01

Stop one
Martinsturm
Wilson Blade V9 Super Tour Tennis Bag (15 Racquets): [hand on the stone, breathe] It began — and I want you to FEEL this — as a grain store. A humble grain store in the counts' courtyard, thirteenth century. [pause] And then, between 1599 and 1601, Benedetto Prato raised it three storeys and crowned it with that colossal onion dome and lantern, making it one of the earliest Baroque structures on Lake Constance. The covered outer wooden staircase enters in 1602. The Martinskapelle follows around 1701 to 1705, holding medieval frescoes of biblical scenes painted circa 1362 to 1420, restored by Florus Scheel between 1910 and 1914. A city history museum since April 2015. From GRAIN. To THIS. I am not crying, you are.
02

Stop two
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Wilson Blade V9 Super Tour Tennis Bag (15 Racquets): [circle it slowly, nobody speaks] Peter Zumthor designed this. Built 1990 to 1997, opened July 1997 with the American light artist James Turrell. Nine hundred and twelve etched glass panels, each roughly 250 kilograms, hung as an outer skin. Inside: unpainted exposed concrete, polished terrazzo, no comfort, no apology, no explanation offered to anyone. Zumthor called it a lamp that absorbs the changing light of the sky and the haze off the lake. A LAMP. Mies van der Rohe Award in 1998; the Pritzker for him in 2009. [to the group] Look up. Hold it. HOLD IT. Now release.
03

Stop three
Seebuehne der Bregenzer Festspiele
Wilson Blade V9 Super Tour Tennis Bag (15 Racquets): 1946. The war has just ended, and someone in this town says: opera. On the water. [beat] The first performances went up on two floating barges — one carrying the stage, one carrying the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. From that, THIS: a permanent lakeside amphitheatre seating around 7,000, with productions that routinely pull the lake itself into the staging. Every July and August: Carmen, Tosca, La Bohème, Turandot. The 2018 season drew 270,000 people over five weeks, and Carmen across 2017 and 2018 drew 400,000. [voice going] Two barges. Four hundred thousand. Nobody move. I need a moment.
04

Stop four
Pfaenderbahn
Wilson Blade V9 Super Tour Tennis Bag (15 Racquets): [gesture upward, from the shoulder, bigger] The ascent, darlings. Opened 20 March 1927, carrying you from the Lake Constance shore at 419 metres to a mountain station at 1,022 — a rise of 603 metres over a line 2,063 metres long, average gradient 31 percent. Six minutes. Up to twelve metres per second. That is an entire second act delivered in six minutes. In 1994 the Vorarlberg ropeway maker Doppelmayr rebuilt the whole installation: fully glazed cabins for up to 80, two support towers removed, hydraulic tensioning and stabilising systems fitted, sliding platforms at both stations. Face the view. Do not look at your phone. This is the exit music.
Five is not four plus one. Five is a completely different problem, and anybody who tells you otherwise has never tried it. There is a threshold where quantity becomes its own discipline, and fifteen racquets is well past it.
The Wilson Blade V9 Super Tour 15-pack is built for that side of the threshold. Three main compartments, so the load is organised rather than piled — racquets in their own space, kit in another, everything else in the third.
Two of those compartments are thermally lined, and that matters: a hot car boot slackens string tension and softens grips, and the lining is the only thing between your frames and a July afternoon. A ventilated compartment takes shoes and wet kit away from everything else. Accessory pockets handle grips, dampeners, balls and valuables.
And padded backpack straps come alongside the shoulder strap, because at full load this is a two-shoulder object and pretending otherwise ends badly.
Bregenz is a town that understands doing something enormous and making it look easy. The Bregenzer Festspiele began in 1946 with performances on two floating barges — one carrying the stage, one carrying the Vienna Symphony Orchestra — and grew into the permanent lakeside Seebühne, where the sets are the size of buildings.
Around the lake: the Martinsturm, a thirteenth-century grain store raised three storeys between 1599 and 1601 by Benedetto Prato and crowned with its onion dome; the Kunsthaus Bregenz by Peter Zumthor, opened in July 1997, hanging 912 etched glass panels of about 250 kg each as an outer skin; and the Pfänderbahn, climbing from 419 to 1,022 metres since 20 March 1927.
It is also perfect for that six-minute ride up the Pfänder, when you want both hands free and everything you own on your back.
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