Kandersteg night.

The volunteer family left today. They’ve done a lot of work, all told, work I’m glad I didn’t have to do. The three of them did a lot of odd jobs and small, annoying tasks, and they did them cheerfully while enjoying free room, board, and evening programs in the Alps. It seems like a worthwhile vacation to me. They took a few days off at the end of their stay to enjoy the area, and I think they’re going to hop around a bit before flying back to Texas. I mostly appreciated having a second woodchopper to help me split kindling, and I’m excited that they fixed the ping-pong table. Dutch and I had a raging table-tennis match last night. (I’m not supposed to call it ping-pong, as the proper name is, as the Aussies have informed us, table-tennis, but “table-tennis table” is too redundant for me.) We’re practicing up so we can beat up on the Kandersteg boys.

We took a staff night out to the Kandersteg International Scouting Centre (KISC) a couple of nights ago. We had a tour of their compound, then did introductions. They have about twenty-five or thirty staff members right now, to our eight, due to the size of KISC. Their facilities are nice; they have more skis and a larger outdoor kitchen than we do, plus their staff don’t have to do their own laundry or clean anything. I still like the setup at our Chalet, though. It’s nice having a little family of nine of us, even if it means we’re on duty more often, and our place is vastly more beautiful than theirs. Also, we’re on the mountainside for easy hiking access whereas they’re in the river valley, we have a ton more ski runs than they, and their uniform is a bright pink shirt. Anyway, we’re due to get another four or so staff members soon (kitchen, maintenance, programming, head manager), so things should settle down around here. Oh, and their whole staff is volunteer, except for the head manager, but we get paid, even if it’s not much.

We split up into five teams for a trivia game after the introductions. They’ve an international staff as well, which made for great fun during the game. They had an international pop culture round, a round about KISC and our center, a round about Switzerland, and a photo round. We had to know things like the highest peak in CH, how many cantons CH has, whether the picture was of Bob Dylan of Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, in which eye their Brazilian staff member is blind, where the Chalet cat was when she got lost a month ago, and the KISC manager’s middle name. My team won by a single point and was awarded giant bars of Toblerone, as well as other candies. Everyone was treated to an all-night dessert buffet (during which SAussie dared me to have one of each and I certainly complied) and two free drinks. I tried another Swiss beer and a cider.

After the quiz, we adjourned to their hangout room, where we had a table-football tournament. (You can’t call it fuseball in German-speaking countries, because Fussball just means football/soccer. They’re very keen on “table” sports in the rest of the world, though they do go in for air hockey instead of table-hockey, I believe.) We played Americas v Europe, Sweden v Finland, Germany v England, USA v Australia, Netherlands v Southern Hemisphere, etc., until we ran out of combinations of teams with at least two people in the category. I’d forgotten how difficult it is to play with one person per dowel, all four of you crammed along the side of the table and trying to see what’s going on all at once. Overall, the Swedish boys and the Netherlands team of Dutch from our place and SAussie’s boyfriend from KISC proved to be the best, I think. Germany also did well, as did any team with more KISCers on it, since most of our Chalet crew hadn’t played in years.

We then adjourned to the fireplace room, their actual staff room. Their Korean staff member was turning twenty-one that night, and the KISCers gave him a bottle of sake. I thought they said that someone’s Japanese mother made it back home. We shared it around during lively conversation, and then someone dared the Kandersteg boys (and their couple of girls) to sing their KISC song. They said they would if we sang ours, but they didn’t all know theirs, so they had to run off and practice. We took the opportunity to escape out the window so that we wouldn’t have to sing. They had scaffolding up, so we climbed down and crept around to watch them learn their song through the window. Their Brazilian staff member helped us learn it quickly, and we made up our own verse. They eventually found us outside, so we hopped back in and sang their song to them as they prepared to begin in the history room. They put on a good performance after all, and we didn’t sing ours, promising a rendition if they came to visit us soon. Another KISCer produced a bottle of mystery alcohol from some other country, distilled by a friend’s friend. It was light brown, sweet, and strong, and we left them to it after a bit. We had to get home and start practicing our table-tennis for next time. We’re also planning a capture the flag match on our territory. We’ve fewer streams, more trees, more hillside, and we know the area.

I’m off to a campfire now. The adorable British kids have promised to teach me some amusing English songs. I’d best have a relaxing evening, as I have three days off and I want to make the most of them.

Lastly, I got up early this morning to take a few photos of the fresh snowfall, so here those are. The water trough is traditional on Swiss farms. They keep them running year ‘round for thirsty hikers. And cows, of course.