Welcome to the book page My Wonderful Monte Valdo by smartmyway!

We are very pleased that you have made it to our site – in this day and age with the enormous and constant flow of information that’s not granted at all. We would like to be a source of inspiration for your personal deceleration. Find your "me time". A good start is a cosy book that still offers some depth. For this purpose, we have re-published the work of Kathrin Ruegg, and, with the re-edition of the My Ticino Diaries series, we invite you to rediscover and positively shape your “me time”. My Wonderful Monte Valdo is your entry point to just that.

With warm Ticino regards!

Maurizio Vogrig & Roland Voser, Cademario in summer 2023.

The book.

„On April 30, 1971, at ten o‘clock in the evening, I decided to change my life. I was forty-one years old, single, healthy, a little too fat, had a mania for putting everything into precise figures or lists, and had my hair dyed reddish-blond. With my city-famous furniture store, I was considered a well-earning businesswoman. But I had enough!“

In the pristine mountain world in the south of Switzerland, Kathrin Ruegg wanted to return to the roots of life, to a simple but all the more meaningful existence without all the superficial distractions of a big city that often mask one’s unfulfillment.

Working hard, with simple means and the help of ordinary people, she tries to transform an abandoned group of houses high on the hillside above Locarno into a vacation paradise. Southern cheerfulness outshines her description of the many obstacles that stand in her way.

Now, for the first time in English, the story of the challenges this remarkable woman had to overcome to fulfill her dream of a simple life in nature. Read how she fared on her journey to this new life.

The original blurb.

Like so many people who live on this side of the Alps, Kathrin Ruegg had lost her heart to Ticino - more precisely, to the village of Froda, where she regularly spent her vacations. Here she knows all the villagers, here she feels at home.

Here, she also finds what she calls her "treasure": Monte Valdo, four crumbling houses with stone roofs, beautifully situated on a mountain terrace, but without water, without electricity, without access, and therefore, together with a large chestnut forest and a former vineyard, for only 10,000 francs.

No construction company wants to take on the repair work - the village is too far away. Therefore, Kathrin becomes an apprentice to a bricklayer and an electrician in Froda. She searches for water with the help of a local "witch"; she takes in the homeless all-rounder "Michelangelo", who likes to drink a glas or two too much, as a helper; she comes to terms with the primitive living conditions, enjoying more and more the conscious return to the essential, feeling happy.

This deep feeling of happiness helps her to persevere, even when her money is lost in a bank crash, when the spring she has finally found runs dry, when she breaks her foot at the most unfortunate moment.

In this first book of the series My Ticino Diaries, she describes with invincible humor the struggle to climb Monte Valdo and all the quirky helpers who stand by her. This is a book that passes her happiness on to the reader.

Albert Müller Publishers, 1974

The book series.

My Wonderful Monte Valdo is the first part of the original series My Ticino Diaries in 9 volumes and 2 picture diaries. The publications from 1974 to 1989 reached an audience of millions from all over German-speaking Europe.

The stories of Kathrin Ruegg tell in an entertaining way the realization of a new way of life. The organic farmer and reality-oriented woman awakens in readers a longing for the simple life.

Outside of common clichés, she offers people a convincing message from Switzerland. The catchy reading provides orientation, conveys impulses for one's own actions and has sympathetic identification potential without being aloof.

All Ticino diaries will be translated by smartmyway and offered again under the title My Ticino Diaries. The first book My Wonderful Monte Valdo is already available.

The author.

Kathrin Ruegg (in German it has an ü: Rüegg), with civil name Doris Schmid, was born on March 7, 1930 in Arosa (GR, Switzerland) and died on June 12, 2011 in Gordola (TI, Switzerland).

After the divorce of her parents in 1942, she moved with her mother and brother to Basel. After completing secretarial school, she worked as a typist at the J.R. Geigy AG chemical factory.

In Basel, Doris Schmid ran the Bottewage, an interior design store, with great success from 1960 to 1971. Then, she decided to quit the hectic city life and start anew in Ticino.

In 1971, Doris Schmid wanted to realize her dream of a vacation resort in Monte Valdo in Ticino, Switzerland's sunniest region. Guests were to rediscover the simple life. As her bank in Basel went bankrupt and she lost all her savings, she began to write and, under her pseudonym Kathrin Ruegg, described her experiences in her Ticino diaries.

Based on these diaries, Werner O. Feisst from SWR traveled from Germany to Ticino and met Kathrin Ruegg for the first time. Together, from 1982 to 2006 they produced over 350 extremely successful programs on cooking and customs (“What Grandma Used to Know”). In 1991, about 50 broadcasts on life issues were added (“Questions for Kathrin Ruegg”). She thus achieved a very high profile in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Kathrin Ruegg created a literary and fictional oeuvre of almost 50 diaries, storybooks, picture books, cookbooks and gardening books. She always inspired her readers and made the Verzasca Valley a very popular destination for many guests from Switzerland and abroad in the 80s and 90s.

The publisher.

In 2018, Maurizio Vogrig and Roland Voser founded the publishing house smartmyway in Auenstein (AG, Switzerland). In 1998, they had found their second home in Ticino. With the documentary about Kathrin Ruegg, published by smartmyway, the idea of republishing her Ticino diaries was born. This took place from 2019 to 2023 with a gratifying response.

Under the title My Wonderful Monte Valdo, smartmyway published an English edition of the first Ticino diary in the series My Ticino Diaries (link). Also, smartmyway supported Kurt Aeschbacher's pandemic gift campaign for the elderly with the diaries.

With her books, Kathrin Ruegg has created a small but unique piece of Swiss cultural heritage that is worth cultivating and developing. This down-to-earth Swiss ambassador shall - with her life-affirming and endearing stories from Ticino - find her way also into the hearts of today’s readers. With this motivation, the publisher has made the author and her work accessible again.