Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
Two eagle chicks hatch in a nest atop the castle towers and witness centuries of history unfold below: Savoyard knights riding to war, Bernese governors collecting tithes, and the revolutionary crowd of 1798 hammering the bear escutcheons from the gate. Told through the eyes of Aigle's heraldic birds, the story spans from the medieval lords to the birth of the Canton de Vaud.
A child hears thundering rockfalls echoing from the Diablerets massif and climbs to the frozen plateau of Tsanfleuron, where playful but clumsy devils are bowling with boulders, shaking the mountains with every strike. The child must teach them a gentler game before their reckless sport sends another 50 million cubic meters of rock crashing into the valley below.
In the castle museum's collection of 400,000 wine labels, one painted label peels itself off the wall at night. The child follows the painted vineyard scene through the glass and into the terraced slopes of Aigle, where a talking lizard who lives in the ancient stone walls explains how the walls absorb the sun's warmth by day and breathe it back to the vines by night -- the secret behind Switzerland's most famous Chasselas.
The little Aigle-Leysin rack railway chugs past its station and keeps climbing into the clouds, carrying a sleeping child to a mountaintop far above the Rhone valley. There, the ghosts of Dr. Rollier's sun-healed patients tell stories of courage and hope -- how they came to Leysin barely able to breathe and left cured by nothing more than alpine sunlight and mountain air.
A retelling of the legend of Jean du Bouillet: a child and their curious goat discover a salty spring near Bex when the goat refuses to drink from any other spot. Following the salt underground, they descend through the 50 km of hand-chiselled tunnels where salt crystals glow like lanterns in the dark -- and learn why this humble mineral was once more valuable than gold.
When the carved Bernese bear escutcheons are hammered off the castle gate in the revolutionary fervour of 1798, one small stone bear escapes and tumbles into the vineyard. There it befriends an eagle from the town's coat of arms. Together, the unlikely pair learn that freedom means more than winning or losing -- it means finding the courage to share the same sky.
A warm Alpine wind whispers through the vineyard stone walls at night, ripening the grapes with its invisible breath. A child follows the foehn uphill through the terraced slopes and discovers it is the breath of a sleeping mountain giant who has guarded the vines since Roman times -- exhaling warmth in autumn to ripen the Chasselas and inhaling cold in winter to let the vines rest.
A child sneaks into the UCI velodrome at night and discovers the ghosts of champion cyclists from 125 years of racing history, each riding their era's bicycle -- from towering penny-farthings to sleek carbon-fibre machines. Ferdi Kuebler himself appears, pedalling furiously in his 1950 yellow jersey, challenging the child to one lap around the banked track before dawn breaks over the Chablais Alps.
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