The Gotthard base tunnel cuts 35 miles through the Swiss Alps, providing a high-speed rail link for goods normally carried by a million lorries a year.



The leaders of France, Germany, and Italy were among 1,100 guests and 300 members of the world's media invited to share in this feat of engineering and technological triumph, marked by a lavish opening ceremony at the fairground Rynaecht in Erstfeld, as envisaged by German theatre director Volker Hesse.

And it was, um, a bit weird.