May 22nd, 2004

Under the beer glass, lies the fun

COLLECTOR / Three years ago, when Bettina Costa moved from Argentina to Laufen, she began collecting beercoasters. She already owns, however, around ten thousands pieces from all over the world.

Text: Regula Wenger

LAUFEN. Who goes to Bettina Costa and Toni Scherrer's house and ask for the beercoaster collection, will not get the chance to speak in the next half an hour. With enthusiasm speak the Argentine and the Laufner about the object of their passion. Costa has already displayed before herself her favourite pieces: an old set of Cardinal beercoasters. And her husband brings immediately, as soon as he hears a keyword, the suitable item: for example, a parcel just arrived from United States and that will be opened with excitement. Its content: beercoasters. To drink there is, by the way, no beer, but the typical argentine mate.

Since three years, the 39 years-old Argentine lives in Switzerland, just in the center of the old town. The laboratory technician and the computer specialist met in Internet. During three months they sent mails to each other every day. Finally, Toni Scherrer visited her in Argentina, and after three days Costa took the firm decision to follow Toni to Switzerland. Although her friends thought she was mad, she quit her good paid job and sold her flat, since: “I had really everything, except the real love”.

She is happy, says she today. It is the best decision I could have ever made. Her husband agrees. Costa appreciates in Switzerland, among other things, the punctuality: Today, she gets angry if the train comes once three minutes too late, she admits smiling. She suffered never from homesickness, although the people are here sometimes very serious. “In every country they are more cheerful than in Switzerland”, adds Scherrer.

“At the beginning I thought that all the Swiss were collectors”, says Bettina Costa as she remembers her first times in Switzerland. But then, she realized, that above all, Toni's relatives and friends collected like crazy: sugar bags, coffee-cream lids, city maps, everything about trains... “I had to have my own collection”, decided the Argentine. One day, in a meeting where she was a little bit bored because at that time she could not understand German very well, she began to play with beercoasters. “Afterwards we went to a pub. And there, there was again so many beercoasters...”, remembers Costa. From that moment on, it was clear that there was a new collector in the family.

Approximately 10,000 beercoasters, some of which she has received as present, lie today at home. In the self-made homepage, there are photos of 6,670 beercoasters from 131 different countries. “I am mostly interested in exotic countries”, says Costa. Her husband brings immediately the corresponding folder and shows pieces from Vanuatu, Panama or Antigua. During their trips, they always put the focus - although they selves don't drink much beer – in bars and restaurants, to ask for beercoasters. “The road is the target”, says the Laufner: “What you learn by searching and the contacts all over the world. That is more worth than the whole collection.”

Caught by the collector's fever

“It is Bettina's collection”, says Toni Scherrer, however, the stamps collector is so absorbed by the beercoasters as his wife. Most of the beercoasters are meticulously scanned and placed in the homepage www.coaster.ch. “At the moment it is only a catalogue, now we want to program a database”, says the 41 years-old technician. But first the thick HTML manual must be read to the end. The homepage was programmed really very rudimentarily, but it is logic and fast, adds Scherrer convinced. By the way, when Costa and Scherrer know from somebody who has just started to collect, they send 30 beercoasters as present. “That makes the new collector happy and gives us space at home”, says Costa. (rew)