Leisure
Main article: Sport in SwitzerlandThe close proximity to the mountains in all areas in Switzerland has greatly influenced the leisure of Swiss people. The growth of ski and mountaineering resorts in the Swiss mountains have caused the Swiss to become very sports conscious. Apart from skiing and mountaineering, Swiss-style wrestling (Schwingen) is still popular in rural areas. Sunday-morning shooting sessions and Hornussen (a kind of Alpine baseball) are two other traditional Swiss sports. Shooting, tennis, golf, ice hockey, football (soccer), basketball, handball, gliding, paragliding, sailing, swimming, volleyball, floorball, mountain biking and hiking in the forests and mountains are all popular pastimes. Fishing is commonplace in the many lakes and rivers, but often a licence is necessary. Many mountain lakes freeze over during winter and are used for curling, horse and dog racing, particularly around St. Moritz.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the word leisure:
“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“Some are “industrious,” and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,—work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)