What if the entire journey on a rollercoaster consisted solely of the part where you’re slowly inching your way to a peak, holding your breath, waiting for the drop and speed that never comes? As a passenger on the world’s steepest funicular, located in Switzerland, you aren’t exactly in for a dramatic and adventurous ride; your viewpoint of the surroundings will remain perfectly perpendicular thanks to the rotating cylindrical passenger carriages, and it never goes particularly fast. But nevertheless, the Stoos Bahn Tram is an experience to remember, showing off the mountain scenery from unprecedented heights.

Traveling from Schywz to the mountains village of Stoos, which is set 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) above sea level in central Switzerland, the Stoos Bahn Tram follows the peaks and valleys, making its length look a whole lot like a white-knuckle attraction at an amusement park. But it traverses its 1,738 meter length (just over a mile) at speeds of 22 miles per hour, gently bobbing up and down as its passengers remain upright, no matter how steep the sections become.

And they do get steep. The journey reaches inclines of 110 percent, smashing a previous world record for the steepest funicular belonging to the Gelmergahn in Bern, Switzerland, which reached 106 percent. It took 14 years and $52.6 million to complete the project, which was officially launched in mid-December 2017.

Three hundred feet above the valley floor, a suspension bridge gently sways and bobs as pedestrians cross its 1,621-foot length through the Swiss Alps. These impressive stats have helped the Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge in Switzerland break previous records, making it the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world.

Sure, the glass-floored bridge in China is higher and forces you to look down from your precarious position, but this bridge is almost as scary, considering that it’s not stationary and measures just two feet wide. That means you have to march down its length single-file, making it harder to clutch onto others for dear life.

The bridge was completed in 10 weeks by Swissrope and offers magnificent views of the surrounding mountains, including the Bernese Alps and Matterhorn (if you manage to look up and enjoy them instead of staring at your feet and trying not to hyperventilate.) It features a grated metal floor, runs between 5,000-7,000 feet above sea level, and takes ten minutes to walk cross. The pass through the mountains previously took four hours to navigate.

Photos taken from the air (provided by the Switzerland Tourism Board) give us the best idea of the bridge’s scale. The Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge links two sections of the Europaweg hiking trail, a two-day link between the towns of Zermatt and Grächen, and replaces an older bridge that was damaged by falling rocks. It’s named for its primary sponsor.

It doesn’t matter where you go in the world: it seems like litter is always an unwelcome part of the scenery. The Swiss city of Lucerne decided to do something about their litter problem by enticing residents and visitors to have fun while throwing their rubbish away. The initiative is called “Lucerne Shines,” and in the many years since it was implemented the city has seen an exceptional response.

(all images via: Freshome)

The project saw 16 public trash bins converted to public game stations. You won’t find any fancy touch-screen games, though – these games are all about cleaning up your mess and leaving the city a little prettier than you found it. From short mazes to free-throw lines to hopscotch, the initiative appeals to everyone who likes to have a little unexpected fun in the middle of an otherwise-ordinary day.

The project is a follow-up to a more general city cleanup initiative. The original effort saw a huge reduction in the amount of waste on city streets, but Lucerne was still spending an astonishing amount of money on litter cleanup every year. The city then had the brilliant idea to use fun as an incentive…and suddenly, the citizens of Lucerne just couldn’t wait to pop their trash into the waiting receptacles.

It’s often said that there are no unique ideas out there – only unique means of executing those ideas. Swiss artist Felice Varini, however, has been executing his incredibly unique ides in a unique way since 1978. His singular style of geometric painting calls into question our ideas about complex art pieces and the interaction between art and viewer.

Upon seeing Varini’s work for the first time, most people react by claiming it’s fake. Indeed, when looking at a photograph of a Varini painting from the vantage point, the painted object does appear to float in mid-air, like it’s been overlaid in Photoshop. But once you see the same painting from outside of the vantage point, it’s clear that the piece was created in real life without the use of computer trickery. He paints shapes and geometric patterns in three-dimensional spaces, so that when the viewer sees the piece from a specific vantage point it makes sense, but when viewed from outside of the vantage point the shape appears skewed and distorted.

Though the technique looks incredibly complicated, Varini insists that “anyone can do it.” He says that his type of painting requires no special talent; rather, it requires thinking and choosing the right spaces. The spaces he tends to choose are wide-open interior spaces, such as museums and hallways, or exterior locations like rooftops or even entire villages. His goal, he says, is to explore aspects of the space that have heretofore been ignored.

Although you can only see the complete, sensical painting from one specific vantage point, Varini insists that the most important aspect of his paintings is what lies outside of the vantage point. The myriad configurations viewable from every other possible aspect are what keep him inspired to continue creating these complex paintings. While the vantage point offers a predictable view, looking at the piece from any other spot creates an entirely new and unpredictable experience.

Thinking and creating much different than most other artists, Varini has indicated that he never considers the viewer when creating his paintings. He doesn’t consider how the pieces may someday be seen because he doesn’t know how or from where the viewer will see them. He simply creates a piece of art and sets it free to have an independent existence. According to Varini, the viewer can see the piece, be part of the piece, or even walk through it without noticing it or being able to identify it.

In the artist’s words, from an interview with Poetic Mind:

“Everyone knows how a circle or a square looks like. My concern is what happens outside the vantage point of view. Where is the painting then? Where is the painter? The painter is obviously out of the work, and so the painting is alone and totally abstract, made of many shapes. The painting exists as a whole, with its complete shape as well as the fragments; it is not born to create specific shapes that need to satisfy the viewer. The paintings are not defined by the understanding of the viewer or what the viewer sees, but rather exist in their own right, and have their own relation to the three-dimensional space in which they were created. I work with the reality itself, with nature.”

Although he creates his paintings on-site and usually on a large scale, Felice Varini does not consider himself an installation artist. He calls himself a painter, because regardless of where or how his art is realized, it is – at its core – a series of complex and beautiful paintings.