Brunnen

The other day, while biking home after work, I stopped to get a drink of water (fountain pictured below top) and it hit me.  I left fountains off my top 10 list last year.  What an omission!  Understandable only in the context of the overflowing abundance that is Switzerland.  Too many things to like and ten is such a small number.   So, list be damned.  The fountains of Switzerland cry out for recognition and I will respond.  Let’s start with the basics, the water itself.  Simply nothing better.  Cool, fresh and free.  Also, the fountains are everywhere.    Hiking, running or biking, I’ve filled my bottle in every corner of this beautiful country.  I especially like that many incorporate a nice little perpetually refilling bowl for dogs.   Equally entrancing is their varied and charming appearance as well as the Swiss culture they represent.  Far from mere public bubblers, they’re art, crafted from stone, bronze and cast iron, many with gilded figurines.  They’re also a walk through history.  Bern, which calls itself the “City of Fountains”, boasts over 100, including 11 classics from the 16^th century.   Their most notorious may be the Kindlifresserbrunnen  (child eater fountain), starring an ogre with a bag of squirming babies, devouring them as if they’re candy.  Hans Gieng, the 16^th century Fribourg artist responsible for most of these, may have had a good explanation for this one but, alas, it was lost to posterity.  In Basel, Pascal Hess and Martin Stauffiger developed a terrific website for their 2002 Maturarbeit project (http://www.brunnenfuehrer.ch/) which catalogs Basel’s 231 fountains, a tool begging for use in the creation of a treasure hunt.  Standing out among many, Basel’s most famous has to be the ornate Fischmarktbrunnen (pictured below bottom), Switzerland’s oldest, believed to be in operation since 1390.   Not to be outdone, as usual, Zürich offers guides for ten tours covering the 1,224 fountains https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/dib/de/index/wasserversorgung/brunnen.html  scattered throughout the city.  Number 1 on their list is the  Amazonenbrunnen which was the first supplied from spring water and dates back to 1430.   As I reflect on what I learned while conducting this little bit of research, it’s clear, in both villages and cities there’s a great deal of pride and affection felt by the country’s citizens for their fountains.   Well deserved, too, as this network of structures brings together elements of culture, art, history, environment and economics while offering the opportunity to stroll through the centuries in the community of your choice, slaking your thirst when necessary.  And rest assured, while they may be old, they’re subject to typical Swiss quality standards, meeting the same contemporary ISO 9001:2000 certified test requirements as the water flowing from the household tap.    Drink up!