First Stop: Textile Museum (5/21)

It looks as if I failed to do some careful editing yesterday. Oops! Anyway, this morning started with an excellent breakfast at the hotel. There were some people also eating breakfast who were of Indian nationality and were speaking American English. On a hunch, I asked them where they were from, and they were from San Jose. They couldn’t believe that I was from San Mateo! They had a couple of darling kids with them, and the kids were fun to watch. There was a conversation about Star Wars, and whether dinosaurs were a part of Star Wars -  and then whether robots were a part of Star Wars. And something was said about being like a good dinosaur and eating breakfast properly. Whatever works . . .

Anyway, I took public transportation back into St. Gallen, and stored my suitcase and backpack at the railroad station. Then I went directly to the Textile Museum. St. Gallen is known for textiles, particularly embroidery. The area around Lake Constance, otherwise known as the Bodensee, is good for growing flax for linen. For many for hundreds of years, St. Gallen was the center for embroidery, which was done by hand as a cottage industry. Then in the middle of the 1800s, to keep up with demand, the embroidery machine was invented. And a couple of things: first, embroidery could be done much more quickly and in a much greater volume. Second, it puts men in charge of the machines, and now the women did the grunt work - threading needles and changing spools of thread. The area around St. Gallen thrived until the world-wide Depression of the 1930s, when demand was down and many of the companies closed. Things picked up again after World War II, and the St. Gallen area supplied fabric, lace, and embroidery for many of the couturiers.

The museum itself is relatively small, but there is a library on textiles. The first-floor exhibits were devoted to embroidery, lace, and linen - essentially to fabrics used for garments. On the second floor was an exhibit of fabrics for interior design, and a discussion by interior designers about patterns and colors. Although it was interesting, I was much more interested in what was on the first floor. One of the things I learned was that mechanized lace is made through a burnout technique. It makes sense, but I’d never thought about it. Also, there were a number of companies that specialized in embroidery. Each of the companies came out with patterns twice a year (very similar to garment pattern companies). The designers worked - and apparently still work - in St. Gallen to come up with embroidery designs. There was a multimedia exhibit of about 12 different companies and their respective embroidery patterns. For some reason, this display was an English, which made it much easier for me to understand what was happening. The different embroidery patterns were fascinating and beautiful. Some of these companies still exist; others disappeared in the 1930s. There was a big embroidery machine on display.  They turn it on once a week, but I wasn’t there on the right day. Even so, it was fun to see the machine. Separately, there was a small threading machine. It would have been interesting to see that work. I only spent about an hour at the museum because the display space is so small, but it was still a thrill to be there. By the way, St. Gallen is still a textile center, although it appears that the companies concentrate on special-use fabric, like fabric for outdoor garments and for car interiors. It sounds as if much of what they do now is synthetic, which is probably where the money is.

From there, I went on to the Abbey Library, which is why most people go to St. Gallen. The library is from 16^th-century, and monks hand wrote, or copied, many of the books in the library. It is in rococo style - one of the few examples in Switzerland. I walked into the library and got a sense of it, but chose not to take a tour.  From there I went to the cathedral, which is also in rococo style. The ceiling is painted with murals. It is simply amazing! Close to that is the Anglican church, which I was unable to get into. Either I was there at the wrong time or the church was closed today because it’s some kind of holiday that I don’t understand. (The stores were closed in St. Gallen today, as well.)

I had a delightful salad at an outdoor café before heading back to the train station. Now comes the lesson from my Blosser grandmother, who always used to say, “Pride goeth before a fall.” As I was getting on the train to go to Winterthur, I was thinking that I’d had very little difficulty this trip with getting on the right train, or getting off at the right stop. In fact, my train travel between cities has been simply marvelous – a good lesson for the U.S. with its generally poor public transportation, especially in California. On the train, I did notice that no one on this train was calling out the stations where the train was to stop. (Calling out the stations is standard practice, as are signs inside the train that tell you where you are and what station is coming up next.) I also noticed that we were going to stations that were labeled “St. Gallen,” and then something else.  I assumed this was a regional train, and these were stops within the Canton of St. Gallen.  Well, we got to what seemed like a rather large city, and just as the train was pulling out again, I saw the sign, “Winterthur.”  I asked the woman across from me if this was Winterthur.  She said yes, and told me I’d have to travel to the Zurich airport station, and then I could turn around.  Because that station came up so quickly (I assumed we were quite a ways from Zurich), I nearly missed THAT station as well! So, I got off the train, admired the public transportation system again – trains running into the airport from other parts of the country!, and found my train for Winterthur.  With all that, I only arrived about a half hour later than I would have otherwise.

I went straight to my hotel and got settled in.  This is a comparatively small room, but it’s designed like the trailer that my parents and I traveled in when I was an adolescent. There’s a double bed on the bottom, and a bunk bed -for one person - above. I feel right at home, except I was the one who slept in the bunk bed. This time I’ll sleep below. I went off in search of a place for dinner. Since this is a holiday - I have no idea what holiday, most everything was closed. There was no way I was going to eat at either McDonald’s or Burger King, both of which were in easy walking distance and, of course, were open. I finally found another hotel with a restaurant that was open and had reasonable prices. I had delicious lamb, vegetables, and rice with superb bread, and was very happy. Now I’m ready to settle in for the night.