Winter. FinKa

Winter. FinKa

“The snow hatches the landscape,” writes Lydija Tschukowskaja (Going Under, 1972).

Here, the snow draws a softly falling curtain onto the wooden wall of the terraces and in front of the landscape. The view outward dissolves into the indistinct.

The terrace floor is covered in snow. Snow piles up on the railing.

When no snow falls and the sky remains overcast, there is nothing but the two-tone of white and the black of the forested slopes, the dark blue in the distance. Above them, the icy peaks.

You can see the cold. The silence seems audible.

Snow bathing? The white bathtub outside in the open almost disappears beneath the new white that has filled it.

The bare blackness of the Palabirn tree in front of the school building opposite: a sculpture, in the way the tree has turned away from the wall into the open. But also a drawing, the trunk and branches against the open sky.

Snow on the roof of the Romanesque tower of St. Johann, not far away halfway up in the village: the tower has gained a new lightness.

Blinding days of sun. The FinKa warms itself.

In between, a morning as if built shut. A wall in front of the window. Fog, not pressing, not heavy. Inside, it is bright.

It is thawing. A patch of meadow lies free in the backyard, as the FinKa calls its garden. The green beside the grey of the granite slabs, the “purple-grey” (Lydija Tschukowskaja) of the strip of gravel:

A deliberately conceived colour concept comes into effect in the FinKa, as Sascha Plangger explains in his multifaceted and image-rich book about the history of the former finance barracks, its transformation into a hospitable hostel, and its remarkable interior life.

No one is sitting yet on the bench in its sheltered enclosure. Behind the window door, a watering can, flower pots. No philosopher on the “philosopher’s bench.”

The lavender still smells faint, the rosemary has kept some of its scent, the thyme lingers longest on the hands.

Tufts of grass and short-leaved plants, still inconspicuous, have held their ground under the snow between the paving slabs. A small wilderness. The essayist, nature and mountain writer Robert Macfarlane has sharpened the sense for this – in his book The Wild Places (2007; German edition 2015).

It snows again. Layer upon layer settles on benches, tables, railings, hedges.

It thaws.

Now the white is missing, the bright light in the landscape.

It will snow several more times.

February 2026. Written in Switzerland. It has snowed there too, at the southern foot of the Jura.

 

About the author

Verena, born in 1941 and living in Solothurn, continues to write – and with this text, a part of that shared time at the FinKa remains.

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