June
2008
The Great Unknown… (Day 14)0
Remember the itinerary I started building back on day 11?
It looked like this:
6:00am (wake-up call for people who want breakfast)
7:20am (wake-up call for everyone else)
7:00-7:20am Breakfast (optional)
8:20am group assembly in lobby of SSTH
8:22am group departure for bus station
8:29am bus departs for Chur (arrives 8:42am)
8:42am group continues to Kulturforum Wurth Sculpture Garden (3 minute walk)
8:45-9:15am visit sculpture garden (outside Kulturforum Wurth Museum)
9:15am group departure for Stadtgarten (10 minute walk)
9:25-9:40am explore Stadtgarten
9:40am group departure for Rätisches Museum (10 minute walk)
10am guided tour with Museum Director: Dr. Jürg Simonette
10:45am tour ends
10:45-11:45am group may explore rest of museum or walk around town
12pm group assembly at bus station
12:10pm bus departs for SSTH (arrives 12:20pm)
12:20pm lunch at SSTH
1:30pm class in room 104
6pm dinner at SSTH
…looks pretty sharp, doesn’t it? I’d contacted the Rätisches Museum and arranged for a tour, I’d contacted the Kulturforum Wurth Museum and confirmed that their sculpture garden is open 24/7, even when the museum itself is closed, I’d looked at a city map and figured how to get from each point to the next with ample time for strolling. Adele was the tour guide for the day, she nominated me to be assistant, and I was sure I was ready.
Then somehow I managed to get on the bus today without any map of the area. And when we got off the bus in Chur station, there were no helpful signs pointing to the road or the museum we were meant to visit first.
Lesson of the Day, #1:
Before leaving your room to begin a day of tour guiding, double-check that you have everything you need. Do not get complacent, or the day will come when you walk out the door trusting that you packed everything only to find that something got left behind.
Luckily, Katherine had a map. Unfortunately, it was not the one I’d used to build our itinerary. According to this map, it was a much longer walk to that sculpture garden.
Lesson of the Day, #2:
Research is everything. Wherever possible, do NOT attempt a tour cold. Walk the walk and see the sights before taking a group – make sure you really know where you’re going and how to get there.With smiles, confidence, and the newly-drafted Katherine as navigator, Adele and I led our group out of the station. Adele and Katherine took the front, I brought up the back and helped the group stay together. After a quiet 10 minute stroll through a more modern, residential, side of Chur, we found the Kulturforum Museum. And around the corner was the garden.
(from this angle, it looks kinda like a snail. from others it looks like an elephant, a boat, a roller-coaster…)
(L-R: Dr. Garely, Adele, Mark, Gia)
Besides small plaques displaying the artists’ names, there was no information available in the garden about the sculptures (some information on each piece is available at the museum’s website), so we were free to form our own conclusions about what the works said and represented.
After checking the time, Adele and I agreed that it would be wiser to walk straight to our next museum, without trying to cram in a visit to the park. Our walk led us past a few sites of major construction (from the poster displays, Chur is building luxury apartment complexes that would fit right in with those of NYC), and back into the cobblestoned Old Town we’d explored before.
Dr. Simonette gave us a wonderful tour (he has a quiet sense of humor and is fluent in English, though he rarely has cause to speak it), providing information about the museum and its exhibits as well as a bit of history about the region and the city of Chur (after all, his museum is dedicated to the history of the Canton of the Grisons).
The first settlement of what became Chur dates back 10 or 12 thousand years ago, so while it might be hard to verify that Chur is truly “the oldest town in Switzerland” as the ads claim, it is certainly one of the oldest. The museum itself is about 130 years old, and has slowly grown to fill the former residence of Baron Paul von Buol zu Strassberg und Rietberg. Except for the attic, the progress of time is vertical: the oldest relics are in the basement, and the more modern exhibits are stacked above. The attic houses a permanent collection of farming and peasant relics, and the Director really wishes they could be moved. The current arrangement suggests that the Grisons has not yet encountered the Industrial Revolution, and this is simply not true.
The museum’s newest permanent collection, Power and Politics, offers the history of the men and women who shaped history through armies and wars, castles, alliances and leagues, persuasion and force. The walls are thickly covered with portraits of the key players, and the booklet explaining the various events and subsequent actions and reactions was (for me at least) the most page-turning thing I’d come across in a while.
That said, I still liked the attic. I’ve seen tapestries and furniture, coins and muskets and bladed weapons, and history is filled with stories of powerful people, brave people, martyrs, wars, and sudden reversals of religion and fortune. The attic had esoteric things I’d never seen before, like devices for straightening the horns of cattle, and books detailing what cows should look like. Apparently, the Swiss have a very long tradition of liking things to be neat, tidy, well-maintained and attractive.
