Appenzell is small but beautiful, fiercely conservative and famous for it’s rural crafts – embroidery and weaving (more tomorrow on those), and the parades that accompany the summer and autumn moves of the cows to and from the alps (summer pastures high up in the hills). It’s the canton with the lowest population density and is completely surrounded by canton St. Gallen. I love the Tracht or traditional dress from Appenzell. We actually had an Appenzeller band playing at our wedding many moons ago.

It’s also famous for it’s voting practices. When the rest of Switzerland gave women the vote at federal level in 1971 (yes it really was that late!), the men of Appenzell stood firm and refused to agree to give women the vote locally. That came only in 1990 – can you imagine? The women in Appenzell have only had the vote on local issues for 21 years!! They are also famous for their Landsgemeinde – this is how they still vote in Appenzell… (in the main square, by raising their hands, none of that confidential ballot box rubbish here!)

It’s very pretty though – maybe a little touristy, but it’s worth wandering around and trying out the local specialities Birebrot (a bread made of pastry with a filling of dried pears) and Biber (a dry gingerbread with a sweet hazelnut filling)

(this is a Biber.)

The painted houses are really lovely and haven’t changed in style for hundreds of years. Here are a few to whet your appetite!

And here is one last one, which isn’t painted, but charming nonetheless. I think it must qualify as the world’s most delightful recycling centre!!

It’s a lovely part of Switzerland, steeped in tradition and presenting a slightly different face than the typical chocolate box image of high mountains and snow!

Helen

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2011 at 11:09 am and is filed under Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.