Ref: "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."
Btw, if I remember it correctly, the people living in these 2 Swiss
houses can only leave them via Italian territory (unless they take a
boat).
Rgds,
Dieter
--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Craig" <trehala@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>