"sign at the top of Mount Titlis tells the story of Chinese gymnast Donghua Li being inspired to win Olympic gold after seeing a Buddha-like shape in the rock."
I read this as: "we, the swiss are actually responsible for this athlete winning this medal. If it wasn't for our rock, she would never have won."
Anyone got any more examples (I have seen many in the news) of exaggerated credit and self importance for world events ?
For the record, the link was wrong on swiss info (I originally found it following the russian tourists link). When I posted and followed it, the reference had been corrected. Then I tried to delete the hypertext link, but was unable to do this as the delete-link button did not appear in the edit window.
I've heard that the latest Mars missions were inspired by the Planetenweg on Uetliberg. The typical example of foreign policy that is usually praised at the homefront is the Middle East conflict, but it's not that simple to judge its consistency and impact.
Misplaced ambition and an exaggerated sense of their importance in the airline pecking-order and value of ZRH as a hub prompted Swissair to launch a disasterous acquisition and self-built alliance strategy.
That could almost be a thread in itself..although we have one for UBS already. Still, pride before fall stories apply in every country, its not a local phenomenon. However, accountability for such falls seems to have greater consequences elsewhere.
It is generally accepted that inability to conceive the failure of the swiss carrier and the arrogance of its expansion plans ( assuming Switzerland to be strategically significant the centre of everything important), went a long way to causing it's downfall. The Conti attempt at recovery was too little too late. It is fair to say that the board of swissair (which at its peak had 29 members and not one had airline management experience) was ineffective and fail to instigate auditing and balances (for 'twas their job) that would have flagged severity of the problems earlier.
I know we are going to have a number of "it had nothing to do with the nature of the swiss people" nay-sayers but unfortunately it did. It was a national flag carrier and shareholders were slow to even conceive that it could be in trouble and asked few questions. The board was rife with conflicts of interest, and the previous CEO that embarked upon the ill-fated Hunter plan continued unchallenged for over five years, before his policy of acquiring loss-making airlines with borrowed money finally blew up in his face....