Swiss Review 5/2020

Swiss Review / September 2020 / No.5 10 Report STÉPHANE HERZOG I arrived in La Brévine on 2 July, amid blustery weather. The valley of the same namewas cloaked in fog. As I got off the bus in the village square, I sud- denly shivered. Was my summer at- tire – a t-shirt and a light raincoat – going to be enough? The digital ther- mometer hanging in the square was showing just 18 degrees Celsius. It was the La Brévine effect! Perched at just over 1,000metres in altitudewithin a depression in the Juramountains, this commune in the canton of Neuchâtel holds several records for its cold weather. Amongst them is the lowest temperature ever recorded by a Me- teoSwiss local weather station: on 12 January 1987, the thermometer reached -41.8 degrees, setting the re- cord for the coldest inhabited place in Switzerland. According to Jean-Mau- rice Gasser, the mayor of La Brévine: “It’s coldest first thing in the morning, when the sun is coming out. You would expect it to get warmer, but the sun’s rays clashwith the cold from the ground.” In the streets of this little village, crossed by four roads, a summertime stroller will find themselves sliding into a frosty fantasy. There is a shop which rents out cross-country skis on wheels during the summer, named Si- beria Sports. A hostel, closed at the moment, bears the name Loup blanc (White wolf). Behind it is the Alaska furniture shop, and Isba, the Russian for a log hut, an old restaurant. But the village’s icy reputation has not always been so well celebrated: “its reputa- tion made people think that the peo- Cold weather: the trademark of La Brévine, even in summer Set in the Neuchâtel mountains, the village holds the record for being the coldest inhabited place in Switzerland. Global warming may be disrupting its snowfall and low temperature records, but La Brévine is still drawing in the crowds.