This day started really early with a bus trip to Ftán, a village high up in the mountains. We all visited two farms there, both doing ecological farming, and we got the chance of tasting bread and cheese. Afterwards we split into four different groups and we will let now the groups report themselves about their visits. We start with the first group which visiting a mill in Ftàn. So I pass the floor to Anna, Friedrich, Ginta and Laura:
“Our work as a team started in a rather original way – at least that’s what we could tell from the looks we got from most of the other participants. Since we were the only ones brave enough to go out in the wind, Ginta warmed us up through a couple of games. Long story cut short, the last game was all about trying quite a lot of weird poses and we got a lot of rather embarrassing pictures of us taken. But since this exercise couldn’t last forever, we eventually got up and walked to the mill in Ftán, where we met Cilgia, its current owner, and Valerie, our translator. On the outside, the mill looked just like a typical Swiss house that could be easily put on a postcard, but everything was different in the inside. As Cilgia explained, knowing how the machines work was not enough; you have to actually understand the mill as if it were a person, something we could feel when it began to function: the entire building started to shake, as though the whole machinery had come alive. At the end, we listened to Mr. Grimm explain some local history and walked to the bus station without getting lost, which was quite an achievement. Right now we have one huge question that needs to be answered: how did we manage to get a sunburn when all we did today was to shiver and complain about the cold? Note taken: blonde hair, fair skin and Swiss mountains are not exactly the best combination in the world.”