In the thirteenth century, St Gallen had become an important market town as a producer and exporter of exceptionally high-quality linen. Early in the eighteenth century, cotton began to outsell linen around Europe, and by 1790, some 40,000 women were working from home to embroider cotton and muslin for export. The invention of embroidery machines in the 1820s and 1830s brought a golden age to St Gallen. A few decades later, the region boasted some 100,000 machines, with production still centered in the home. By 1913, embroidery was Switzerland’s largest export industry, with St Gallen accounting for around half of the entire world production of textiles. These days, that figure is down to just 0.5 percent, but Swiss embroidery remains a highly valued, luxury commodity and production continues in the hands of small, highly specialized companies that supply designs and finished products to haute couture fashion houses: Lacoste’s famous crocodile logo, for instance, is Swiss embroidered. While St Gallen’s embroidery industry is almost entirely computerized it still relies on some two thousand local women working from home on fine hand-sewn detailing impossible to achieve by machine.

One of St Gallen's most important landmark is the imposing baroque Cathedral in the heart of the stunning "Stift” district. This beautiful district has been awarded World Cultural Heritage Status and is under the protection of UNESCO. I stayed in a small hotel on one of the side streets not far from the train station and a block from the old part of town, across from which there was a small audio store where I purchased a set of headphones for my son's birthday. The night was cold but clear as was the next morning when I took a short walking tour around town. I went into a toy store and purchased a set of SBB wood bearing freight cars for my model railroad. It's funny how you can find things that you are looking for in the most unsuspecting places, of course it helps if you want everything!.