One of Grandpa Oskar's habits was to count the freight cars rumbling by under the balcony of the house directly behind the station. The grandfather once cast the aluminum in the nearby plant, which went to Italy and from there to the whole world. In contrast, his farthest journey was to a small Swiss town called Einsiedel.
In the remote, secluded little mountain village, where the streets are so narrow that children can cross them even by jumping on the roofs, the grandmother lives alone, who always dreamed of another life and wrote poems at night.
Long gone are the days when goods were transported on steep hillsides on ladders. Nowadays it is customary to go shopping in the Placette every Saturday with a Subaru.
When, one day in February, the grandfather asks his grandson to accompany him to prune the vines, they both know that not only the days of the vines are numbered.
Rolf Hermann's first book of stories is a real literary novelty. He looks back on his childhood and youth, which he spent in a valley surrounded by sky-high mountains in the Swiss province of Valais. It depicts the living space of three generations in the changing times, with a rich description full of warmth and emotion, with a specific language. It tells about quiet yearnings and silent farewells - evoking gentle melancholy, sometimes sharp pain in the reader. And about writing, the activity that gives immortality to objects and the people who like them.