From far away it was a brown spot with blue dots and white letters. In grandma’s bed and breakfast inn there was a crack in the window of the breakfast room through which you could look through. To the Jenewein Haus. It stands on the Geigenbühel, something reassuring. You find culture here too. Even if it is hidden. But in any case Mrs. Jenewein, the owner and also independent manager of a bed and breakfast inn, had a special clientele. The architecture attracted a lot of artists, as for instance Oskar Werner. It stood there painted blue and clad in brown.

Mr. Jenewein, who commissioned the building, was a social democrat. Even during the Nazi era he refused to say the Hitler salute arguing that “‘Grüss Gott’ is also a nice greeting” (play on the Austrian-Southern German greeting “Grüss Gott”). There is not much that is of cultural or historical significance here. The house was built in 1930, in the heyday of modernism, by a very important architect who was influenced by the Bauhaus. A house that stood out as being different from other houses.

Decades zoom by (along with oneself) the brown house with the blue windows and the white letters. The house is depicted on each representative postcard of the town.

Then it vanished. Torn down under the cover of night, replaced by something else. To this day there are rumors that it was under monument protection or that it was never protected as a monument since it was a private house. The heirs have built yet another building in the typical Tyrolean style, adding one more to the countless apartment buildings. The house no longer exists – the house that I knew no longer stands.

When I blink with my eyes, I can see in the distance a brown spot with blue dots and white letters. On a ski slope which is, depending on the season, either white, green or brown.