This afternoon the government will announce what further restrictions will be lifted as of May 31st. Most likely restaurants will be allowed to fully reopen; home office will cease to be mandatory; up to thirty people will be allowed to meet privately indoors and fifty outdoors; and larger events will be allowed to take place with an audience. We will share the announcement with you later in the day.
The day after the party was quite a wake up call for the city. They had to clean up an extra 12 tonnes of garbage left in the streets by FCL fans. Two areas of the city were mainly affected. Vögeligarten where fans had set up large TV screens, a generator for electricity, and had copious amounts of beer and other drinks. Because the city had not provided any extra toilets, the fans relieved themselves on the library’s walls and defecated in between parked cars. On the Allmend where 10 000 fans partied well into the night, the situation was even worse. Pyrotechnics were released in the crowds, causing mass panic movements, miraculously noone was injured. The town is being blamed for not having provided portable toilets, also not having enough police to deal with the crowd, nor any medical teams to help deals with injuries or seriously drunk people.
On Sunday a tragic cable car accident in Stresa on the Italian side of the Laggo Maggiore led to 14 deaths. The traction cable pulling the cable car broke and the emergency breaks did not function, leading the cable car to go backwards downhill gaining speed before being propelled into the air. It fell about 15 meters to the ground where it rolled several times before crashing to a stop in trees. It now seems as if a special metal fork usually put in place during maintenance work to prevent the emergency brakes from working had been (inadvertently?) left in place. Three arrests in connection to the accident have been made.
It is official: presidents Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on June 16th. The last time the heads of Russia and America met on Switzerland was in 1985 when presidents Reagan and Gorbatschow met. The city has just three weeks to get itself ready for this international political event.
