cash

Today we got to properly leave the house for the first time in three days, yay!

There's this building on Dan's commute that from time to time has convoys of police cars in front of it, and for a long time we wondered what it could be...a jail? But it turns out that it's owned by the publishing company Orell Füssli and they print banknotes there. The company traces its roots to Christoph Froschauer, who famously printed Zwingli's Bible translation, and today they had an open house to celebrate 500 years of the printing business. So we got to go inside the building where they print Swiss money! Cool...

They had a Froschauer Bible on display, and a little exhibit of posters and maps that the company had printed.

Here's one for the Swiss rail company, by Swiss graphic designer Hans Erni. Apparently this was before they added the Italian "FFS" to their acronym.

And here's part of an exhibit on banknote printing. The company printed a special commemorative note for their 500th anniversary, and Christopher was sorely disappointed that we couldn't figure out how to acquire one.

Not pictured: in the very slow freight elevator that connected the exhibitions to the cafe, we learned two nicknames for Orell Füessli, Orell Furtzli (Orell farts) and Ohrli Füssli und Schwänzli (ears feet and tail, as in the leftover animal parts you'd get at the butcher). Tee hee.