Classics on the Billboard
The Swiss region named by a novel
Switzerland has a region that carries the name of a storybook girl.
On the billboard
The area around Maienfeld in eastern Switzerland welcomes visitors as Heidiland. A motorway rest stop bears the same name, and near Maienfeld there is a village where a house is furnished as Heidi's might have been. One novel left its name on the map.
In the book Heidi · Johanna Spyri
Johanna Spyri's Heidi opens with that very village: From the old and pleasantly situated village of Mayenfeld
. Five-year-old Heidi, an orphan, is led up the mountain by her aunt Dete and left with her grandfather in his hut, an old man the villagers avoid as surly. What Heidi changes in that hut is where the story starts.