“We don’t want to become like Disneyland, of course – but it’s important to be open to new ideas, to bring new life to the village.”
Bänz Simmen, a local guide with an irrepressible energy and staggering depth of knowledge about Andermatt and the surrounding area, relays this at the end of our 90-minute tour around the Swiss Alpine village. By this point, I have lost all feeling in my feet – it is -10C – on a walk that was meant to last an hour. But Bänz was just bursting with interesting information, from the region’s ice age history and unique geography that meant travellers passed through from all directions, to the village’s more recent transformation from a military base to a world-class ski resort, that it was worth sacrificing some toe sensitivity for.
