Life on the Piste - The Swiss Traveller's Guide.

As the more pleasant weather approaches we’re given the opportunity to take a look away from the covered cities and the mountains with their gradually receding snowlines, and one of my favourite fairer weather attractions has to be the Rhine falls at Schaffhausen. Lying in one of the Northern most parts of the country, an hours train ride from Zurich, the falls are located on the High Rheine between Germany and Lake Constance and are believed to have been formed in the last ice age, approximately 14,000 to 17,000 years ago. One of the most intriguing aspects is the formation of the falls themselves, during the Wurm Glaciation, the Rhein was pushed to a channel far south of its existing course, and the previous courses of the river, now filled with gravel, can still be seen. As well as being accessible from Zurich by train, if you have the time for it, there is the fantastic river cruise along the Rhein you can take afterwards, either the full 5 hours to Kreuzlingen on the sho

Zermatt Unplugged Zermatt is set once again to host the brilliant Zermatt Unplugged festival from the 8th - 12th of April. Founded in 2007 by Thomas Sterchi and Marco Godat as a singer and songwriter festival, Zermatt Unplugged has increasingly developed into a meeting point for fans of unadulterated sounds. Musicians and bands such as Suzanne Vega, Chris de Burgh, Alanis Morissette, Billy Idol, Lionel Richie, Jason Mraz, Stephan Eicher, OneRepublic or Mando Diao have been inspired by the Unplugged idea, and have performed on the Marquee and Club stages of the festival. Zermatt Unplugged is the only festival of its kind in Europe, and is promoted by some of the major organisers in the Swiss festival scene. The stages this year are as wide and varied as ever:  The Marquee Stage, the Club Vernissage, the Sunnegga Sessions, the Mont Cervin Palace, 5 New Talent Stages and new The Alex as well as the Gandegghütte cabin in the Matterhorn glacier paradise ski area,