Of Cheese and Chocolate

How could I be in Switzerland, near the town of Gruyères, and not visit the town and factory? Thank Goodness the friends we are visiting, who live in the lovely nearby mountain village of Villars, bring us here.

 

 

 

There are some bumps along the way. Or, more accurately, some curvy roads. This necessitates a small stop to cure the car-sickness.

 

There's a lot to learn once we finally manage to get there. For example, 348 million kg of milk is made into 29,000 tons of Gruyère, with another 460 tons of Gruyère d'Alpage, produced in Switzerland. 2/3 of that is consumed in Switzerland -- by us, on this trip alone, it seems -- and the other 1/3 is exported to the rest of Europe and North America. Personally, I can't believe that France alone doesn't count for at least 2/3 of what's made, given how much Gruyère I see (and eat) there.

I know. The rest of you are probably not as interested in the cheese facts as I am. But even if cheese is not your passion, the town itself is worth a visit. It has to rank up there with the cutest of Alpine villages. The hilltop spot has fortified castle walls, medieval cobblestoned streets, cheery flower-box covered windows, real cows, and artistic chickens. What more could you want?

 

 

 

 

Well, you'd probably want chocolate. And you don't have to get very far. Luckily, our kind hosts feel the need to take us there, too. Thank goodness! The Cailler chocolate museum and factory tour is -- you will not be surprised to hear -- the visit preferred by the kids. This is one of the original mass-produced chocolates in the world, and still one of a very high quality. After the sample-it-all room, we walk out swearing we will never eat another piece of chocolate again, despite the fact that we have souvenir bags full of tins and bars of chocolates. Well, maybe not never again.

 

 

 

Do these kids look happy? That's because they know they're about to go in and gorge on endless chocolate samples. If we had taken the same photo after the session, their faces would've been greener than the boys' T-shirts. There is a looo-oooo-oooo-ooot of chocolate eaten.

 

Old and Cute. Like a Grandpa

Zermatt is seriously old and cute, just like a grandpa. And not just any Grandpa. The Alm Uncle, aka Heidi's Grandpa, in the book Heidi. Old, cute, and very typically Swiss.

 

 

Here Anthony examines a 16th century pig stable stuck smack dab in the middle of the old town. I'm sure it goes for a cool million now, but back in the day, it was just a poor, little, stinky sty. The one next to it used to house the sheep and the cows in the winter.

 

 

 

Sometimes the old sits right next to the new.

 

 

There's a new town. I mean, the millionaires in Zermatt aren't all holed up in former pigsties.

 

 

 

Yes, it's a Gruyère bus. No, it's not actually made of Gruyère. It's the free ski-bus that goes around town to hauling skiers and their bulky gear to and from the lifts. It drives through the modern streets of the new parts of town only, since there's no Earthly way it could make it through the narrow cobbled streets designed in medieval times for goat, pig, and cow traffic only.

 

 

 

Birthday Bomb

We bomb down the hills at the end of the day, stopping slopeside for a sugar bomb to celebrate my birthday. It's literally ski-in, ski-out, about 2/3 of the way down the mountain on our way home.

 

 

It's the family, G-rated version of the après-ski. Though mine does have a splash of Bailey's in it. Still, even for the grown-ups, it's really the whipped cream that's the star.

  

It's not just a blast. It's a ball! Gigi learns the excellent slopeside hippie art of tennis-ball swinging.

 

 

And then we go home and bomb down the slopes on our butts and some teeny-weeny sleds. Given the expressions in the photos, this is evidently more terrifying as an adult. Perhaps because our butts keep slipping off the teeny-weeny sleds as we bump, bump, bump down the hill.

 

  

 

I'm on vacation in beautiful Switzerland in the Matterhorn's shadow with the people I love most in this world. What's not to celebrate? It's the bomb.

White Out

Is it white out in Switzerland? Sometimes, too much so. It seems like every ski week in Switzerland will be both blessed -- and cursed -- with new snow. The snow itself is great, of course. But the snowing, a little less so. One day in Zermatt, we find ourselves skiing in a white out so thick, we literally cannot see a single contour or feature on the hill. Not only is it cold, wet, and ultra slow-going, but it has the unpleasant side-effect of causing all of us to experience motion sickness. And I'm not exaggerating. Sometimes the sensation is so strong, for a moment it's as if we literally don't know if we're going down or up.

 

 

The picture below is from the subsequent year's trip in Villars. I think. We could be in the same Zermatt white out. Or, we could simple be in the middle of a piece of paper.

 

I know we're in Switzerland, or Italy -- one of the two, anyway -- by the flags. Which we can just barely see. But we might be at the South Pole, if  the blustery snow and the penguin sculptures are any indication.

 

 

If you don't hear from us for too long, just send out the St. Bernard. We're probably still out there, lost in the white out.

 

Sticker Shock

When we move to Paris, some things give us sticker shock. Then we travel to London and get sticker shock, feeling like Paris is cheap. Then we come to Switzerland and get sticker shock, and decide that London is affordable. We are afraid to visit the place that makes Switzerland look like a bargain.

 

Now, whenever you're eating in a lodge or slopeside, you know you'll be charged extra. In Switzerland, you're paying for the ingredients, the labor, the charming café ambience, the mountains, and -- apparently -- the Lamborghini that the laborer drives through the mountains to get the ingredients to the charming café.

 

 

 

But it's still fun to ski in to the adorable old chalet on the hills and order this, for a A rösti is a German potato pancake (a non-Jewish, uncircumcised latke, that is) covered with fried eggs and melted cheese and, for a bonus, some bacon, for around $20. When you're skiing in the cold air, what could be heartier or more perfect? So delicious.

 

 

In this Swiss-side chalet, we end up ordering and sharing the charcuterie platter after we discover that a plate of spaghetti will cost us around $30. The server tells us there are crepes, as a special, and we are just about to order those when Gigi, wise-little bird that she is, decides to ask, "How much are the crepes?" It turns out they are $24 each. That seems rather ridiculous since we can get the same thing around the corner from us in the heart of touristy Paris at about $6 each.

 

Or, you can just ski over the summit to the Italian side, to this charming chalet, where the same plate of pasta (no, wait! Not the same! Better! Authentically Italian!) only costs 10€, or about $12.



Or this beautiful café on the Italian side. I don't honestly remember the exact price of the meal, but I know it was a lot less than $30 -- and that's for a hearty steak.

 

Germansignreading

Are we super-mature people? Apparently not. We think Letzte Fahrt is simply a hysterical invitation to pass gas (or, as Anthony like to say, "equalize the pressure") together.

 

 

 

The the girls like saying the name of this bakery, too. In German, the CH is not CH as in CHocolate but closer to a CK sound like bronCHitis.

 

 

 

At Fuchs, they make Bergführerbrot (Bread for the Berg's Fuhrer?!):

 

Or this unpronounceable one. I assume it means dwarf, or garden gnome.

 

 

On this sign, honoring somebody for something I can't understand (call to all German speakers), I particularly like the word Matterhornbesteigungen. He's the best eigungen on the Matterhorn.

 

 

The picture signs don't mean much to us either, but they entertain us nevertheless. Is this the universal sign telling us to slide down the hill horizontally? On our faces?

 

But mostly what I appreciate about the German-speaking part of Switzerland is the long, combined words. Below: winterwanderweg. There's a word going around on the internet -- the longest in the world, apparently: rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. It's 63 letters long and means "the law for the delegation of monitoring beef labeling."