Snow Tire Day

The Swiss law states that all cars must have snow tires on their cars by December 1st. This is what the chaos at our neighboring garage has looked like for a week now. It's been so busy, that crossing the street under these conditions has now doubled my commuting time. My commute is 90 seconds.

In other local news, the neighboring town (actually a collection of the towns of Gentilino, Montagnola, and Agra) is collectively known as Collina D'Oro, the golden hill. Montagnola is where the author Herman Hesse lived and died, and his burial in the St. Abbondio cemetery leads me to believe that Siddhartha and Journey To the East notwithstanding, he must have died on good terms (i.e., a faithful believer) with the Catholic Church.

At any rate, Collina D'Oro has just begun selling their most recent bottling of merlot, the 2004 vintage, and it is by all accounts one of the best ever. Dean Zanecchia gave me a bottle for my birthday, and I must say: tasty! The contents of the bottle were tasty, I mean -- not the bottle itself...


Collina D'Oro 2004 Ticino Merlot -- that's the town crest at the bottom of the label.

As the name implies, you need a certain amount of Oro to live in the neighborhood -- we live just below the golden hill on the silver hump of Sorengo... but there's a nice trickle down effect, such as the one just pictured.