Switzerland

Trip Start Apr 15, 1981
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Trip End Jun 30, 1981


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Flag of Switzerland  , Zürich,
Wednesday, April 29, 1981

After doing an outdoor show at the city university in Zurich, we jumped back onto the bus and headed deep into the Alps to the alpine town of Wintertur.  I stayed in the home of a retired gentleman and his daughter, who was the graphic designer that did our promotional material.  This is a picture-postcard type of place that you would see on a travel brochure.  Houses are scattered on alpine meadows on the slopes of the hills which overlook the town, and the backdrop for all of this is the incredible beauty of the Alps themselves.  My hosts showed us the kind of hospitality that the Swiss are famous for and a few other things as well.  He was an officer in their National Guard and we were given a tour of their civil defenses.  Interestingly, each member is required to keep his weapons (automatic) at his home and bring them to their mustering point in the case of an emergency.  The thinking is that because the size of the country's populated area is so small, the defenders would not have time to muster and have their weaponry issued before they were overrun.  For a country that has not sent a soldier in harm's way for several hundreds of years, I found their thinking really quite practical.  The main bomb shelter in the downtown was in an underground parking garage equipped with blast doors, water and air filtration systems.  Several months worth of food, medical suppplies, clothing and munitions are all in place.  They were certainly well organized for when the 'Big One' hits!  What I did not understand was why they felt that anyone would bother to drop an expensive bomb on this out-of-the-way, non-strategic country village and, well, cow pasture.
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