Swiss and Switzerland

I had a very intense bittersweet moment here, just as I was taking this snap. A big black crow came up to me – which crows very rarely do. Somehow we connected, albeit briefly, on that part of consciousness where man and crow overlap. After this spiritual bonding I tossed him a huge pecan nut from a bag I was carrying. Instead of enjoying it, he just carried it off to one of the bushes you see in this snap, and promptly buried it.  Did he truly think it was his nut – maybe a nut so good it could not be eaten today but best saved for a more festive time? Was he just showing me how much he cherished the nut, only to return to eat it after I left? Or . . . was he contributing to the foodstocks of all the crows in Le Locle – and if he was, would that somehow reduce the pleasure I took from this man/crow nutgiving gesture? Or rather, should I judge a community spirit like that to be both admirable as well as somewhat lacking in mankind?

What is worth mentioning now is that the famous science fiction writer Stephen Baxter has postulated that after the evolutionary fall of man, crows will ascend and become the dominant species. Maybe this little man/crow event today is a little evolutionary kick along that inevitable journey?

Continuing the series,

 

If you’ve spent anytime skimming through my blog, you’d’ve (how’s that for a contraction!) picked up that I love street art.

Well, that doesn’t mean I love all street art. Here’s a snap from what directly in front of the main train station in the city of Biel/Bienne:

When you consider the location of this piece in the direct pedestrian traffic flow then it sort of makes sense. But, somehow its very tight integration into the landscape – no “buffer” to soften the effect . . . well, I’m not sure what it’s missing, but in its entirety, for me personally it is a bit lacking.

In Geneva

A public mausoleum in Jardin des Alpes, a city garden in Geneva:

OK, I can’t really comment about modern art because I don’t understand it. At least not the modern art currently on display at the Migros Museum:

OK, I don’t understand the art – but I do like the way this snap turned out. So, maybe that is one way to define good modern art, whether you are happy with the photos you take of it?

The town of Crans Montana is actually located high in the mountains of southern Switzerland, nevertheless even at altitude there are plenty of pretty lakes:

Crans-Montana, in the canton of Valais in Switzerland – home to the rich and famous, movie stars like Roger Moore, restauranteers like Michel Roux.

But to me, a rubber matt that covered the ground in a town square was the most interesting:

The pattern is 100% squares, they only look distorted due to the camera.

In Arbon

On top of the Gurten, near Bern

Near the Gurtenbahn

Just outside what would have been the medieval village wall,

Continuing the series,

Continuing the series,

If you are not from Switzerland, you MUST exercise extreme caution before visiting this village.

Otherwise, there is a real possibility that your brain will explode!

Stein am Rhein is a little medieval village in north central Switzerland, and it’s famous for its medival houses that are elaborately painted, as these snaps show.

Here is one of many houses:

And here is a close-up of the bits that are elaborately painted:

 

Continuing the series,

If you are not from Switzerland, you MUST exercise extreme caution before visiting this village.

Otherwise, there is a real possibility that your brain will explode!

Stein am Rhein is a little medieval village in north central Switzerland, and it’s famous for its medival houses that are elaborately painted, as these snaps show.

Here is one of many houses:

And here is a close-up of the bits that are elaborately painted:

 

Continuing the series, Le Landeron is a medieval village in central western Swiss canton of Neuchatel that is one of a very tiny minority of Swiss villages in which most of the houses have been equipped with medieval dormer cranes, used for lifting things to the highest level:

For a long time I wondered about this, until I spoke with a historian in the German village of Villingen-Schweningen. He told me that people are lazy, if they can they prefer to keep their grain in their basement, and only in cases where the water table was very high were the higher floors of buildings used for grain storage. Et viola, dormer cranes.