With the first few puffs, the slow-smoking competition at the Regis restaurant in Muotathal can begin. This year, the Swiss championship was organised by the Pipe Club Innerschwyz.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The Swiss Slow-Smoking Pipe Championship attracts around 50 enthusiasts, with the winner being whoever manages to keep the embers alight for the longest. While the world moves ever faster, for a few hours there are those who choose to slow down. An encounter with a community that seems somewhat out of step with the times.
We went to the Selgis restaurant in Muotathal, central Switzerland, to meet the pipe smokers. It’s the middle of nowhere. On one side, a tip for inert materials; on the other, a shooting range; and in between, a road that winds its way into the mountains of canton Schwyz. The competition starts at 2pm, but some people arrive hours in advance. There are members of the Pipe Clubs from Uster, Lucerne, Kreuzlingen, Küssnacht and Biel/Bienne, as well as those from the PC Wild Hogs in Ibach, the Heavy Briar Smoking Club in St Gallen and the Pipapassione Turi in Locarno. And finally, members of the PC Innerschwyz, who, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their foundation, have organised this year’s 51st edition of the Swiss Slow-Smoking Pipe Championship.
It’s a sort of reunion among long-standing friends. A handshake, a hug, and then off to the judges’ table. You don’t collect a race number, but a slip of paper confirming payment of the CHF30 ($36) entry fee.
Bruno Ege of the Pfeifen Club in Lucerne and Claudia Baggenstoss of the Wild Hogs Club in Ibach (Schwyz).
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Three long rows of tables have been set up in the restaurant dining room. Some people are wondering where the best spot is: is it better to have a clear view of the stopwatch or to stay out of the draughts? The Pipapassione members choose the middle row. They leave a piece of paper with their names on it on the table and then go for lunch.
A pipe to remember a friend
At the end of the meal, the pipes finally emerge from pockets and bags. They are the symbol of a time almost lost, of a contemplative everyday life, shrouded in wisps of smoke. Johanna Zeder, born in 1942, also made her way to Muotathal this Sunday in early September. She is here with friends from the Biel/Bienne Pipe Club. “I live on the edge of the woods. In the evening, I sit on a bench, light my pipe and contemplate nature,” she says. “Sometimes I watch a marten or a fox darting by. Other times, it’s the moon that comes to greet me.”
Zeder has been taking part in slow-smoking competitions for 20 years; it was her husband who entered her for the first time. “You can smoke just as well as the other women taking part,” he said to her one day while she was waiting for him outside with the dog. “My husband used to smoke while driving,” she explains, “and I had to load and light his pipe for him. That’s how I learnt to smoke.”
The competition takes place at the Selgis restaurant, next to the Muotathal shooting range. Many participants arrive early and have lunch there. Many of them already know one another and make the most of the time to chat and reminisce about past events.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The competition will take place later inside the restaurant, but this Sunday the weather is still fine and pleasantly warm. After lunch, many people smoke a pipe outdoors, without a thought for the competition.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
But it could also be a cigarette, as in the case of these three women (two sisters and a friend). They didn’t have to travel far: they come from the canton of Schwyz and are members of the Wild Hogs pipe smokers’ club in Ibach.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Each pre-packaged plastic bag contains 3 grams of tobacco, 2 matches and a pipe tamper. The materials are strictly regulated and identical for all participants. Participants are not permitted to bring their own materials, in order to ensure a level playing field.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Walter Kaiser is a member of the Innerschweiz Pipe Club, which is organising the Swiss Championship this year. Here, he is busy handing out bags containing the competition materials to the participants.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The competition begins at two o’clock sharp. The participants may open the plastic bag and begin to shred, knead and roll the tobacco before filling the pipe. Everyone has their own technique. The way the pipe is prepared can make or break the contest. After five minutes, the pipe must be ready.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Participants then have one minute to light their pipe using one or both matches. After that, they are not permitted to relight it under any circumstances. Any unused matches are collected by the judges.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The numerous prizes on offer are displayed on a table in the restaurant. Participants may choose their prize in the order determined by the final rankings
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Silence reigns in the restaurant: all the smokers are focused on their pipes. Even the lighting has been kept to a minimum, so that they can better observe and assess the embers in the pipe bowl.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Shortly after the cigarettes are lit and the first puffs are taken, wisps of smoke begin to gather above the competitors’ heads.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
After ten minutes, participants are allowed to have a drink for the first time.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The tobacco in the pipe is gently tamped down continuously, and the ash is gradually removed from the bowl. As can be seen here, it is collected on a folded sheet of paper.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The smoke continues to rise. A representative of Pipapassione Turi, in the Canton of Ticino, bathed in an afternoon sunbeam. The pipe smoke is not inhaled into the lungs, but held in the mouth to savour the flavour and aromas of the tobacco.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Csaba Borbély’s technique for removing ash from the pipe bowl. After each brief use of the tamper, he wipes it on a sheet of paper. Slowly and methodically, this pattern of greyish dots of ash takes shape.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Csaba Borbély is taking the last few puffs from his pipe. In the background, the judge is watching his every move closely. When the embers die down and the pipe appears to be empty, Csaba has managed to smoke for 2 hours, 12 minutes and 27 seconds with just 3 grams of tobacco.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Accompanying her is Patrick Eruimy, a retired policeman. At first glance, he resembles Simenon’s fictional police detective Jules Maigret, with a handsome raven-black moustache, a hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth: but not just any pipe. “It’s the one that belonged to my friend Jean-Pierre Métres, a member of the Biel/Bienne Police Force like me, who passed away a few years ago,” Eruimy says. “During our get-togethers, we always sat next to each other, and the one I’m smoking now was his. I smoke it in his memory. It’s as if he were sitting next to me again.”
Michele Luconi, from the Pipapassione club in Locarno, says he only smokes his pipe at lunchtime, stepping out into the open air where he can relax. “Mine isn’t a compulsive habit like smoking cigarettes. I smoke mindfully and never at home or in the presence of my children,” he says. Like other participants in the competition, Luconi is aware of the risks of smoking.
Csaba Borbély, from the PC Innerschwyz, also smokes only occasionally. “I lit my pipe for the first time in 2023, when I made my debut in a slow-smoking competition,” he recalls. “I don’t smoke in everyday life.” To avoid exposing his family to smoke and disturbing the neighbours, he has installed an extraction system in his garage, where he practises.
Tonino Bucher, Lucerne Pipe Club, and Sandra Bosshard, Uster Pipe Club. She finished third in the overall standings with a time of 1 hour, 58 minutes and 10 seconds.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Three grams and two matches
Everything is ready in the restaurant dining room. The doors and windows are closed to prevent draughts that might affect the competition. The participants are seated at their places. On the table in front of them lies a blank A4 sheet of paper and a Savinelli pipe, model 101 rusticated, the only type permitted in the Swiss Championship. Walter Kaiser, a member of the organising club, hands out plastic bags containing three grams of ‘Innerschwyzer Chriesihit’ tobacco, a wooden pipe stem 10cm long and 15mm in diameter, a box containing two matches and a paper napkin bearing the Swiss cross. Official slow-smoking competitions are held in accordance with standardised rules, such as those laid down by the International Committee of Pipe Clubs.
The competition director is Edgar Auf der Maur, a founding member and president of PC Innerschwyz. “Please check the quality of the two matches and, if necessary, ask for them to be replaced,” he says. Meanwhile, silence has fallen over the room, although the odd joke flies back and forth amongst those who take the competition less seriously.
At the stroke of 2pm, Auf der Maur gives the signal for the competition to begin. The competitors open the envelopes containing three grams of tobacco, which they place on the sheet of paper.
Sandra Bosshard, from the Uster Pipe Club, takes a few pinches, places them in the palm of her hand and begins to crumble them. “Today’s tobacco is rather sticky and the results in training have been disappointing. Well, let’s see how it goes,” she says before the competition. “Slow smoking is a science in its own right, and you have to work out how the embers behave with the tobacco.” When asked what her secrets are, she replies with a smile: “They’re secrets, after all – you don’t reveal them.”
Working with the embers
The stopwatch keeps ticking. Of the five minutes allowed to load the pipe, four have already passed, but Bosshard continues undeterred to crumble the tobacco. Once the time is up, the chairman of the jury starts a new countdown: one minute to light the pipe with the two matches.
“Turn off the lights,” orders Auf der Maur. The room is plunged into semi-darkness. Wafts of smoke rise from the tables and the air becomes unbreathable. The competition judges move along the rows of tables, ensuring the rules are followed: the use of a pipe cleaner is permitted only while the pipe is in the mouth; blowing into the bowl, tapping the pipe and drinking are prohibited during the first ten minutes.
The 2026 Swiss champion is Csaba Borbély. Originally from Hungary, he is a member of the Pipe Club Innerschwyz. He smoked his pipe for 2 hours, 12 minutes and 27 seconds. On the right is Johanna Zeder of the Pipe Club Biel, the grande dame of the Swiss pipe-smoking scene, who came third in the women’s category.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
After 20 minutes and 23 seconds, Priscilla from the Wild Hogs PC raises her hand. Her pipe has gone out. She signs the scorecard with the recorded time and her race is over. Now she’d like to go outside for a cigarette, but she has to sort out the rankings. Her name is the first at the bottom, in 54th place. The slow-smoking competition is the opposite of a normal race: whoever finishes first loses.
Five minutes later, it’s Tatjana, her club mate, who throws in the towel. And little by little, more and more chairs remain empty in the hall, while the outdoor area comes to life. About 20 competitors make it past the one-hour mark. After two hours, only two remain: Bruno Kuster of PC Uster and Csaba Borbély of PC Innerschwyz. They sit almost opposite each other and challenge one another with puffs of smoke.
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Swiss tobacco fields
Borbély takes short puffs. He doesn’t speak or look around. His attention is focused solely on the embers, which he tends to by constantly turning the pipe in the brazier. It takes patience, finesse and meticulous care to make three grams of tobacco last for over two hours. The trick? “Keep the embers as small as possible, without letting them go out,” says the man of Hungarian origin, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
Borbély exudes a serene calm. Rather than a challenge with Bruno Kuster, his seems to be a contest between himself and the embers. And indeed, when he is left alone and the silence in the restaurant is broken by a round of applause, Borbély remains unperturbed. He continues to stare into the stove, as if in a kind of dialogue with the embers. His stopwatch stops at 2 hours, 12 minutes and 27 seconds. Only then does he accept the handshakes and pats on the back. But he does so without fanfare, offering just a faint, shy smile. His real goal was to reach three hours – a time he’d come close to achieving during his training sessions in his garage at home.
The funny thing is that Borbély doesn’t smoke, except during competitions or when he’s with friends. Well, he’ll console himself in his own way: next time, he’ll be able to treat them to a glass of whisky. It’s the prize that, as Swiss slow-smoking champion, he has chosen from among those on display.
Tobacco arrived in Switzerland around 1560 and, from 1680, began to be cultivated, initially in Ticino and northwestern Switzerland, before production became concentrated in the Broye plain and the Wynental.
While snuff was the predominant form of tobacco in the 18th century, pipes and cigars became popular in the 19th century, only to be supplanted by cigarettes in the 20th century. During the Second World War, under the Wahlen Plan, the area under cultivation doubled to 1,472 hectares.
In the post-war period, smoking enjoyed its heyday, associated with notions of elegance and freedom and with iconic figures such as Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Gottlieb Duttweiler, who were cigar smokers, or Max Frisch and Otto Stich, who were pipe smokers.
From 1964, as the first scientific evidence emerged, smoking became increasingly linked to serious health problems. In 1978, health warnings appeared on cigarette packets in Switzerland; in 1991 a ban on television advertising was introduced, in 2005 smoking compartments on trains were abolished, and in 2010 the federal law on protection against passive smoking in public places came into force.
(Source: Swiss National MuseumExternal link)
Edited by Daniele Mariani. Translated from Italian by Julia Bassam, sub-edited by ts
