The St. Gotthard massif is a mythical place for many Swiss people. It’s a place where their ancestors created the Swiss Confederation, where they fought against the Habsburgs and where William Tell aimed his crossbow at apples and governors. For Beat Guggisberg the mountain railroad is a reminder of childhood vacations, but in a sense the St. Gotthard is also his mountain of destiny.
Chauve-souris, bats. That’s the first memory Beat Guggisberg has of the Gotthard. As a child he and his family once stayed at a campsite on the other side of the mountain massif. That’s where French-speaking children taught him the word for “bat”. "Our vacation started as soon as we left the Gotthard Pass behind," says the head of Technical Insurance at Allianz Suisse. The Gotthard: the frontier between school and freedom.
Back then he never dreamed that the Alpine massif would become the focus of his professional life. Today the 56-year-old knows the Gotthard like the back of his hand. Since construction of the longest rail tunnel in the world began in 1999, Guggisberg has driven into the mountains more than 100 times in his capacity as an Allianz risk consultant. But it’s never become routine. "When you’re standing in a freshly breached tunnel section and hear the rock groaning and creaking around you, it still makes you cringe, no matter how many times you’ve heard it."
