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:
“Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption ... is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“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)
“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)