Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child in Poschiavo discovers that the colourful Palazzi houses each hold a hidden recipe from a different country. Following clues left by a returning confectioner, they bake their way through Spain, Poland, and France to unlock the secret of the grandest villa — the one built by a pastry chef who never forgot where he came from.
On the Bernina Express, a child notices the train going in a full circle on the Brusio viaduct. The loop is actually a time portal, and each revolution takes them deeper into the railway's construction in 1908, where Italian workers are solving the impossible challenge of climbing the Alps on smooth rails alone.
At the Cavaglia Glacier Garden, a child peers into a marmitte dei giganti and falls in. Deep underground, ancient glacier spirits are still grinding their enormous pots, cooking stone soup from the minerals of the Alps, and they need a human helper to taste-test the recipe before it's finished.
A child discovers that the Catholic bell tower of San Vittore and the Reformed Chiesa della Trinità ring their bells in a secret code at midnight. Deciphering it reveals a friendship pact from 1642 between two children — one Catholic, one Protestant — hidden inside the tower wall for nearly four centuries.
A child riding the Bernina railway asks why the train has no cogwheel. The locomotive itself answers, telling the proud story of how it was the first to climb the highest Alpine crossing on smooth rails alone — up a 7% gradient from Italian palm trees to Swiss glaciers in a single journey.
A child at Lago di Poschiavo notices the water level rising and falling like breathing. Following the Poschiavino river upstream, they discover that the lake is alive — formed when two ancient rockslides shook hands across the valley — and it sighs seven metres with every season as the power station draws its water.
A child in Poschiavo finds the old house where baby Guido Fanconi was born in 1892. Inside, a magical stethoscope lets them hear the heartbeats of children around the world whom Fanconi's discoveries would one day save — a story about how a boy from a tiny Alpine valley changed paediatric medicine forever.
A child meets the ghost of Wolfgang Hildesheimer wandering through Poschiavo at night, unable to sleep. Together they walk the moonlit borgo, and the great absurdist writer shows the child how to turn sleeplessness and solitude into stories — finding beauty in the small hours of a quiet Alpine valley.
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