Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Samedan

I had been off work (part time layoff type of thing) so I had made a couple of short trips just around. This town is called Samedan; it is a mountian resort town in Graubunden, the big mountainous part of Switzerland to the southeast. It was pretty much off season for them, so most of the stuff was closed, but it didn't matter to me, I was just looking around and riding the train and watching the mountains through the window!



Do to the obviously cold climate here the walls of houses are traditionally very thick, as can be seen by how far the windows are recessed back. I read that while modern technology makes faring the winter much easier, traditionally the windows are kept small and recessed like this so that they could be insulated when necessary. See the notably small windows in the upper levels of the house in the pic below. Also sometimes animals were let into the basements for warmth.





Cool decorative themes are drawn onto the houses:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Eugene,

It's great that you've visit the canton of Graubünden - my mother grew up there. Please let me adjust the spelling of the village you visited, it's called SAMEDAN.

Gruss,
silvio

Diesel Debbie and Captain Pancakes said...

d’oh! thanks silvio! :)