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The Great Escape! 200 Brits have disappeared overnight from Verbier Hotels. Their escape was camouflaged by the fog. Uneaten meals were found outside their rooms. No one knows where they are! I wonder if they have been digging a tunnel, or are trekking through the snow to France ^^

https://www.20min.ch/story/200-brite...r-946183998060
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(Thanks, Klostergirl)

This deserves a thread of its own.

Makes no sense. How have 200 people who prob don’t know each other coordinated this themselves from their rooms. Then where have they gone? If they don’t have cars there are not many flights. Add to that you don’t need to disappear as you can get permission already to travel home.

Not much about Britain makes sense recently, so this is is quite within the norm really

Oh look how organized Brits can be! They should all go into politics, all 200 of them.

Funny. An other headline asks "Is there a finder's reward for finding a Verbier-Brit?".
I thought Euro-tunnel and ferries are also closed? So they're gonna swim home? I think Tom was on to something re refugee boats after all. But probably they're just skiing in France now.
Hard to believe, hotel staff did not notice movement of 200 people who were not supposed to be seen anywhere but on their balconies.

However, if they ran, it means they got a dine-n-dash case waiting for them here next year.

Can't access 20 Min due to ad. blocker- could you do a very short summary, please? Maybe they all walked up to Chamonix to go and stay with other Brits there

Ferries & Eurotunnel are in operation from France to UK
Apparently a Swiss school teacher who worked in the UK is the mastermind behind this, she lives near the border & is friends with the border guards. She invited them round on Boxing Day so the escape was easy

post 1

yes- but perhaps a bit more detailed? Thanks.

You can always pause your ad blocker but all you will find out is that there is not more there than what olygirl wrote. 20 minutes is bad but not the Sun.

Copied from 20 Minuten into Deepl:

About 400 English tourists should have spent their vacations in Verbier in quarantine.The federal government had ordered appropriate measures on Monday because of the virus mutation. Now about half of the British have secretly left the village.

On Monday, the Confederation has imposed a retroactive quarantine for entrants from England because of the mutation of the coronavirus. This had consequences especially for the ski resort Verbier in the Valais. As reported by the "SonntagsZeitung" (paid article), of the 400 affected English tourists known to the municipality, half left the village in a night and fog action - before the quarantine period expired.

"Many of them stayed in quarantine for a day before leaving unnoticed under cover of darkness," said Jean-Marc Sandoz, communications officer for the Valais commune of Bagnes, which includes Verbier. The hoteliers first noticed the clandestine departure because their calls to the quarantine rooms repeatedly went unanswered or the meals deposited outside the rooms had not been touched.

Where the tourists disappeared to is unclear - there were no flights between Switzerland and the UK at the time. "This was the worst week our community has ever experienced," Sandoz said. The community felt abandoned by the federal government and the canton - and in an "unprecedented situation."


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

__________________
Faith isn't about everything turning out okay. Faith is about being okay no matter how things turn out.

wow thanks olygirl. Wow.

Last Christmas
I gave you my heart
but the very next day
you ran far away

This year
to save me from tears
I'll get a vaccination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gmARGvPlI

What's news-worthy about that? Pretty standard with Swiss hotel food in my experience.

Apparently, one of them was spotted on Lake Greifensee this morning...

Is that a British Verbier fat man filming, wow


when did this disappearing act take place btw, date?

my hypothesis:

1. their british ski holiday tour operator organized a bus to france without telling authorities and picked them up in the night. It's a quick jump over the border from verbier.

2. the hotel is being all like "oh we didn't see anything" despite 200 suitcases rolling in the night because they want return customers back next year

3. the canton will not make much noise about it because the problem is gone really, they just went on a bus and went abroad without coming in contact with the population, besides these people were in quarantine and not even ill with corona. To sum up: victimless crime, shared economic interests with the hotel.

4. the confederation will say it's up to the canton to enforce the rules, and they're not going to throw a diplomatic temper tantrum over this becuase it's not worth it for the same reasons as above.

5. the channel is actually open for lorry drivers if they get a quick test done even from the UK to France, but I don't think the UK has any reason to test the incoming drivers, and for passengers I don't think you are in the same queue as the lorries so it's possibly not even that crazy, even if they have to all get a quick test.

Umm, what sort of bus holds 200 obese Brits?

Tom

Try reading the article.

Anyway, Friday (why am I not surprised)

Tom

That would have to be a couple of buses. I know, we are used to field trips.

Eta - Eh, just saw Tom's crass post.

Ho, ho, ho.

Tom