Text and Photographs by Yvette Cardozo
Vol. 13. No. 10
In the end, my friends and I didn’t really do much skiing on our winter adventure to Switzerland. We were too busy soaking in delicious hot water pools, riding down mountains on funny little snow bikes, deciding whether to buy a Swiss watch in an ice palace at the “top of the world.” Oh yes, and eating more kinds of cheese than I knew existed.
Leukerbad is not exactly on “Switzerland’s most visited” list. It’s a typical small mountain village … 1,200 people, cobblestone streets that rise and drop at alarming angles, charming old houses built of sturdy pine with carved gnomes on the doorsteps. And baths. Lots of baths.
People have been coming here for five hundred years for the town’s healing waters. In fact, when you buy a combo ski ticket, it also gets you into the three local spas.
First, though we had to get to Leukerbad, a journey after twelve hours of air travel that involves three trains and a bus ride. But the train station is below the airport. Landing at eleven in the morning, we cleared customs by 11:15, rode down an escalator, and was on the train within forty minutes
Skiing in Europe is not like skiing in North America, a place where everyone wears an altimeter watch and feels cheated if they haven’t clocked 30,000 vertical feet. Rather, its hefty breakfasts, an hour ride on a local train, maybe two hours on the slopes followed by two hours over rosti (killer potato-cheese dish) and unquie herb and milk-whey sodas. Then maybe another hour on the slopes before hot chocolate, a sauna and dinner.
But no fear. You WILL walk it off. Nothing is ever close here and if a local tells you it’s a five minute walk, budget fifteen.
We skied ourselves into exhaustion that first day, then wandered into town, grabbed our bathing suits before heading to Burgerbad to bob in a thermal pool while sipping wine and nibbling sliced cheese and meat from a floating tray. Another night, it was off to the Alpentherme pool where we floated in hot water while watching the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace on a full size movie screen.
And then, there was the Roman/Irish bath. Its eleven rooms of sauna and steam get progressively hotter, broken by a quick, soapy massage and body scrub with coffee grounds, then a gradual cool down. The sauna rooms had windows so we could watch a snowstorm turn the village into a Currier & Ives Christmas card.
Oh yes, and we were all nude … men and women together wandering without a concern.
In addition to baths and watching other people’s money the Swiss do something else incredibly well … cows. Cows have sustained the Swiss over the centuries. The milk, the butter, the yogurt and the tiny milkshakes at breakfast are incredible. Once you’ve had creamy Swiss milk, you are spoiled for any other.
After four days of baths, milk and a bit of skiing, it was on to Grindelwald. If Leukerbad is off the beaten path, Grindelwald stands firmly in the middle of the trail. This is the iconic Swiss town, known around the world.
“We have the same number of cows, sheep and goats as we had a century ago,” a local said proudly. Rent-a-cow is wildly popular for the few who don’t have their own. For as little as fifty Swiss Francs, you get a percentage of a local bovine, which means you get a percentage of its cheese.
High in the mountains above town, we met Urs Raber, who won the World Cup Downhill 1984 ski race. He currently owns the Schoenbuehl Hotel outside nearby Interlaken (www.hotel-schoenbuehl.ch). On request, he will guide skiers on the two and a half mile Lauberhorn downhill race course.
It’s really not that steep if you are making turns. The racers, of course, aren’t. At the end of the day, the trip down was a journey by itself. Starting at the very top, the tracks thread through a world of white passing rustic wood huts housing cows for the winter, past the tinkle of goat bells, small farmer cabins, down roads, over bridges, through tunnels, before gradually coming back to civilization by skiing through people’s back yards then along city streets.
But, of course, skiing is not the whole story here. Forty percent of winter visitors to Grindelwald don’t even ski. So, the next day we did the James Bond breakfast at Piz Gloria, an amazing revolving restaurant high in the mountains in the Schilthorn area.
It’s been forty years since James Bond performed the movie”s famous ski chase and jumps in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. On a floor below the restaurant, they show ancient film clips which are more than a bit funny by today’s technical film and ski standards. But the view from the revolving restaurant is nonetheless, breathtaking.
Some places in the United States and Canada compare themselves to the Swiss Alps, but until you have been here, you can’t possibly envision the Alps. The mountains rise with a towering wall of spare, snow covered rock. Blue glacial ice and folds of uplift make an awesome sight.
The other big non ski activity is the cog train. We caught it the next day to Kleine Scheidegg then to Jungfraujoch, Europe’s highest train station at 11,333 feet. Most of the six mile ride is through a tunnel and the top part, alone, took sixteen years to build at a cost of what today would be almost $25 million per mile.
There’s a weather station up here, an observation deck with killer views of the glacier, a booth to send picture emails to your friends, an ice palace with sculptures of igloos, penguins, eagles … and a concession stand selling Swiss watches.
Our last day we tried something called a velogemel, a wooden snow bike that locals have used for centuries. It’s a simple wood saddle, handlebars and skis instead of wheels and it works exactly like a bicycle. We slid down the mountain, gliding around curves and floating alongside trees. It was a blast.
Some 2,380 vertical feet later we wound up at Kleine Brandegg where we did what any smart Swiss does at the end of a snowy day … savored the local house special drink, in this case a mix of coffee, kirsch (a potent cherry liquor), sugar and whipped cream.
My last day, I went in search of a good, strong local cheese. We couldn’t find a cheese shop so we stopped in a bakery for directions.
“Oh my father has cheese in his sport shop,” a girl said as she paid for her bread.
Sure enough, across the street her mum Kathy smiled and excused herself to rummage in the basement, coming up shortly with a half kilo wedge.
Who made the cheese?
“We did.”
You have cows?
“Of course. Four.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
If you go:
Winter season in Switzerland runs December through April.
For overall information, MySwitzerland.com
Leukerbad, www.leukerbad.ch
Grindelwald, www.grindelwald.net/index.php?userlang=en
Jungfrau and the trip to “the top of the world” — www.jungfraubahn.ch/en/
Schilthorn and the James Bond activities — www.schilthorn.ch/en/
Swiss transportation system including trains, buses, ferries, Swiss Pass and more, www.swisstravelsystem.ch