This Swiss ski resort and its close neighbours appear to be trapped in a charming late 1960s/early 1970s time warp, from the Piz Gloria revolving restaurant, dubbed the ‘revolting’ restaurant by our wise beyond her years seven year old daughter, which is perched on the 3000 metre summit of the Schilthorn and was used as the location for the villainous Blofeld’s lair in the Bond movie ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, to the adorably old fashioned canopied chair lift which still gently takes you up to the ‘First’ summit. Even our hotel ‘The Sunstar’, its name redolent of that optimistic era has a “Norwegian Wood” panelled interior and looks out onto a mountain vista straight out of “The Sound of Music”.
We’ve come here from the ice and snow of our home city of Warsaw, so packing has been remarkably straightforward and we are loaded up with ice skates, ski boots and all the other paraphernalia of this breathtakingly expensive but glorious pastime, which we love so much. Sabrina’s agoraphobia sadly keeps her from enjoying the pistes but she has a non-skiers lift pass so can roam the mountains at will, while our daughter skis in my slipstream (well mostly, when she’s not shouting for me to ‘wait up’ every hundred metres or so).
Glitzy St Moritz with its Cresta bobsleigh run may wear the crown of Europe’s oldest and most glamorous Alpine winter sports resort, but Grindelwald in the Bernese Oberland has welcomed mountain climbers (it looks out onto the north face of the formidable Eiger), ice skaters, curlers and skiers since 1891. The first cableway in the Alps was built here in 1908 and by 1912 its new railway had reached the Jungfraujoch, which is still Europes’s highest railway station, at well over 3,400 metres.
This traditional vibe is all to the good as a couple of years back in Klosters, a fashionable resort much beloved of British royals, their aristo friends and attendant paparazzi, I was dragooned into the hotel’s end of week cabaret dressed up as one of the Spice Girls (‘Scary Spice’ never looked such a fright). So this trip I’m hoping for something a little more Swiss German, more gemütlich (warm and cosy). And so it is proving as we settle into an easy rhythm of long drawn out buffet breakfasts in our hotel (there’s nothing as comforting as a selection of mueslis and mountain cheeses) as sunny skies or a complete ‘white-out’ increases or curbs our enthusiasm to suit up and hit the slopes, which in either case we rarely do much before 11am. Long drawn out late lunchtime rendezvous with Sabrina on mountain top terraces are followed a few hours later by ‘après ski’ drinks by the ice and curling rinks as our daughter flashes past and superannuated curlers gracefully glide their stones into place, swims and saunas in the hotel pool and late evening dinners.
On a morning of heavy snow and poor visibility, we take the old train up to Kleine Scheidegg, and decide on a whim to continue on all the way up through the tunnels in the permafrost up to Jungfraujoch station and observatory, which is at the head of the valley containing the vastness of the Great Aletsch Glacier.
Obscured by clouds and battered by high winds for most of the time we spend there we find to our daughter’s huge disappointment that even the hardy huskies (or more likely their handlers) are indisposed, so after gingerly walking the halls of the freezing cold Ice Palace, hacked artfully out of the belly of the glacier in the 1930s and filled with whimsical ice sculptures of bears and other animals (like a large scale set of Swarovski Crystal Wildlife figurines), we beat a hasty retreat into the overheated railway station restaurant to ease our hunger and altitude sickness pangs with a feast of carbs. The macaroni, mince and onion casserole we order which arrives at our table in a winsome friesian cow patterned saucepan, is more than up to the task and Sabrina and I further fortify ourselves for the return journey through the continuing blizzard with a couple of glasses of Glühwein, our favourite Swiss mountain tipple and far more moreish than any of the ‘food as fuel’, we have eaten on this trip.
Glühwein: Serves 6 small glasses
In the classic Swiss German recipe, water is substituted for orange juice (not nearly as delicious in my opinion).
1 bottle of red wine ( no need for expensive one)
1 cup of orange juice
4 tbsp sugar or to taste
8 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1 lemon sliced
1 orange sliced
Put the wine and orange juice in a pan, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and add the sugar, stir till dissolved then add the spices, simmer for about an hour. Adjust the sweetness then add the lemon and orange slices, turn the heat off, let sit for a few minutes to extract the oils from the citrus fruit skins, then serve.
By the time we get back to Kleine Scheidegg station, the white out has magically lifted so thanking the ski gods profusely, we strap on our skis and complete the journey in blazing sunshine.
One of the joys of skiing in this part of Switzerland is the ability to range far and wide across a number of interconnected resorts. While not quite as romantic or adventurous as skiing across the Swiss border from Cervinia in Italy to Zermatt and back in a day with passport in hand, as I have done a couple of times, rolling the dice that a bout of severe weather won’t strand you on the wrong side of the Matterhorn for the night, the trip we make from Grindelwald to Wengen and the chocolate-box-lid worthy village of Mürren, has its fair share of drama including the dizzying cable car ascent to the top of the Schilthorn. Already feeling queasy from this, the last thing we probably needed at an altitude of 3000 metres was to have lunch in a revolting (sic) restaurant, masses of carbs not withstanding.
So it was a relief to get back on our skis for the long descent to Wengen, narrowly managing to avoid the distinctly ungemütlich ‘Direttisima’, the famous Black run which with a gradient of 88% claims to be the world’s steepest!
This is sheer poetry . I want to travel to Switzerland right now
Great to know about the joys of Grindelwald, it seems to be slightly old fashioned but beautiful.