Last Friday, Good Friday and Aries Full moon day, the weather report announced an interim high with good weather in the mountains. So we went to see the Ballenberg open air museum, where I had been 3 years ago for the last time. In a beautiful valley they have collected and restored over 100 historical buildings from all over Switzerland. A stroll through the past, where you encounter different styles of architecture and different ways of living and working – farm houses, mills, a pharmacy, a hairdresser, charcoal burners… And plants and farm animals.
What fascinated us most was a last residence room where they presented how a person was laid out, with a decorated young lady dummy, candles burning, prayer songs in the background, and in another house a birth room with the midwife equipment of the 19th century – birth and death in the midst of everyday activities…
When we started in the morning there were still the raindrops of the night glittering on the grass in front of our house and the clouds hanging deep.
But in Ballenberg, 75 km away, the sky had cleared up. Friday was the first day after their winter pause and many families were enjoying the excursion.
A ram greeting for Aries full moon!
Relaxing in the sunlight
A view from the balcony of an old pharmacy
Picture of an old drug book showing Mandragora (mandrake) in the form of a woman.
There were two herb gardens where first flowers were sprouting. Here: Adonis flowers
Fresh mountain water
Producing easter eggs
A fairy’s meadow
On both sides of the valley – high mountains covered with snow
Waterfalls coming down the cliffs
Walking though”Ticino”
Looking up
An old merry-go-round in the forest with children enjoying the ride
A little chapel from Ticino. Inside it was clean but old astral clouds seemed still to hang around.
St. Michael fighting at the altar, with the balance of justice, of karma, in his left hand
Some old Alpine houses – with a lot of “open air” and very little comfort inside
An old mill – inside two millstones were grinding the grain – which was for sale. And an old man explained us how they used to operate the mill.
The old mill wheel moving around with the noise of the mill stones
Not torture instruments of for Easter bunnies, but chocolate moulds. In the Chocolaterie you could cast your own bunnies.
