GENEVA : Hail an ‘Eternal Alliance’
It won’t be the big celebration that organizers had originally hoped, but stoic, stable Switzerland will fete its 700th anniversary as a confederation during the next few days. Frugal Swiss voters in several central cantons turned down plans for a national fair to mark the occasion when mountain tribes living around Lake Lucerne rose up to challenge the feudal rule of the House of Hapsburg.
Nevertheless, several thousand Swiss youth have been invited to gather beginning today in the Rutli Meadow, where those fighting farmers of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden took the oath of “Eternal Alliance” that most historians view as the moment of creation of the Swiss confederation.
On Thursday, national and local politicians are to meet representatives of Swiss communities abroad.
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