St. Moritz

Though the names of its resorts -- St. Moritz, Davos, Klosters, Arosa -- register almost automatic recognition, the region wrapped around them remains surprisingly little known. Resort life in winter contrasts sharply with the everyday existence of the native mountain farmers.

Graubünden is the largest canton (a political division similar to an American state) in Switzerland, covering more than one-sixth of the entire country. To the north it borders Austria and Liechtenstein, and in the east and south it abuts Italy. As it straddles the continental divide, its rains pour off north into the Rhine, eastward with the Inn to the Danube and Black Sea, and south to the River Po. The land is thus riddled with bluff-lined valleys, and its southern half basks in crystalline light: except for the Italian-speaking Ticino, it receives the most sunshine in the country. Its 150 valleys are flanked by dense blue-black wilderness and white peaks, among them Piz Buin (3,313 m/10,867 ft) in the north and Piz Bernina (4,057 m/13,307 ft) in the south, the canton's highest mountain.

Of all the Swiss cantons, Graubünden is the most culturally diverse. Swiss-German and Italian dialects are widely spoken. But the obscure and ancient language called Romansh (literally, "Roman") is spoken by almost 20% of the population, harking back to the 1st century BC, when the area was a Roman province called Rhaetia Prima. Some say the tongue predates the Romans and trace its roots back as far as 600 BC, when an Etruscan prince named Rhaetus invaded the region.

Though anyone versed in a Latin language can follow Romansh's simpler signs (abitaziun da vacanzas is vacation apartment; il büro da pulizia, the police office), it is no easy matter to pick it up by ear. Nor do the Graubündners smooth the way: Rhaetian Romansh is fragmented into five dialects, so that people living in any of the isolated valleys of the region might call the same cup a coppina, a scadiola, a scariola, a cuppegn, a tazza, or a cupina.