My visit to Campione d'Italia

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





 
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