5.

La Chaux du Fonds

La Chaux du Fonds is the birthplace of Le Corbusier. The city has a watch museum and a few buildings designed by Corbusier. The city rises from one end to another. At the topmost point is the first building (Maison Blanche )that was designed by Le Corbusier. There is also a zoo which is located just by the way, while walking down towards the train station. We saw a sloth bear, reindeer, llama and a polar bear!!

There is a small plaque on the wall of a building where Corbusier's house existed. Some of Corbusier's drawings have been made into street graffiti at some places.

The watch museum is quite fantastic. The building sinks under a berm and looks absolutely unremarkable from outside. The moment one steps inside, one is enveloped by machines and components of machines.

Watches and everything to do with them. Exploded models of watches, the earliest watch to the latest. Suspended spheres float around displaying some of the watches. Just like the watches even the architecture was exposed concrete displaying deep beams and strange skylights at the most unexpected places!!

In the train en route to La Chaux du Fonds there was a man sitting opposite us wearing a shirt that had two slits on his cuff for the straps of the watch. We were just dumbfounded to discover something as awesome as that.

Later on it turned out, that man was the head of the watch museum!! :)