BYE WEEK

Today I went to Chur, Switzerland with teammates/players Matt Walters (Michigan State) and Nic Haritonenko (Dresden, Germany). Chur is directly south of us in Hohenems, below the tiny country of Leichtenstein. We visited Robin Haas & Toni Muggwyler, two of our Swiss import players. Robin took us on a tour of his town, showing off many of the fantastic sites. It was a rainy miserable day, but getting out of Vorarlberg was nice and the beauty of the Swiss Alps and Chur cannot be overstated. This is a city steeped in tradition, is the oldest town in Switzerland having been settled for well over 5000 years.

I will get some pictures from Matt tomorrow(?), but for now the one above will have to do. From www.schweizbilder.ch.

Tomorrow I'm also taking the overnight train to Graz (birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger) to visit some friends and scout Vienna on Saturday. Stay tuned for more pics!

More on Chur:
----from www.myswitzerland.com---
Chur looks back on 5000 years of settlement history, which also makes it Switzerland’s oldest town. This lively small bishop’s town has developed to become the cultural and economic centre of the Grisons, thanks to its excellent location on key transport routes through the Alps.

To help find the most important witnesses to the town’s history, two discovery trails marked by red and green footprints lead through the town. Examples include the Gothic old town dating from the 15th and 16th century, where the influences of the neighbouring countries remain visible today and attest to the skills of the Italian master builders, and the 800-year-old cathedral with its wonderful, three-sided carved altar dating from the 15th century. Visits to the Rhaetian Museum with its cultural-historical and folk art collection, as well as the Art Museum with its Grisons’ paintings and sculptures from the 18th – 20th century, are particularly rewarding.

500 shops and over 100 restaurants and hostelries offer visitors a wealth of possible purchases. The town’s many annual events as well as concerts, theatres and cinemas make the southern ambience of Chur noticeable. What’s more, Chur also has a zoo and leisure park.

A regional mountain – the ‘Brambrüesch’ – means that Chur also has its own winter and summer sports region. In summer, Chur is the ideal spot from which to set off on walks and visits to vineyards in the ‘Bündner Herrschaft’ winemaking region. Chur is the gateway to the Grisons mountains: 26 holiday and spa resorts can be reached in less than an hour from Chur.

Panorama trains travel from Chur into the Grisons Alps, e.g. the Bernina Express to St. Moritz and Tirano along the Albula route which has been much praised as a masterpiece of railway construction, the Glacier Express to the Matterhorn, the Arosa Express to the renowned climatic spa resort, and the Heidi Express to Davos.

Chur is the centre of the Chur Rhine valley, which reaches from the “Bündner Herrschaft” wine-growing region to the spectacular gorge of the Viamala. Whilst the “Bündner Herrschaft” with its centre of Maienfeld once inspired Johanna Spyri to pen her Heidi book and today produces outstanding Pinot Noir wines, Grüsch-Danusa, best known as a winter sports region, lies at the valley entrance to the Prättigau. To the west of Chur lies the Domleschg, the most castle-populated region of Switzerland and directly to the south of this Thusis, at the entrance to the steep Viamala gorge.