We flew into Geneva and then had about a 3 hr coach trip into Grindelwald. We passed loads of pretty lakes and could see mountain tips off into the distance of course. It got quite exciting the closer we got to them, but as we started climbing, even we realised that there was not as much snow as one would expect, but hey....we are saffers, what do we know (or care) about the quality of the snow. As long as we can run around in it, slide down koppies on it and watch it turn yellow in places (just kidding), it was fine.
This is the main street of the resort, taken from the station. We spent a lot of time catching trains and cable cars all over the place, lugging skis and poles around and trying desperately hard not to collect a few eyeballs on the ends of them.
This is our ski group with the instructor, Fritz (the little guy in the middle). He looked like he had stepped out of the Gnome-mobile but he was very patient and as he is a mountain guide in summer, he would point out different peaks to us and was pretty good at spotting the 'chamois' (mountain goats..at first I thought he was talking about washing his car or waxing his skis). Of course he was super fit and I don't think he knew a lot of English swearwords, otherwise we would have heard them. This picture was taken overlooking Wengen, where a series of the World Cup ski events was to have taken place. There was great excitement but they had to cancel the practice runs and I never even got to peak at all the foreign sosaties (you know...beef on sticks). One of the ladies we met in the resort said that she had been in a cable car with the Italian team, the whole Italian team, with all their nice thick calves..and hams...and oh la la...those rippling muscles..and that was before she got to the biceps!
One of the days we took the train up to Jungfrau, which is like paying a visit to the top of the world. It was pretty exciting and dramatic views made my palms sweaty and one had to fight the urge to get on one's belly and crawl around instead of walking around in places. We thought of Rick and Robin when we were walking on scaffolding type platforms above a few drops. It was okay until you realised that you were walking on what looked like frozen chicken wire and you had hundreds of holes between you and a vacuum.
Oh, and it was a little bit cold out there...
Now we get to the real stuff. These are pictures of us trying to look like we know what we are doing. See I haven't figured out that my skis aren't on yet! Hmm, I wonder who took that photo and which way around he was holding the camera.
Graham at least has his skis on, would love to have seen what happened if he had just slid a little further back...
This was taken at one of the many restaurants that are dotted all over the mountains. We had wonderful views from here and it was taken on one of the sunny mornings when we had been on some good soft snow pistes. We landed up sitting next to a guy we both used to work with in the wonderful old days of CDE and whom we had last seen 10 years' ago.
The best thing was that the lady who took our photo sat next to us at dinner in the hotel. One night we were talking about curling and Graham said something to her about "do you think there is any kind of skill in curling...?". Her hubby very politely nearly wet himself. He told us that Hilary used to 'curl for Scotland'. Hee hee. We ventured out one night to try curling at the local ice rink and boy was it fun!!! I will never mock it on TV again. It was such a laugh and we were very competitive out there and...yes....there is skill involved..and 'no' we did not have a lot of it, but I would definitely do it again.
yoo-hoo......once again, looking better than I either felt, or ski-ed for that matter. One stops many times to 'admire the view'. It has nothing to do with trying to control your bowels when you see how you have to get down the mountain, nor about wondering if your legs can take any more strain on those turns!
Ok, my favourite part, when we were safely tucked up back in a cable car on the way back to the village.
though sometimes all this work can be very very tiring..... south west trains do not offer anything like this!
This is a view from our balcony. Switzerland was great and the area we visited would be amazing to re-visit in summer (they have wonderful walking trails that are used all year round) but we found it very expensive. I think we have been spoiled working in the UK and earning pounds, we have got used to finding most places quite reasonable..except this one. It is not a place to visit if you are on a tight budget!!
This was at the top of one of the cable car points and also a station. The teepee is a pub and do not be fooled by the size of it on the outside. We had a peek inside at some stage and it was the size of Ellis Park in there! (and smelled like it too probably, especially if SAB watered the grass with its waste water).
On the last day we did a bit more of the touristy thing and took ourselves off to Wengen where we could not watch the cancelled world cup ski events but where we ate a huge pork schnitzel, visited an English church and bought myself a Swiss Army knife.
And..so to bed...and dreams of that 'shoosh- shoosh-shooshing' sound as we effortlessly glided down vertical cliff faces lulled us to sleep. (and precisely not the echo of someone in our party throwing a strop, taking off skis and marching down the piste saying..." I am not doing this anymore...you go on and leave me behind...I am NEVER doing this again.." and who promptly went out and bought a snow and ski mag to see which resorts had the highest chance of snow in March...... by the way has anyone noticed how grey Graham is becoming?
