My Town - again

When I saw this month's theme I had to laugh. Less than 24 hours prior to learning that I was gonna write about my town, I already posted the Top Ten Things about my town!

What to do?

I mean it's hard to compete with castles and pretty vineyards I've already presented! 

I'm going for the quirky little things that are totally worth mentioning. 

Like the 44 veggie plant boxes that were distributed all over the old town this summer. The initiative was called "Chruut und Rüebli uf de Gass" (Swiss German) which literally means green leaves and carrots on the road, but what it stood for was to bring country life to the city. Probably also to demonstrate to the kids that produce actually wasn't "made" at the supermarket.

In May, citizens were invited to help assemble the wooden boxes, fill them with potting compost and plant some potatoes, tomatoes, green beans or carrots. Each pot had a sponsor who was responsible for watering and weeding it. Mid-September there was "Thanksgiving": people were gathering to harvest and cook their veggies. I hear it was a nice get-together.

As I mentioned in my other hometown post, we are lucky to call a nice old castle, positioned on a hill, our own. What I didn't say was that there are remains of ancient town walls with loopholes in the old town, and when they wanted to build new apartment houses, a smart architect came up with this idea. I like how they were able to combine the old with the new!

How do you feel about giant spiders? (Some say those are actually supposed to be ants. Same thing...) Not a fan myself, however when I discovered those guys I had to get out of the car and take a closer look. Somebody must have made them out of recyclables. Upon asking around it turned out they were part of an exhibition called "neighbourhood art" in one specific street. 

It is creepy driving past them, though! I'm not sure if they are still gonna be around by the end of October, but if they are, I think I might slap some glow-in-the-dark adhesive film on them!

In my other hometown post (I know I keep mentioning it. Head over there already and read it, so we can all move on!) I was referring to the little store that sells produce grown by inmates, and I thought I should go back and take an actual picture of the correctional facility. It's not that easy because it is surrounded by a tall wall equipped with barbwire. So when you stand directly in front of it you can't see anything  

This is the best I could do, and I think it actually looks pretty.

My Dad grew up not far from there until he was 4 years old. I remember asking him if he wasn't afraid some bad guy might escape. 

For a couple of years there has been this bi-annually used bicycle market. A few weeks prior to the actual event they display some "dressed up" bikes all over town to announce the market. One year my Mom, Colin and I tried to find them all. We managed to spot 8 out of 10. This year I scored the missing 2!

Concluding this post I am going to show you something old. Even older than our castle. It used to be a Roman amphitheater. They discovered it when they wanted to build a freeway access road. It's pretty neat, extremely well preserved, too!

I went there with my Mom who is the actual photographer in the family. It was a nice walk through wet grass, something I don't do every day.

I hope you are having as much fun with this post as I am! Please check out the other posts here! 

See you next month!