a hospice on the route. This hospice is
still run by monks/canons, who used to go out on skis with the dogs to search
for survivors (and those who were not so lucky) in the snow. According to my
guide book, the monks have served this hospice for around 1,000 years! The
pictures on the train give an impression of what skiing monks looked like…
Ok, I’ve teased you enough now – here are some cute pictures of St
Bernard dogs now:
On the way back from Martigny, I had time to visit Sion (Sitten), which
is the capital of the Valais/Wallis canton. Despite being the capital, it
seemed strange to me that everything was in French, as this canton is one of
the few bilingual ones. The language boarder stems from the time of the Roman
Empire – the Latin evolved into French, whereas the areas controlled by the Aleman
(Germanic) tribes have remained German speaking. Even the architecture felt
different from the wooden Swiss chalets I’d become used to seeing in Zermatt.
The name Sion apparently comes from the fact that there are two
medieval castles facing each other on the hills above the town – Château
de Valère
and the Château
de Tourbillon. Unfortunately Valère, which is the more complete castle,
was covered in scaffolding when I went, so here is a photo of Tourbillon, which
was destroyed by fire in 1788.
For those interested in flags and such like, here is the Valaisian one. The stars represent the original number of districts within Valais - 8 French speaking and 5 German speaking (today there are 6 German speaking districts):
No comments:
Post a Comment