New Glarus Wisconsin is also known as “Little Switzerland. It was founded by Swiss immigrants and retains remnants of its culture via canton emblems festooned on its buildings, Swiss-themed festivals, cheese factories and brewery, and its Swiss Historic Village and Museum which includes reproductions of traditional Swiss homes, schoolhouse, churches, firehouse and a range of shops, and a history exhibit that traces Swiss immigration history to America in general, and the New Glarus area in particular.

We arrived the weekend of one of the town’s festivals, a barely attended music festival which at least got us to walk the downtown area where we stopped at a few places:

• A couple cheese tasting rooms (Maple Leaf and Edelweiss);
• A sausage company (Reuf’s Meat Market) which has dozens of types of sausage including bleu, beer and onion, chili, pizza and apple bratwursts (brats) and Landjaeger (a Swiss variant of jerky, which we had).

• The New Glarus Brewery’s town tasting room where we got tastes of two of the brewery’s most famous offerings, Rhubarb beer (not to our taste) and Spotted Cow (which we both enjoyed).

We also found an interesting old building at the edge of town.

While not exactly a tourist destination for us, it was cute.