Work hard, play harder.

The other American [whom I will call Sloan] and I were the only two junior staff members on duty today, so we had three meals to prepare. (Meeting new guests with her is always entertaining because they ask if we knew each other before coming to Switzerland. We have to explain that we live a good 4500 kilometers away from each other in the States.) We also made three beds in preparation for tomorrow's guests, and I worked in the shop for an hour. It snowed again all last night, thank goodness, but that meant a bit more shoveling to do. My arms weren't sore at all after all that ice chopping, just my hand muscles, but I could feel the sluggishness in my forearms when I lifted the shovel. We got a reprieve later in the day so that we could join a candidate on a snowshoe hike. We stopped at a hollow tree on the hike and climbed up the inside. I could hear the crack and rumble of what sounded like an avalanche down the valley as we crossed a snowy field.

We're understaffed at the moment, and the senior staff and HR people from the world headquarters are here to choose new senior staff members. Our center manager, the Dane, left a couple of days ago. They've got four candidates here, one Swiss, one British, one Irish-Austrian, and one American. The Swiss one came to have tea in the staff house last night. She's got the best experience, but she's not serious about the job. The American is at least sixty, out of shape, and could never hike or ski as much as is required, much less come running uphill in case of emergency. I like both of the others, but I'm especially partial to the Irish-Austrian. She seems like she'd make a strong leader. She can also speak both English and German, though so can the Swiss, of course. The Brit is quiet, so I don't know much about her. Perhaps she is like me and prefers to size things up before jumping in.

We're also out a cook ("kitchen coordinator") at the moment, which is why I've been helping in the kitchen so much lately. Sloan and the American candidate were also in there today. They can't use the metric system to save their lives, and the candidate is very hesitant. It's just food, for goodness sake, and the people coming to eat it have been out skiing/boarding/hiking/snowshoeing all day. They'll eat anything, I promise. But I had to show her how to do everything, including how to make instant mashed potatoes, and I had to convert a recipe from 30 to 20 people for her. Sheesh. Sloan accidentally put two liters of water in the beef stew she was cooking instead of one, then tried to fix it by adding extra gravy spice powder instead of flour. Cripes. I, on the other hand, fixed the dinner and made a fabulous date cake. Nobody's signed up to be the cook yet. Seriously, if anyone reading this is interested, it's a year-long position with paid airfare, room, and board, so you can basically save your whole salary. They'll take anyone of any age and you get two days off per week for partaking of all the wonderful outdoor activities Switzerland has to offer. Not bad. I would definitely think about being senior staff here if I weren't so set on going to school next year.

I'd actually try to get the program coordinator position. It's also open, or will be in May, when SAussie leaves. An ex-junior staff member and a North Carolinian are vying for the position. I don't yet know which one I hope will get it. SAussie has set the bar high.

Brazil made some kind of crispy chocolate cookie from her hometown, so I'm going to quit typing and sit down for night tea with most of the staff.

Day to day.

I haven't given the best picture of what it is I do, I suppose. I'm actually signed up to work odd jobs at a chalet. I help the guests out, give tours of the place, since it was built in 1932 and has some interesting quirks, and pitch in around the house. Sometimes this means I have to help with laundry, though that's easy because they have an industrial washer & dryer and there aren't that many guests anyway. Sometimes I get to cook dessert. I made a pan of bread & butter pudding today, for example. Whenever I can, I take the outdoor tasks. I sort the recycling, shovel snow, and clear the fire pit. Today, I chopped ice. We'd had a few cars not make it around the last hairpin of our winding mountain road, and more than a few slide back down the hill after trying. I chopped ice until I got a blister on my palm, then I chopped ice till the blister filled with blood, then I chopped ice till it burst in my glove, then I chopped ice for another hour. Afterward, I shoveled all that chopped ice off the edge of the road. I didn't mind a bit. It was good exercise, and anytime I wanted a break, I just leaned on the handle and looked out at the mountains. They're amazing. Here, this is the view from the staff house window just after daybreak.

For that matter, this is the staff house, where I live. I took that right before the last big snow. It looks more like the former picture around here these days.

I generally get up between seven and half eight (eight-thirty, that is--I have to speak European around here) and head to the main chalet. Sometimes I help with breakfast, sometimes I just stuff myself on muesli and fresh yogurt or the bread that's delivered to us daily by the local baker with some Alpkäse. I help out in the morning, but we get lazy by lunchtime. The staff usually eats leftovers for lunch, and since the kitchen coordinator makes a full meal for dinner each night, we have plenty of options. Plus, there's always that bread and cheese for a sandwich. We don't work very hard in the afternoon, either, actually. I spent this afternoon in the office, hanging out with the senior staff and the chalet cat. We had tea and ChocOvo bars right after lunch, and since it's Sunday, we had official afternoon tea at three or four. We have official tea at least half the time, actually, whenever someone suggests it. We've two Aussies, so even though our Brit has left us, we still have lots of reminders for tea. Afternoon tea actually means hot chocolate and whatever leftover dessert we can scrounge up, since we have regular tea all the time. Today it was cake, lemon or chocolate chip. Sometimes it's chocolate mousse, raspberry crumble, or peach upsidedown cake. (We make a new dessert every night. Sometimes I get to cook it.) All the staff members sit around a rickety old table, sipping chocolate, chatting about our countries, making fun of each other, and planning out the afternoon and next few days. I get some real work in before dinner (see: ice chopping), then stuff myself again. I have been eating everything in sight lately. Just piling the food on. It's great.

We had raclette for dinner tonight. It's a Swiss-French dish wherein you cut a bunch of slices of cheese, then put them one by one in your little pan, just the size of your palm, to melt. You stick the cheese pan on one level of a griddle, then put bite-size pieces of food on the upper level. We had potatoes, peppers, broccoli, bread, and pineapple to choose from. When the cheese is bubbling, you put your food bites on your plate and use a little spatula to scoop your raclette cheese over your food. Put in a new cheese slice while it cools, and you can go on all night. Dinner's not this much fun every night, but it's always good and often Swiss or at least European in origin. After dinner this evening, I gave a tour.

That's probably the most boring my days get, and really, I had fun today. It's always great to just sit and talk to the guests, as they're usually from all over. We had a trio of young women earlier this week, one from Canada, one from England, and one from Japan. They were traveling together and game for discussions during and after dinner. So, usually, we've a local woodcarver to visit, a hike to guide, or a fondue and Swiss trivia night to put on. Brazil and I put together a great campfire for a group of Boy Scouts who visited the other night. They were an international group from Basel, and one of the leaders was also Brazilian originally. The other played rugby and told me all about where to hike in the Black Forest and which castles to see on my way there. I also learned some Boy Scout songs, mostly about pirates, beans, and heaven. Hmm. I'm leading a hike along the river in a few days. We'll go see the falls, have a snow barbecue, and then head up Engstligen for some snow tubing.

I'll leave you with the obligatory "Hey, I'm in Switzerland!" photo. I should have a better one soon, with snow and all. I keep forgetting to get pictures of myself. It's been a crazy past few days. The board of trustees (BOT) for the center was here, so we had to keep all fifteen of them happy as cows with bells. They asked for extra servings after the kitchen had cleared up dinner, had me fetch them some wine right as I was about to head to bed, and fussed about trying to impress each other. They held meetings during the day, so I had to help stock coffee and cookies in multiple rooms. I did have fun on their last evening. They hiked out to this gnarled old tree for appetizers and fun in the snow. I got to hike out with a giant cheese platter, too large in diameter for me to wrap my arms around. It was wood and an inch thick, so it was a bit of a job to get it out there. Sydney (the other Aussie) and I also carried three thermoses of Glühwein between us, which we set up on a toboggan beneath this gnarled tree. I threaded my way between all these old women with my arms outstretched, trying to get cheese to everyone on a narrow, snowy path. I'd already passed them the wine, so they were pleasant and fed me some cheese as well. There must have been at least fifteen varieties of cheese, nearly all delicious, plus some apricots, cashews, walnuts, hazelnuts, prunes, and a pear. When we finally finished the cheese plate, I helped the BOT strap on snowshoes and we took a walk. Anyone who didn't want to snowshoe could sledge back down. We made it back to the chalet just after the sun set, just in time for dinner. I think we kept the BOT in good spirits for the time they stayed.

Also of note: I can walk into town when I feel like it, and Finn and I went to the grocery store the other day. They have a good ten brands of Swiss chocolate, plus all the Easter displays are out right now. There are chocolate bunnies like I've never seen before. They also pre-dye their eggs, which I found hilarious.And then I found the cheese aisles. Ooh. The chocolate, by the way, has more than one of its own aisles as well. And the wine! Wine is wicked inexpensive in Switzerland, it turns out. I've been testing out the beers the last batch of staff left here, having a nightly installment of an international beer tasting, but I might have to switch to wine for a while. I got a Swiss fondant and a French pinot noir for starters. I'll crack them open in a few days, when I have another long break. The chocolate I bought for the rest of the junior staff is already half gone, so I'd better get in on that first.

Skiing.

Skiing was a bit rough on Wednesday. This is the kind of weather we had, and a decent picture of what Adelboden looks like. It didn't stop snowing all night, so they hadn't had the chance to groom all the runs. Those they had groomed still had powder piling up on them. I went up early with Finn, and she showed me her favorite runs. We had a pretty good day of it, though my quads got tired by about 15:00 from a combination of prior disuse and hacking through all that powder. We had the brilliant idea of tackling an ungroomed run earlier in the day--we made it about a kilometer before we gave up and climbed through chest-high snow to the access road. It was like a combination of cross-country skiing and snowshoeing with broken snowshoes, and we figured we couldn't make it the rest of the way without losing too much ski time. We took the higher lifts when they opened, but the wind was so strong at the top that I felt I was being scoured. Finn pointed her skis away from the run and I watched as the force of the snowstorm actually pushed her uphill. We headed down in a hurry and kept to the Silleren area for the rest of the day. This is one of the gondolas above the river on the way home.


We came back in the late afternoon, stuffed ourselves with tuna pie, and suited up again for night sledging. This time, we set out with Brazil, SAussie, and SAussie's boyfriend as well. When we'd dragged our toboggans up to the Tschenten lift (the lower lift into town closes at 18:00), we found the night sledging canceled due to the weather. We'll come back another time. They have a good 15 km of lit sledge trails, including one long, 7km run. Instead, we headed to one of the town's sledge areas and flew down by the light of our headlamps. Afterwards, we held a snowfight with lots of good tackling and dragging, program department versus administration. This, of course, caused a piercing need for heisse Schocolade. We go for hot chocolate at least once per day here, sometimes up to thrice.

Today was all I could have hoped for. I stayed home while four of the others took off on another early morning, but I caught up with them after breakfast. I'd promised Brazil I'd start teaching her to ski before I set out for the day. She had never seen snow before this week, so it was a tall order. She's never skated either. She's scared to go downhill. I did teach her a few ways to hike back uphill after she slips, plus two ways to stop. She got good at standing back up after crashing whilst on my watch, but she never quite mastered snapping her boots into the bindings. I kept having to reach down and brush snow off her boots, then manually latch them onto the skis. We'll try again in a few days.

After the lesson, I packed a lunch and headed to the lift. It's easy to get up to the mountain here. After a snow, we can just ski (or sledge, or skibock, et cetera) down the road to Oey, at the base of the valley. There's a lift in Oey that takes you either up to town or all the way up to Silleren, with a couple of stops at easier areas on the way. Silleren's got great skiing, so I stayed there for a while before heading higher up the mountains. This is from the top of one of my favorite runs. There's a good ski map of the local pistes we can use to plan ahead, plus they've got those boards with lights indicating open lifts all around the slopes and on Adelboden's main street.

At the end of the day, I met up with SAussie and Finn. We headed back to the Chalet to soak in the clawfoot tubs and get a bit of work done. I can't wait till my next day off. I might try to blend in with the locals--they sunbathe in full ski gear at the lifts and ski restaurants. I sat down for a moment by the little slalom, but it was tough to stay seated with all those runs in front of me.

Oh, and my accomplishment of the day was asking the lift ticket woman if my card was good at all the areas around here and how many points each type of ski lift cost, then buying the proper lift card for the rest of the season, all in German. I'm trying to get Finn and Dutch to speak to me in German so I can practice.

Town & snow.

We walked into town today after the last bit of training. It's about 45 minutes down & up, though I bet I could go a bit faster. Some of the other new staff aren't as ready for the mountains. We wandered the street (really, there's pretty much just one main street) and met up with the senior staff for hot chocolate. This was no Swiss Miss crap, let me tell you. Delicious.

Our sole African left today, and the Dane is leaving within the week. He's starting to get squirrely, teasing everyone and spending extra time around us, even though he's the center manager and has plenty to do. Everyone else is coming together well as a group. We had our new staff initiation right after the hot chocolate, and I think it will be a fun three months. We're already picking up each other's accents and vocabulary.

The Finn and I stayed out late skibocking this evening. The other new staff gave up on their toboggans, so we wound up sitting on the skibocks atop the hill, getting to know each other and staring at Adelboden town across the valley. The snow we'd been getting all day cleared a bit during the walk back from town, then again while we skibocked, so we got a great view.

I've got the next two days off, along with the Finn and one of the Aussies. We're going to the back side of the mountains to ski all day. They've got night sledging on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so we'll do that after a quick dinner, and then probably go out on the town before getting up again Thursday for some more skiing. I did take pictures today and yesterday, but it's past bedtime and I want to be refreshed for tomorrow. We got about 15 cm of fresh snow today, and if it keeps snowing all night, I'm going to need my wits about me to negotiate all the powder.

Training.

Not much to say today. I'm in training yesterday through tomorrow, so we're learning how to be proper staff. Yesterday was all procedural, but today we hiked through the snow into Boden and then out to the second-highest waterfall in Switzerland, Engstligen Falls. Our valley splits into three out here, and this turns into one of the rivers. If you take a gondola to the top of the falls, up to the Chuenisbargli and Lohner mountain range, you can go dog sledding. Maybe next time. We went on a second hike after lunch, up to a local woodcarving family and then over into Adelboden through Oey. This one was higher up, so we got a break from the ice & snow.

I felt good enough afterward to think about a jog (I'm not going; I'm typing this instead), but my fellow new staff members are taking naps. This bodes well, actually: I'm hoping I'll be the main ski and hike leader for our crew. I'm fit enough, anyway. We'll see how well I ski these mountains. We're supposed to get a bunch of fresh powder soon.

I get two days off after we wrap training up tomorrow. We'll end with a night on the town, so probably not a very early start the first day, but that's all right. I'm not in the best skiing shape yet, so my quads likely won't last all day anyway.

It looks like my schedule is 3-4 days on, 2-3 days off, for the most part. I have a longer spell of work (5 days) when a large (70 people) group comes in a few weeks, but I'm going to be leading skiing at that point, so I don't mind.

Next on my list, after skiing, tobogganing, sledging, and all manner of other snow sports, is trying more Swiss food. I've had chocolate fondue here, but no rösti, cheese fondue, or raclette yet.

Later on, once the snow melts, I'm going to do day(s) trips into Niesen, Kandersteg, Thun, Interlaken (for the chocolatier, Jungfrau, and Trummelbach), Bern, Luzern, Geneva, and Milan. Possibly also a ride along the Glacier Express railway, but I might also save that for my getaway. It's a quick trip from the end of it into the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland, Lake Como, and then Venice and out to the rest of Europe.

Adelboden and my home base.

I scouted out my little chalet after I arrived last night. We've got two main buildings for hanging out and eating in, a campsite and two little chalets (one just one room and an attic, real Swiss family [Robinson?] style) for guests, plus the staff house. I'll post pictures when I can get out in the daylight and take some.

So far, only one other new spring staff member is here. She's from Brazil and quite jetlagged, even though her time difference is only four hours to my nine. The rest should arrive late tonight, and we start work on Sunday. They haven't actually moved the winter crew out of the staff house yet, but we got to move in to our rooms last night. I had been looking forward to getting settled after living out of my backpack for a few days. So, here's my room. My bed is to the left in the L-shaped room, with cabinets built in behind the door, in that slice of the wall you can see at the lower left edge. I love all the light wood here, though it's odd that absolutely everything is the same color and construction style.

I went out with all the other staff members last night. We walked into town after a sort of flame-lit hazing. The Brazilian, whom I will henceforth refer to as Brazil, went to bed instead. The walk into town is about two miles from our little outpost, one down to the river and one back up the other side. It's pretty steep, but nothing I couldn't handle. We all got the standard and claimed the big corner table just as another group left. It was a great group. We have staff members from Brazil, England, Finland, Holland, Canada, Denmark, America, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and Nigeria. We were joined by one of the Canadian's (Ontario) sister, two more twenty-somethings staying as guests (from Toronto, like the other Canadian), and a couple of staff members from another chalet from England and Ireland. The Finn, Brit, Nigerian, both Aussies, Dane, Dutch, and Swiss will all be around for at least a little while. It's been great living with such an international bunch already.

If you order a beer in town, you automatically get a large Cardinal. The other obvious option is a small one (but why would you get that?), though rumor has it they will actually serve you other beers if you ask for them by name. Other choices include some kind of weird tea drink with a German name and a Flying Hirsch (which is called a Jägerbomb in America). They do it with a mini bottle of Jägermeister instead of a shot of it, which means you have to have better aim. I stopped after the Cardinal, though, since I was still rather tired from traveling, and the Nigerian and I walked back around midnight. The others ventured on to a couple of clubs, eventually making it back to the chalet around four. Despite my early bedtime, I slept till noon, missing both breakfast and lunch. I didn't feel as tired today, so I must have needed the extra sleep.

The part of the day I was awake for was okay, just sort of hanging about and getting used to everyone. I helped out in the kitchen for a while because I didn't feel like hiking on my own before learning the area. We made a great curry and then some excellent fondue. I spent much of the evening chatting with a few women from England. They've been all over Europe, so they gave me some tips for my upcoming travels. Nigeria and I talked for a while about medical education, since she's also starting medical school in the fall, and Brazil and I started planning out our first trip.

I've got a couple days off right after training ends. I might just ski, but Brazil wants to get going on our travels. We'll see. It's been unseasonably warm the last two days, but we're due for a bunch of snow and then some cold sunshine soon. I'm psyched to get up higher on the mountain.

Such great heights.

My bike ride around Zürich was cut short by a quick rain shower. I ducked into a cafe and had an Ovomaltine, NOT to be confused with the Asian/American immitation, Ovaltine. It was actually pretty good, more vitaminy and malty than I anticipated. It was tough to order that instead of a drinking chocolate, but luckily, you get a bit of Swiss chocolate with every hot drink you order around here, so I didn't miss out too much. Also on my list of drinks to try is Rivella, a soft drink made in part from whey. I know, weird. It supposedly doesn't taste like milk at all. It comes in regular, diet, and green tea, which looked like mint on the bottle but probably isn't. I wasn't brave enough in the store last time. Plus, I don't like American soft drinks, so I didn't think I'd like this.

Speaking of shopping, you're required to weigh out all your fruit and veg, then affix the price labels the scale prints out before you get to the register. Good to know for next time. Also in the Migros, one of two ubiquitous Swiss grocery chains, I found some odd bread. They had normal loaves, plus those odd "toast" varieties with no heels they have in England, plus various sorts of French bread, and then also these odd, dark rolls. Naturally, I picked up the food I didn't recognize. The rolls were very dark brown, but they had those slices across the top and I could see that the inside was white. I smelled them, and the scent was familiar and yet unidentifiable. After purchase, I figured it out: pretzel bread! Of course. They're delicious, and they remind me that I need to go get even fresher pretzels once I hit Bavaria.

I also visited the candy shop before leaving Zürich. They have more types of gummi and marshmallow treats than I thought possible to create, just walls of the stuff. Any extra space has licorice candies of varying shapes. The chocolate? All American brands, except those Kinder eggs with stuff inside. Weird. I was so put off by the lack of Swiss chocolate that I didn't even try a few marshmallows.

I forgot to say that I also tried the wine the other day. The local white, Fendant, is delicious and dry enough to suit me. I'll have to taste a few more varietals soon. In between alcohol and soft drink tastings, I've enjoyed the fountains. I'm a sucker for water fountains, so I stop at every single one to admire the carvings and suck up some cold, clear water. It keeps me from being too homesick for Portland and its Benson Bubblers, I suppose. I also had an encounter with a German-speaking ATM (unusual, they almost all have German, Italian, French, English, and Spanish). I'm getting better at German, so I was able to get my 100 Swiss Francs. It gave me a 100 SF bill, but it was simple to swap it for some smaller bills and coins. Swiss Francs come in 100, 50, 20, and 10 SF bills, as well as in 5, 2, and 1 SF coins, and in .50, .20, .10, and .05 rappen coins. I've got the conversion down, and the coins and bills are all nicely sized and colored for easy identification (AHEM, America).

In all, I like this city. I really appreciated the walkable riverfront. Should have gone to school here; check out the university (and an even more impressive tech school to the right). These are accessable via funicular.

I've probably given the impression that Switzerland (CH in abbreviation, for Confoederatio [Confederation] Helvetica, its true name) is all food. Not so. I finally made it onto the renowned Swiss train system. I had heard about their puntuality, but the ticketseller even corrected me when I asked for the 12:30 train. It's actually the 12:32 train. Stupid American. Sure enough, we left at exactly 12:32, and all my connections (first over to Bern, the capital city, then down to Spiez, near the central lakes, further south to Frutigen on a regional train, then finally out to Adelboden, the town in which I'll be living for the next three months) were just as precise. I had between five and twelve minutes between connections, so that was easy, and they were either the next track over on the same platform, or, in the case of the Spiez-Frutigen one, on the same track. Just disembark, wait a few minutes, and get on the next train. As the trip progressed, I went from city to gorgeous countryside to city, then back to farmland, then to little chalets up on the hillside, then finally to a mountain town. I wanted to hop off and explore the rural towns a bit, and I could have, since the Swiss train tickets are good for any train going to the destination you paid for all day, but I wanted to show up when I said I would. The final transfer was to a bus, which hauled me, about thirteen others, and a whole lot of ski gear up the mountain to Adelboden. It was a bit foggy, but I could still see jagged peaks all around.