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Fig. 2.2.
Nostalgia experiences: petting zoos and drinking water from a mountain stream in Heididorf.
destination. As a result, the trademark remained
unused until 1997, when the rights to it were
sold to a chain of highway restaurants and to
the region of Bad Ragaz, which needed to give
an identity to its tourism initiatives. In 1997, the
offi cial trademark for the 'Heidiland vacation
region' was created and launched for the alpine
tourism district of Sarganserland-Walensee.
In the same year, the town of Maienfeld,
which lies just a few kilometres outside the bor-
ders of 'Heidiland', decided to defend its own
'rights' to the story, opening and launching what
it called 'Heidi's House - the Original' which was
also protected by a registered trademark. Maien-
feld is indeed the little city quoted at the begin-
ning of Johanna Spyri's fi rst Heidi novel:
4
from
Maienfeld starts a path that leads to Dörfl i, the
Alpine village where Heidi came to live with her
grandfather. In its fi rst year alone, Heidi's House
in Maienfeld attracted more than 15,000 visitors,
more than a quarter of whom were Japanese. In
the year 2000, Maienfeld welcomed more than
60,000 tourists - 50% of them from Japan.
After an initial period of competition
between Bad Ragaz (Heidiland) and Maienfeld
(Heididorf), both of which revendicated the
paternity of the orphan, in 2005 the two areas
decided to join together to form a single tourism
district with a precise shared identity, integrated
services and trademark, and thus to work
together despite their considerable cultural, social
and economic heterogeneity.
What sights and attractions do Heidiland
and Heididorf offer vacationers? Undoubtedly,
Heidiland and Heididorf allow visitors to
experience days gone by, and a rural, pastoral,
4
This was
Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahren
, published in 1880. The second Heidi novel is
Heidi kann brauchen,
was es gelernt hat
, published a year later.
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