Zofingen: old town, Heitereplatz and museum

On the morning of Wednesday December 28th, still sluggish from jet-lag during Chris' first day at work in Reiden (a short train ride away), I explored the walled town of Zofingen to get my blood circulating and some oxygen in my lungs. After my first lap of the walls, local children were starting to come home from school (the Gemeindeschulhaus) for their lunch, so I followed a few of them along a back lane and then struck off on a narrow lane up the hill, following one of Zofingen's Wanderweg signposts. This led me through sloping orchards and meadows to the so-called Heiternplatz, a flat, rectangular recreation field above the town, out in the countryside, with 60 linden trees planted on its perimeter. A nearby shooting range allowed the locals to practise their deer shooting skills. Not sure I approved of this, but the forested hills in the background, still tinged with autumn colours like a picture in pastel oils, looked romantically mysterious in the mist, and in the other direction I had panoramic views of the industrial valley with its railway line leading in the direction of Chris' workplace and thence to Luzern (or Olten, in the other direction). Had the sky cleared, I think I'd have caught sight of some distant Alpine peaks. Apart from a distant dog-walker, I had the immediate surroundings to myself. I learned, from a carved gothic script plaque screwed to one of the older and larger tree trunks, that it had been school children of my generation who had planted the linden tree saplings to replace the very old, original trees. 

Im Jahre 1955 hat die Ortsbürgergemeinde den Heiternplatz erweitert und am 14. Dez. wurde der äussere Ring von 60 Linden durch die Schuljugend gepflanzt. 

I also approved of a steel children's slide fixed on the steep slope up to the Heiternplatz, but I didn't fall to the eccentric temptation of using it at my age, even though no one was looking, because it was muddy at both ends and too narrow.

I walked downhill back to Zofingen for lunch at the crêperie. There's a scuplture park and other public green spaces outside the town walls, then the school, and next to that a museum with a nymph at the entrance who had sore feet, like me.

I spent a good while inside the museum which was full of interest. To judge from an old video recording and the pictures on the walls, Zofingen's centre hasn't changed much in the last few centuries. Only people's clothes and their means of transport have changed, although even then, there are very few motor vehicles on the streets of old Zofingen today, which are still mostly cobbled. Workmen were re-cobbling one street all the time we were there. 

It was one of those museums that have a bit of everything: stuffed animals, pinned butterflies, prehistoric pottery, oil paintings, historical agricultural implements, costumes. Alongside medieval suits of armour, they had the full costume of a Pontifical Swiss Guard from the Vatican. I particularly enjoyed looking at the early 20th century pictures of the traditional Vereine, groups of local men or women (rarely mixed) with an interest in common, be it music-making or sports or whatever, the photographer of the day using the same background for all. I snapped a copy of the Gymnastics Club photo, dated 1902.

Swiss Guard

Since the first half of the 19th century, Zofingen has been known for its printing works (printing the pages of the Schweizer Illustrierte magazine, for example, and one part of the museum was dedicated to the different equipment they had used over the ages: