Wooden Cow Toys

I associate Heimat (literally: home or homeland) with childhood. I spent countless hours in my room with toys like these, inventing and reenacting all kinds of scenarios. To me, cows are so typical of Graubünden, since you come across them practically everywhere — when hiking, looking out the window on a train, on school trips, and of course during the Maiensässfahrt (a traditional annual event in which schoolchildren and their teachers hike from Chur to the surrounding Maiensässe — lower-altitude seasonal mountain pastures, part of Alpine transhumance). This object, to me, brings together two aspects: childhood in Graubünden and the region’s landscape and fauna.

Clara Hagmann (19), Chur