It's the Little Things That Matter: January 2010

T came to visit me on her spring break! I was so excited to see her!

When T and I were talking about what to see and do she requested that we see some of Robert Maillart's work, in particular, the Salginatobel Bridge! This sounded perfect to me: the structural engineer and the architect were about to play Bridge Paparazzi! We started our quest in Zürich, with the Stauffacherbrücke.

This was Maillart's first bridge, built in 1899, and it still followed the conventions of the time, which were to hide the structural aspects of the bridge with ornament to make it aesthetically pleasing.

We continued on to Bahnhof Stadelhofen to drool over the work of Santiago Calatrava. Calatrava was trained as an Architect in Spain, then later earned his engineering degree at the ETH. His studio is in Zürich, and every year he gives at least one lecture at the ETH. I was so glad to have been able to attend his lecture earlier in the year!

Later, we went to see Asterix and Obelix in the theater! Movies in Switzerland are shown in their original language and subtitled, typically (at least in Zürich) in both German and French. The exception to this is kids' movies, as they understand it would be difficult for younger children to follow. We decided that a kid's movie would be best for us for this reason: this way one of could listen and the other could read! It worked out quite well, and the movie was really cute!

The next morning we hopped on a train towards Graubünden.

Maillartbrücke in entweder Altendorf oder Lachen (1940) ...auf unsere Weg nach Schiers u. Klosters (d.h. Salginatobelbrücke u. Sunnibergbrücke (Menn))

We arrived in Schiers, an adorable little town in Graubünden. We walked around a bit to get our bearings, and

From here we needed to take a Postbus to the bridge: it was too far for us to walk, at least if we wanted to get to our other destinations as well! The Postbus here was really small, about the size of an extended bus. We were the first passengers on. The bus driver was really nice, and explained, somewhat apologetically, that the next stop was the grade school: he was bringing all the kids home for their lunch hour! As all the kids piled on we felt like we were barging in on a school bus, even though we knew that really we weren't.

It was so sweet: he knew all the kids by name, as he made this route several times each day. He dropped each kid off at their homes, to be met by waving moms and/or grandparents, with a cheerful "see you in an hour!"

Finally he dropped us off a short walk from the bridge, so that we could get a great view of it. He warned us that he'd be back in less than an hour so he could get the kids back to school on time, but that if we wanted to stay later it would be a while before the next bus would pass through. We thanked him and hopped off to see what we'd come here to see: the Salginatobelbrücke!

One of my favorite things here was the sound of the cowbells in the distance in all directions! Here we were, marvelling at the steepness and depth of this valley, and how high up we were, and yet the cows were all so far above us! Their bells sounded like an orchestra of windchimes.