Wine festival in Heidiland...

I took a weekend off to meet with Bernd, Vera and Roger. As I couldn’t rent a car, Hans gave me his pickup Ranger. The dogs couldn’t wait to go, happily jumped into the car and off we went to Heidiland, which is part of the authentic Switzerland where the story of Heidi the mountain girl comes from. Our final destination was Maienfeld to take part in the wine festival. As we arrived quite late in the evening and I was tired, I was planning to leave the dogs in the car while I would join my friends for dinner. But when Vera picked me up, she said that everybody was curious to see them and that I better take them. Well, they happily joined us to the restaurant and behaved reasonably well. After dinner we walked around in the small picturesque streets that were already decorated with plenty of flowers for the next day’s wine festival. Then we tied up the dogs in front of a bar and decided to taste some of the Maienfelder wine, which is, by the way, delicious! While we were enjoying the wine, everybody who would come in or out of the bar would admire the dogs, talk to them and pet them. The dogs were very happy with all this attention and I am sure that for them it felt like being in the movie theatre with so many things to observe...The next day, the streets were full of people and stands where you could buy regional specialities. It was a beautiful sunny day and we all enjoyed walking around, including the dogs. For them it was a again a big adventure as they came across things they had never seen in the desert...Liwa was very fascinated by the flying balloons filled with gas and also made friends with a fox fur which was being sold at one of the stands. Everybody had a great laugh when she would stand up on her two little back legs to reach the table and be nose to nose with the dead fox. Also the village fountains covered with floating flowers attracted Liwa’s attention as she would try to take all the flowers out...In the meantime, we had to watch Paulo who would put his long nose on all the tables where they would sell foodstuff so we wouldn’t get into any trouble...Later on, we left the busy little streets and went for a nice sunny walk around the village. Then the afternoon came to an end with a delicious glass of white wine and a selection of village cheeses...