GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 45) - MYSTERIOUS BLUE BOX

SLIDES 0435-0443 (From the "Mysterious Blue Box")

SPIEZ - SWITZERLAND

Possibly 1957

More astonishingly bright Kodachrome from the Swiss Alps taken, as far as I can tell, just over ten years after the Second World War.

It's strange how the colours seem far less subtle than those in the later sets taken on the mid-1960s cruises, but I suppose that colour film technology improved by leaps and bounds much as modern developments tend to be doing.

High contrast, bright colours, and a surprising lack of detail come out in these pictures, and yet the Alps still look rather wonderful in the sunshine, and those two pictures showing people relaxing on the terrace and sitting in a high mountain cafe speak very much of the times.

I'm not as entirely convinced by the group photograph in front of the coaches, though, even if they do turn out to be the kind of wondrous "Blue Cars" that Nicholas Parsons was extolling the virtues of to me recently.

"All get together for a group photo" being another of those phrases that invokes my own personal idea of hell...

Beautiful looking place, though.