In winter the roads to and from the small remote village of Niederwald in the Canton of Wallis/Valais are deep with snow.
Jacob Ritz had to take his dog, Bruno, out for a short walk before crossing the High Street (Hauptstrasse) to his one-man Tourist Office, filled with racks of local tourism brochures. He always took his dog to his small storefront office, because he felt 'safe' with him there. Bruno was a pure race Jura Hunter and had an excellent sense of smell which would help him in stalking and ultimately devouring any prey he would come across, mostly rodents. Jacob was very proud of his dog who always greeted tourists and local residents alike with great enthusiasm.
Jacob was bored with his work. It's not that many tourists found their way to Niederwald in winter; there was no downhill ski-ing available or other outdoor sports such as ice-skating, curling, or tobogganing. There were, however, a few cross-country ski-ing trails in the higher reaches used mostly by the villagers during the long winter weekends. Summer was the “High Season” if it could be called that! Niederwald's main claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of the famous international hotelier, César Ritz, born there in 1850. He didn't live in Niederwald for very long however. He completed his schooling in Sion, the capital of the Canton and thereafter did an apprenticeship as a waiter at the Hôtel des Trois Couronnes et Poste in Brig before taking off for Paris in 1867. There he opened his famous Hôtel Ritz on Place Vendôme in 1898 and not much later the Ritz in London on Green Park in 1905. Of course many other fine hotels all over the world carry his name and today are operated by the Ritz-Carlton Group as part of the Marriott Hotel chain. César Ritz died in 1918 just at the end of the 'Great War' and is buried in Niederwald. Much later the house in which he was born, had been turned into a museum. It has become, during the summer months, a pilgrimage site for would-be hoteliers who attend Switzerland's many Hotel Management Colleges. Jacob being a distant relative of César and head of the Tourist Office, runs it.
Jacob had a much more important concern for the next summer season: In recent years packs of alpine wolves had returned to the Canton from Val d'Aosta, Italy and the Savoy in France and roamed freely, attacking herds of sheep grazing on the surrounding mountainsides. Wolves had been driven to extinction in Switzerland over a century ago! Even though none of the villagers (mostly farmers) had been harmed as of yet, they were nevertheless in an uproar. The cantonal government did not compensate the farmers for destroyed sheep which meant lost revenue for the farmers. It was forbidden to shoot the wolves unless it could be proven that an individual wolf had killed at least 35 sheep. Jacob was particularly worried about the negative publicity that would inevitably keep tourists away from Niederwald.
This afternoon Jacob would be training down to Brig to attend a meeting at the Hôtel des Trois Couronnes et Poste being held under the direction of the Federal Bureau of the Environment. Ecologist groups such as the Swiss World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace would be in attendance as well. Sheep farmers, who fear that their looses could rise exponentially if wolves start breeding in Switzerland as expected, will also have the chance to argue their case. The aim is to come up with a revised concept before the sheep get put out to pasture in the summer.
