Swiss and Switzerland

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.

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, I took this snap of an uncovered bridge over the Thur river while en route to the Rhine village of Stein am Rhein in Switzerland,

Stein am Rhein is a very unusual medieval Swiss village, in which a majority of the historical buildings have painted facades. I’ll show more snaps in upcoming blogs, but first a view of Stein am Rhein from high on a hilltop, looking south:

In this region there is no way to describe the border between Switzerland and Germany except to say highly irregular. Sometimes Germany is north of the Rhein, sometimes it’s south, same with Switzerland. The border takes zillions of twists and turns.

Found a terrific iPad app called Autostretcher. Seems to be the best one I’ve used so far. Just cover a region with lots of snaps and the app stitches them together into one snap, as shown here:

Continuing the series, a one-lane bridge over the mighty river Thur in north central Switzerland,