Buon Giorno!
It's been a long time since I posted a message to BoundaryPoint, and
now that I have been home for a few days from my trip to
Switzerland, I thought I'd tell you the story of my border adventure
in Campione d'Italia. This mail was originally sent out to a long
list of friends and family a few days ago, hence my explanations and
Internet links to Campione, to help them understand just what the
heck I was up to. I don't need to preach to the converted at this
group :-) I have, however, added a lot more to the original mail so
I recommend that those members of BoundaryPoint who are also on my
travelogue list read it again.
A week ago on Sunday 23 July I was in Italy in its small exclave
surrounded by Swiss territory, Campione d'Italia. I took the train
from Locarno to Melide and then walked across the bridge to the
eastern shore of Lake Lugano. From there it was a straight walk up
Via Campione to the famous striped gates. See a picture of the gates
here:
> http://www.hotel-campione.ch/e/index_e.htm
and click on the letter "i" ("About Us"). You will see a photo of
the striped gates and the black car just left of the gates has just
entered Italian territory. I crossed this way too, but only after I
had taken plenty of border photographs.
I saw the casino and the gigantic new one which is completed, at
least on the outside, yet not open to visitors. Cars here either
have Ticino plates or Italian plates, however I did photograph one
car with an Italian plate beginning with CO, the code for Campione.
It was the only such car I saw! (Am I correct about this, that CO is
the licence code for Campione?)
Since it was Sunday, not much was open, however I was lucky to find
a very small variety store which sold postcards and stamps. I bought
some cards and stamps, and hurriedly wrote four from Campione
itself. The clerk however had no idea how much it cost to send
postcards internationally so she fetched someone from a nearby
restaurant who knew some English. He told me that it should cost
1.20 euros (the equivalent of two local stamps) so I took his word
for it and stuck two on every postcard I sent. So, I ask you, if you
got your postcard from Campione, please tell me! I am also equally
interested in the postal mark on the card. Does it say "Campione
d'Italia" or somewhere in Switzerland? (P.S. One recipient has
already contacted me with the good news that he had received my
card. It has a postal mark with "ITALIE" on it, so he says. He
swears it does not say "ITALIA".)
Unlike in Locarno and Bellinzona, Switzerland, officially Italian
but where everyone knows at least a bit of German (yet, as I found
out, no French) the people of Campione knew only Italian (the guy
from the restaurant excluded). I would always begin my questions
with "Tedesco, francese, inglese?" and no one ever replied with an
affirmative. I did however fully understand the variety store clerk
when she told me that I could only mail my Campione postcards in
Campione or Italy, just that "you can't take them back with you and
mail them from Lugano" (whatever that is in Italian).
I wrote the cards on the benches by the landing dock and watched the
trains coming in to and departing from Melide station on the other
side of the lake. After I finished I headed on my border run. I
wanted to find the border markers demarcating the Italian-Swiss
frontier. Read about a similar expedition at the link below:
> http://campione.enclaves.org/
I walked every single winding road in this enclave, and if you
enlarge the topographic map in the link above, you can see where I
ended up.
My map showed that the Swiss border was very close to the north-
south road in the eastern part of the enclave and while I was
following this road I could see a red signpost high above the
embankment set back in the forest. I only walked along this road for
a few steps, literally, before I saw the sign, so I made an accurate
assessment of where the border lay. So the explorer scoop paparazzo
in me set out to photograph this sign and no doubt the border stone
that went with it. I climbed the steeply-angled embankment, a
dangerous feat as the drop on my right was roughly six metres
straight down to solid asphalt. I found the sign and its stone, then
proceeded to walk south, trying as best as I could to follow an
imaginary straight line to the next signpost. I did find it and took
two more photographic souvenirs.
In my attempt to find more border stones and signs I deviated from
the path (minimal though it was) and found myself further south and
staring at a very steep hillside above me, with a six-metre concrete
embankment below me. I could not climb back up so I considered
sliding down the embankment in the same way I had crouched and
climbed a similar embankment when I embarked on my border trek.
Picture these embankments as trapezoids above the road; I would
crouch and climb up the angled sides like a chameleon walking along a
vine. Likewise, I would lie back and slide down, using my legs as
bulldozers, clearing the path in my descent.
However, the bottom of this embankment was far too high from the
road for me to jump down. It didn't look so high from the height of
six metres I had been standing at, yet while I was sliding down I
realised that any jump would leave me with one or two sprained
ankles and perhaps both wrists as well.
While I was slowly sliding down, kicking the debris and soil from
the guttered concrete widths, I was confronted with a situation that
left me staring death in the face. I could see that the gutter of
this embankment did not empty into the forest like the others. This
particular gutter opened up into a cliffside and a plummet to death.
If I continued to slide down, I would send myself falling down a
cliff into a pile of rocks below.
Many years ago I filled out a questionnaire in a magazine that asked
me to write down the scariest moment in my life. Now I haven't had
any scary moments, really, and I had to pull my own teeth trying to
think of something. My hands are like dripping ice right now as I
type this.
I was stuck at the bottom of the gutter, staring at the drop of
death before me. I could not jump down at my left to the road, and I
could not just roll out of the gutter and walk through the forest at
my right since there was no forest at my right. I was even
whimpering, yet was too scared to be vocal, and too scared even to
move. I had no choice but to return whence I came. As I was
carefully balanced in the gutter (as well as scared out of my mind)
I could not turn around and crawl back up. Instead, I backed up the
embankment, praying that I kept a straight line in a path I couldn't
see. All the debris that was in the gutter I had kicked out in my
slide down, so I had nothing to anchor me as I pressed my feet
against the concrete and pushed my weight up. I had to be very
slow so as not to lose any life-saving grip should I suddenly slip
on the zero-traction gutter.
When I made it to the top I was so focussed on getting down safely,
no matter how long it took, that I had no time to thank God for
sparing my life. It was no easy task climbing back up the steep
mountainside, as the dirt was so loose it gave way whenever I clawed
at it and the twigs and roots that were on the ground weren't alive
or anchored to anything. How on Earth did the surveyors get up here
to hammer in border signposts in the first place? In my frustration
in trying to get out of the forest and on to level ground, I even
wondered whose bright idea it was to place the border along such a
steep mountainside in the first place.
Eventually, I did crawl my way back up, more though as a result of
jumping up and grabbing something and trying to swing off that, as
opposed to using a technique such as that of mountain climbers, who
anchor their spiked feet in the rock and wait for a sign of
stability. In my attempts I did slide back down again and got my
hands and socks totally covered in dirt.
When I got to the road, I went over to where I had stared death in
the face. The road here was really a bridge, spanning the chasm that
I was precariously balanced over only moments ago. Even from ground
level, the jump that I was too scared to make did not look that
high. It was an illusion, the perspective of which changed
immediately when I was confronted with the height from above. I
followed the gutter to its deep drop, and saw treetops and rocks
below. You know you're talking d-e-e-p when what you see below you
are tree_tops_.
I continued along the road until it ended in a small park. From here
it was a very short walk to find the sign and boundary stone in
Campione d'Italia's southeast corner, and there was an "L" marked in
the top of the stone to indicate where the corner stood.
As I was so tired from my walking and mental ordeal, I had
considered hitchhiking back down to the town, but when I saw that
the road emptied out into a park, I thought of approaching anyone as
they were leaving for a lift back. There was only one way out of
this place and that was to the Centro (downtown). Luckily there were
two groups departing and I asked for a lift. Two young guys in one
group, where no one appeared more than 25 years old, could not speak
any English or French or German. Now I don't want to sound
anglocentric here, but I couldn't believe that two young European
guys could not utter a word of _anything_ in English to me. I was
left with having to use my index and middle fingers to convey
walking and to pretend to drive an air car to convey that I needed a
ride back.
They said (or, so I think they said) no problem, and soon their
friend came to pick them up. I sat in the front seat while the two
guys whom I met laughed themselves silly in the back. The driver
sped like a demon down the hill, burning rubber through tunnels
and around hairpin turns like James Bond. I tried to act cool, not
wanting to give the gigglers in the back seat any sense of
satisfaction. Also, if the driver was speeding in order to scare the
living daylights out of me, and if we did in fact crash, then he'd
take all of us with him and not just leave me dead. We made it to
the lakeside and I got out of the car, happy to have my life plucked
from the brink of death twice in a single day.
The drive back took only ten minutes, compared to a two-hour walk. I
then returned to the Campione gates and saw a border marker set into
the asphalt with a mysterious "L" marking Italy on the 90-degree
side and Switzerland on the 270-degree side. Huh? To find out what
this was all about, I followed the straight-line border at the gates
to the shoreline. I walked through the hotel property and stood by
the ping-pong tables looking for the border stone at the shore, yet
couldn't find anything. So I asked some guys in a cabin nearby where
the border was, and to my surprise they informed me that the
lakeside border did not begin until just between the second house
and the church. In other words, it was still Swiss territory for the
two houses to the north of the hotel, and then it was Italy at the
church.
I had just walked through the church after being dropped off by
those speed demons and I returned to look for the mysterious
lakeside border stone. I spotted it and took some snaps, yet did not
venture through the dark cobwebby gap separating the graveyard from
the house next door. The stone I photographed was not at the
shoreline, as there was a cliffy drop right after it and quite a lot
of vegetation and planters in the drop occupying the house property.
I wondered if there was anything at the shoreline itself, but that
would have required me to get into a boat and float past all that
brambly mess.
So I wondered, then, when did the border jog corners to meet up with
that marker I had seen in the asphalt at the gates? It did not take
me long to find the marker outside the church on the sidewalk. I had
missed it the first time I walked past. It too had an "L" marked on
it and it lined up with the "L" of the gates marker. I took photos
of these two new markers and for a few steps I walked south, with my
left foot in Italy while my right foot was still in Switzerland :-)
I notice that this church marker is not featured in the
http://campione.enclaves.org/ link above. As one of the
technologically-deprived, I will attempt to scan a photo of this new
(newish) marker.
I never got to the northern part of Campione d'Italia. What is it
like? Does anyone have photos?
Glad to have now visited and photographed border stones in both
Büsingen and Campione d'Italia!
Craig Rowland
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada