Letter from the President
August 1st Celebration

Dear Friends:

We had an excellent fondue dinner on March first. For those of you lucky enough to attend, you can verify that excellent ingredients make for an excellent fondue.

We are fortunate that as the Research Triangle Park continues to grow we are able to obtain more and more Swiss items locally. Point in fact is the Whole Foods Grocery in Durham now carries Fribourg Vacherin. We no longer need to drag kilos of cheese through customs to get a fix of Moitié – Moitié.

Here is an excellent opportunity to stretch your legs as well as expand your mind coming up in a little more than a week. Jean-Michel Margot will be leading a geology based hike through the Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area near Hillsborough, NC.

The hike will begin at the entrance to the park on Saturday, April 26 at 2:00pm. Please be a little early – it is always better than being a little late.

For those of you who can make the leisurely hike, expect to learn about this interesting section of local geography. On top of learning about the formation of the mountain during the Paleozic era, we will be learning about the local microclimate and how it allows some mountain plants like Catawba rhododendron, galax, and mountain witch-alder to thrive in the Piedmont.

If you are interested in doing a little research ahead of time we suggest looking at this web-site:

http://www.ils.unc.edu/parkproject/visit/ocmo/home.html

For the August 1st get together, we have decided to return to one of the original locations of the party – William B. Umstead State park. This excellent location selected by Jean-Marc Bovet has it all – a covered picnic shelter, restrooms, and hiking trails galore. We have reserved the large shelter at the Reedy Creek Section for Saturday, August 2nd from 4:00pm onwards.

As in the last few years we will have excellent Swiss-style sausages. However, this time we are thinking of using the Cervelat to make salad and only grilling the Bratwurst. Don’t worry, we’ll put some Cervelat aside for those of you that prefer your Cervelat grilled. The fees for this meal will cover the sausages and the drinks provided but feel free to bring a side dish or a dessert for the celebration.

The Isenrich Family will provide appropriate music and we’ll have an August 1st address by none other than our Bundespräsident Couchepin. The presentation will be in English and will kick-off the festivities at 5:00pm. People that miss the first part of the presentation can always hit rewind and hear the whole presentation after dinner.

For those of you interested in helping with the set-up, please show up by 4:00pm to help with decorating and setting up the tables. Don’t forget that the park is open all day and this would be an excellent opportunity to spend the day in the woods hiking before settling down with friends to have a good meal and conversation. To that end we have attached a park map to the letter and invite you to visit the park’s website for more information on what the park has to offer:

http://www.ils.unc.edu/parkproject/visit/wium/home.html

The club is holding the cost of the August 1st celebration to $15 for adults and teenagers and $13 for children age 7 to 12. Make your check payable to Swiss Club and send it together with the registration stub before the July 24 deadline to Hanny Isenrich. Her mailing address is just above the registration stub. As we are a little early with this announcement a postcard style mailing will be sent mid-July with any updates. Please note that this and any other recent letter is available from the club website:

www.sccnc.org ... you are here :-)

We hope you can make it to the hike next weekend and the August 1st celebration.

For the Board of Directors,

Stephan Baumann
Club President

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