h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the very south of Switzerland there is a lake called Lago Maggiore, part of it belongs to Italy

The lake is completely surrounded by alps, and the region has a Mediterranean climate (surprisingly enough, since it is located some distance away from the Mediterranean sea, and north from it, too)

It has always amazed me as to why the Swiss have built houses and even villages high up on the mountain slopes, where it must have been very difficult to transport the building material, especially in old times - but maybe they built stoeps!

There is a monastery and a pilgrimage church on the mountainside too - with a view over the lake, the mountains, an occasional small waterfall here and there and a monastery garden with just narrow paths, no roads, no traffic... *voice trails away as she looks out the office window and, instead of the roof tops, sees above described view*

*happy sigh*

How about we trade houses? You can come to Austin, TX, where the heat and wind fly fiercely, and the people slur words together, and cars are as big as small houses, and I'll go to lovely Switzerland, where as you so aptly described, life is blissful. I'll even throw in a psychotic cat and a mortgage!

I haven't replied earlier!

I haven't been back to Switzerland since the summer of '67 when, as a scholar, I toured Bavaria and parts of Switzerland with my German class. I remember staying in the loft of a medieval castle in the countryside near Basle, on an outcrop of rock deep in the forest. From the battlements I looked out over fields of green growing wheat or barley through clean clear sky. Before we left six weeks later, we spent another night there and the fields were golden yellow...

Those Swiss houses in the mountains are made out of a lot of wood, which grows all around up there. The ground is also rather rocky, and if you plough the soil, you turn up rocks for building too! Ther's not much arable land in the mountains and it's better to live where you can't plant crops - that's why the Swiss live on the hillsides. And that is also why they build their stoeps there!

PB, I was always told that Texas is the place where the girls talk so slow that by the time they've finished telling you they really aren't that sort of girl, they are! There are lots of ex-South Africans there (and ostriches too?) I love wide open country so I just may visit there sometime in my life - Arizona too - those mesa mountains are really stunning! I'll trade houses and morgage as long as I can trade incomes too! You could buy a house with a stoep here for the price of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The morgage on my house wouldn't even pay for a used Harley out here...

I still say wow. That sounds like an awesome place to live. I am not a Texan. Some of them do speak very slow... I grew up in CA and I like to pretend that I'm only in TX for a short sojourn for job reasons, although we'll probably be here for a few years. My daughter is also not a Texan even though she was born here... So there you have it.

Oh dear, I had completely forgotten about this conversation - sorry for not replying, Princess Bride!

I'm afraid I haven't got a house in Switzerland to trade - I've only been there on vacation...