Assumption Holiday Fills Valais Churches and the Last Festival Trains

SION - Assumption Day emptied offices in Valais and Ticino and filled the morning Masses in Sion, Sierre and the side valleys. It is a public holiday in those cantons and a working Saturday in much of Protestant Switzerland, a split that still organises the country more than outsiders expect.

Trains toward the Valais resorts were heavy. So were the trains toward Locarno, where the film festival was on its last full Saturday. Two Catholic calendars, two crowds, one rail network.

A holy day beside a red carpet

Locarno's close follows in our Sunday packing-up note. Valais will go back to slope-safety talk on Monday, the same talk as in our later glacier-season report.