The chapel

This little chapel is tucked away off Hauptstrasse. It doesn't appear that it's used for anything, though the bell does toll once or twice an hour -- not for too long, and not too loudly.

20070129 modified

Wanderweg

A network of public hiking trails crisscrosses all of Switzerland and is marked with yellow diamonds. This is a slightly fancy marker, complete with the emblem of Aargau Kanton (state), keeping watch from halfway up Besserstein. It is more common to find diamonds just painted onto lightposts, tree trunks or rocks. There are also signposts indicating destinations and the estimated travel time required to reach them. A topic for another day.

20070129

An hour from home

Weggis (vekis) is a resort town on the Vierwaldstättersee (literally lake of the four forest states, better known as Lake Lucerne in English). There are not so many tourists at this time of year except perhaps for the local ones like us. It had been snowing that morning so I wasn't expecting many photo opportunities. Happily, I was wrong! This view of Mount Pilatus appeared as we were walking along the lake.

20070127

The SLS building (detail)

Villigen is home to a national research facility called the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). The programs at PSI are varied, ranging from elementary particle physics to the life sciences. Pictured here is a detail of the Swiss Light Source (SLS) building which is definitely the most visually arresting of all the structures around the campus. It is shaped like a donut with an outer diameter of 138 m (472 ft) and a height of 14 m. At night, it looks as if a UFO landed in the farmlands. I'm working on finding a vantage point for a night-time shot.

Die Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) ist ein "multidisziplinäres Forschungsinstitut für Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften" in Villigen. Hier ist ein Foto von die Synchrotron Lichtquelle Schweiz (SLS).

20070127 modified

Do not cross the railway lines

Some readers asked about the languages spoken in Switzerland, hence this post. The simple answer, without getting into a discussion about Swiss-German, is that there are three official languages: Deutsch, Français and Italiano. The lower panel of the photo shows a detail of a locomotive with the name of the Swiss railway system in these languages (Villigen is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland).

SBB Schweizerische Bundesbahn
CFF Chemins de Fer Fédéraux Suisses
FFS Ferrovie Federali Svizzere

English is widely used in many areas, as evidenced by the sign in the train station in Brugg (top panel), the closest real town to Villigen. There are actually four national languages, the fourth being Rhaeto-Rumantsch which is spoken by some 50000 people and is not included on the sign. For more information, try these language related pages (in English) at swissworld.org and swissinfo.

Es gab ein paar Fragen bezüglich der Landessprachen in der Schweiz. Es gibt drei offiziele Sprachen (Deutsch, Français and Italiano) und ein vierte nationale Sprache Rhaeto-Rumantsch.

20070125

zum Hirschen

Update: The restaurant has changed hands a few times since I wrote this entry and it is a different place now. We don't go there anymore. 27 Feb 2011.


Continuing on with the food theme. There are certain names that are extremely popular for restaurants and hotels in these parts. The particular names vary by region to some extent. Around us, Bären (bear), Hirschen (deer), Löwen (lion) and Sternen (star) are used a lot. Villigen has a Hirschen (restaurant and hotel) and a Schlossberg. Hirschen is an excellent place and I must say that I'm very pleasantly surprised to find it here. They have seasonal menus with creative dishes combining local produce with influences from all over the world. Their dessert sampler (Der Dessertteller) is usually wonderful. The best part is that they have very nice vegetarian entrees, a welcome change from those places that can think up only spaghetti with tomato sauce for vegetarians.


Das Restaurant zum Hirschen in Villigen finden wir besonders gut. Mit kreativen Saisonmenü und ausgezeignete Nachspeisen ist es wirklich speziell. Das Beste ist die Auswahl der wohlüberlegten vegetarischen Hauptgericht: man muss nicht nur Salatblätter kauen!

0070124

Luxemburgerli: Bitte sofort geniessen

(Inspired by Ming's Tisserie (NYC) and then reinforced by Sara's posts). Sprüngli (est. 1836) is a chocolate and pastry establishment in Zürich with a handful of shops around the immediate area. One of their specialties is the Luxemburgerli (1957): macarons that come in all sorts of flavors. Because they're such delicate confections and should be consumed within a few days of manufacture, they're not shipped outside Switzerland. I recently picked up some vanilla, coffee (called mocca here) and chocolate ones (from bottom to top). Boring, but yummy nonetheless.

Sprüngli ist eine Confiserie (Feingebäck- und Schokoladen- Hersteller) in Zürich. Eine von ihren Spezialitäten sind Luxemburgerli: Makrönli in verschiedenen Aromen. Sie sind sehr delikat und sollten sofort genossen worden, darum werden sie ausserhalb der Schweiz nicht verkauft. Im Bild rechts sieht man je ein Luxemburgerli mit Vanille, Mocca und Schokolade (von unten nach oben).

20070123 modified

First snow of the year

There are some ten fountains in Villigen (which seems a lot for a village of this size) and one of them is pictured here. This one might be called "Brunnen bei der Brücke", I have to check. Most fountains in Switzerland have potable water and if they don't, they have a sign on them labelling them as such. In the German speaking areas, the sign says "Kein Trinkwasser." This particular fountain is fine to drink from, as far as I know.

Villigen hat ungefähr zehn Brunnen. Hier ist einer davon. Die meistens Brunnen in der Schweiz haben trinkbares Wasser. Wenn das Wasser aus einen Brunnen nicht trinkbar ist, gibt es eine kleine Platte auf dem "Kein Trinkwasser" geschrieben steht.

20070124 modified

After the winds

I don't know if the recent high winds uprooted this tree, but the timing would be about right, given the last time we walked by. The top of the tree had landed across the path, but it has been sawn off and put to the side.

Ich weiss nicht ob der Wind den Baum entwurzelt hat, aber es würde zeitlich passend.

20070121

The two-L llama

(With apologies to Nash. I have to say, I can see why he was thinking of pyjamas in relation to these creatures).

Not too far from us is a llama farm. Yes, llama. There are two separate corrals, and pictured here are the bigger specimens. Maybe they're the males, but I'm no expert. The smaller versions are across the street, beyond a field. There's also a goat that hangs out in the area, an area outside the fencing. Must consider itself a cat.

Neben uns gibt eine Llamafarm mit zwei Teilen, einer mit grössen und der andere mit kleineren Tieren. Vielleicht sind die Männchen und die Weibchen getrennt, aber ich bin kein Experte.

20070121

Pond in Stilli

It takes about 20 minutes to walk to Stilli. The land drops down close to the Aare river (beyond the trees on the left). There are three rivers in this area and I'll talk about them later sometime. I don't think this pond is there year round, we've just had a lot of rain lately.

Update:

I've been learning German since moving to CH and I really must practice. This blog offers a good opportunity to do that. Starting today I'm going to try to write a German version after the English one. To those of you who know Deutsch: please feel free to correct me. I mean it.

Man braucht 20 Minuten um Stilli zu Fuss zu erreichen. Stilli liegt direkt an der Aare (die Aare ist ein Fluss und ist hinter dem Bäumen links). Es gibt drei Flüsse in der Umgebung, ich werde irgendwann später mal mehr darüber erzahlen. Ich glaube, dass dieser Teich nicht permanent sondern nur wegen des Regens da ist. In letzter Zeit haben wir viel Regen gehabt.

20070106

The road to Stilli

I took this on the 21st of October, as I walked along Hauptstrasse away from Villigen. The road leads to Stilli (pronounced shteelli, or thereabouts), an entity that was incorporated into Villigen in January 2006. I believe the combined population is now 1855. I like the way the leaves were blown off the tree; they seem to form a shadow.

20061021

Skeletal fishy sculpture

A house near us has this strange sculpture thing on the wall. An anthropomorphic fish skeleton? A nod to Darwin? Just something they thought looked cool? I took the photo yesterday when it was very windy and that's why some of the branches in front are blurry.

20070118

A windy day in Villigen

It is tremendously windy today with night-time gusts up to 100 km per hour (62 mph) and I wanted to capture the effect in a photo. Not so easy, apparently. Do the blurry branches convey the idea that it's very windy? Or does it just look like a poorly focused image?

20070118

Besserstein in the summer

Besserstein is the little hill that overlooks Villigen. I have trouble photographing it as I don't find it very photogenic. Of the many shots I have of it, this is my current favorite. The road is the main road -- Hauptstrasse -- that can be seen in the first picture of this blog.

I'm really looking forward to sharing my impressions of my surroundings. Thank you for visiting, and for commenting!

20050607

January sunset

The day began cloudy and rainy, but by mid afternoon, the clouds had started to break up and some blue sky was visible. We took the opportunity to go for a walk and I took the opportunity to try out some shots.

20070117

Villigen

This is a view of Villigen (pronounced filligen) from Besserstein (548 m | 1798 ft). It's a small village in Kanton Aargau, an hour from Zürich by public transportation. We've lived here for about two years and this is home base for my explorations of Switzerland.

20060617