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@Aug/'73 Swiss

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Over View of Leuk Earth Station （The valley deep cut by the Rhone）

August in 1973, I was at Leuk, a small village located in the deep valley of Rhone Switzerland. Habitants of the village were only some few hundreds, in the middle of canton Valley, a tiny farm village and a connection town with railway station to Leukerbad, a spa resort in the high mountain. We were on works of building a satellite communications earth station complex for Swiss PTT at the time, in the south slope of the valley.

Took a train at Colonaban railway station of SBB (Swiss National Railway) in Geneva, heading for Brig. The train passed along the lake Leman, Laussanne, Vevey, Montreau, and others. All these beautiful towns along the lake Leman were just the same scenes of post card probably you saw once. The train stops and leaves without announcement and any sign of move, but silently and smooth. The scene changes suddenly when the train passed the Montreau. Massive and sharp rising high mountains cover both side of the passenger car windows. The narrow bottom of the valley seemed just peace and calm with farmlands and sparsely located country houses. In about two hours, the train arrived Leuk station, where we supposed to get off. The village was called Susten instead of the name of the railway station Leuk. The village Leuk is located up the mountain slope a few hundred meters away. The village Leuk is much older than Susten, that's the why railway station named after the older village.

Switzerland is the multilingual- country where three official languages, Germany, French and Italian are spoken. The town Susten is located in the edge of German speaking area. Neighboring town, in Sierre, people speak French. Roughly half of the stuff working in the station come from Sierre, of course, they speak French, so in the station, both German and French are heard at any time anywhere. Usually, they speak the language that spoken where one live. In addition, there were quite often visitors from foreign countries, they usually speaks English, the international common language. So, you might note that it is usual that three or four languages were spoken at the same time.

There is another thing, I have specially to mention, in this country. They are so industrious and shrewd. One day, my socks were torn out in one part, consequently without any other idea, I throw it away into the trash in the hotel room. Next day, when I returned from the work, I found the socks was on my desk, patched with similar clothes and washed. It was the last thing I had expected to be happen. I was so moved with the work the house keeper made for me. It was 1973, in Japan at that time, living commodities were becoming abundant, and people were becoming to lose their traditional soul to respect and thank to the belongings, and use it as long as possible.

The train arrived Leuk. Got out of the train carrying a big suitcase. There was a kiosk in front of the station, and restaurant hotel Bahn hof Buffet, where I was going to stay next five months in Switzerland. Mr. Stephen, the master of the petite hotel restaurant. He was the excellently skilled skier as well and had once instructed Tony Rizer on skying during movie shot taken in Swiss mountain. The petite restaurant hotel was really small sized. Besides the master, Mr. Stephen, one live-in maid and two waitresses were the whole staff. Only half a dozen guest rooms were in the first floor above the restaurant. Bathroom was common for all. We settled in several lodges including this Bahn hof Buffet. The dinner was always served at the restaurant for all of us. The restaurant had a main floor behind the main entrance door, there were 5 or 6 tables and counter seats. The room had wooden made and moody atmosphere. Back to the main floor, there was another room with big long table. We used that room every evening to have our dinner after day's work at the earth station construction site. The menu was served different each day, choice of the master Stephen. The main foods were potatoes, they said there were six hundreds different cooking of potatoes. On holiday, we used to spent time sitting down in this Buffet, had drinks or coffee with working colleagues, or read magazine or papers.

Colleague engineers worked together having leisure time at Bahn hof Buffet in Susten

Everyday, we used bus run by Swiss National Railway between Leuk railway station and Leukerbad, a famous hot spa resort located high on the mountain. We got off on the way to Leukerbad, and walked to the work site.

At work site, finishing works of the building had still being on progress. Erection work of the antenna structure had been done by Italian company we contracted, so that many Italian workers were working together at the site. They brought Italian chef from their country for serving the lunch at the work site. Since it took rather long time to go down to the bottom of the valley for the lunch, we also benefitted Italian lunch with them at the site. We, Japanese usually took our dinner together at Bahn hof Buffet, instead, Italian crew did drink or each snack at bar on their preferences.

The satellite telecommunications earth station was being built in the south slope of the valley. The valley consisted of hard solid rock. The huge basement was made deep into the rock-bed. A large spaced basement was made under the equipment room. The basement space was divided into several rooms, one is used for emergency electric generator room where three million watts of electricity was generated in the case of commercial power outage. The other big room was used very unique for us, it was used as the nuclear shelter. The door is made of thick concrete, and equips manual air cleaners since in an emergency case, no electricity might be available. Needles to say, there were enough foods and sundries for the whole stuff to support their life at least few months in this underground room without going out where might be contaminated by radio active materials. At the time, in Japan, we scarcely had idea of nuclear shelter, but they had already equipped it at their house and newly build public buildings. This reminded me the country had military system where everybody has duties of certain period depending on his social statuses. They had kept their country's defense with strong mind and hardware, keeping at the same time, ever-neutral stance in the international relations. This also reminded me the need of extremely strong mind to keep the international border between Israel and surrounding Islamic countries when I was living in Jordan in 1971, as a testing engineer participating on the satellite communication earth station project. It not only required strong will of keeping the boarder but also sad sacrifices that struck people's heart hardly in deep sorrow. All these feelings are hardly understood for us Japanese, who usually live in the midst of peace and happiness without having immediate danger and fear from the neighboring enemy. Switzerland is the mountainous country, very few flat land they have, this makes them to use the land maximum. The hunger of the jet fighter was made deep inside the cave made in the mountains rising from the deep valley where only narrow strip of runway was made. When jet fighter came out of the hunger, it crosses normal road. The normal road was blocked while the fighter jet crosses the road. For most of the Japanese, Switzerland is considered as tourism countries of great mountains full of natural beauty and scale, and delicious cheese fondue, but how many Japanese people knows, it has another side of face that looks very hard working on living and defending their own country with strong mind.by whole people of the nation.

My first visit to Switzerland was from summer to Winter period in 1973. For one thing,I was so moved by their unbeatable strong mind to defend their country, I also enjoyed so much visiting great many wonderful places that everyone knows very well as one of the ordinal tourists during my stay in the country. I was equally amazed the good accessibility to every tourist spots around the country, and of the practices in everything from daily life to the professional business matter. And most important thing in my life is having had one of my best friend Mr. S of Swiss PTT of the time. He still write me constantly each year. Besides him and his family, It was also that first visit to Switzerland that I had acquainted Mr. Kippel and his family, Aebli & Cycy and other who still getting in touch with me time to time.

13/Aug/'73 Rinzo@ Leuk Swiss (Updated on 15/Jan/'06)

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