The city of Gams

I did not realize till the time of writing this post that I wad walked into another city altogether on one of my picture clicking sprees.
The Werdenberg castle is actually in Gams, and not in Buchs. Gams seemed to be a more open “city” and gave some very good photo ops of the rolling greens.

How I envy the people living in these houses!

Here are pictures of the sun orchestrating a light show with the mountains. Note the contrast of the green and the barren on the same mountain:

Gams has the only cinema hall that I noticed in all of my trip. It was playing “Sex and the City”. There was a motel next to it, and a few restaurants.

Plus this sculpture of a woman. I know it was a woman cause I saw representations of a woman’s anatomy that may not be visible fully in this picture here! But I wonder what is the sculpture depicting.

OK now, stop gawking at it!

The smallest city in Switzerland

It’s called Werdenberg. And I discovered it on one of my several evening walks.

Right across my hotel I found this lake. It was hidden from direct view by an old building. The lake itself must have been clean but had a lot of pollen floating on the water surface making it look dirty. There were ducks and a pair of Swans (of Hans as they are called in German) floating among the pollen. There was even a nest right in the middle of the lake.

As I went around the lake, I found these old wooden houses and a note specifying their history. The 34 houses in total, along with a castle, formed the whole city of Werdenberg. The city was built around 1230 AD and was purchased and re-sold by several families till 1956 when it was donated the castle to the local municipality. The castle is the white building in the background. In the foreground is the “Snake House”:

And with the doctor’s house in the foreground:

Some other houses in which people still live:

The view of the lake from the “city”:

The next day when Matthias, the project manager mentioned that Buchs has a lake and a castle, I went “…that dirty lake?! I have seen it”