Once in Interlaken I tracked down my disorganized company and taught skiing for a few weeks in the Bernese Alps.
switzerland is the best place in the world. I've always thought that. well now that I've been here for a little bit, I've realized that beneath the surface, Switzerland is kind of a weird place (but more on that later!)
skiing the Alps the last three weeks I've been spending skiing and teaching skiing in the mountains near Interlaken, Switzerland for a kind of sketchy and disorganized but successful British company that only operates for 6 weeks a year, somewhat legally, in austria and switzerland. well I've had two week-long jobs so far, mostly 17 through 19 year high school kids from various parts of England, and for the most part we just bombed through the powder and crud and down the ridiculously long pistes at the Jungfrau ski areas (Maennlichen, Kleine Scheidegg, First, and the Schilthorn). I took last week's group down what's probably the longest run in the world (definitely the longest of my life) from the top of the almost 10,000 foot Schilthorn 7,400 vertical feet down to Lauterbrunnen at 2,612 feet that's twice as much as the biggest ski areas in the US I think only a skier could understand how cool this place is and add to it all views of glaciers and waterfalls and huge cliffs and the 13,000 foot Eiger, Moench, and Jungfrau.
posh hotels for accommodation I've been in this horrible, horrible place where the company has put up the skiing groups the Hotel Neuhaus in my room a queen bed with a feather duvet, a view over the swans in Lake Thun and big huge Alps everywhere
posh english dudes my partner in crime these couple of weeks has been Tom, a kind of posh southerner (southern England) that blushes from the attention that the 15 year old girls in his classes would give him, and got his ski instructor qualifications through a $10,000, 3-month training course in Quebec called Ski Le Gap, as in "gap year." Tom's been thoroughly convinced that I'm a retard from the time he met me since no matter what he says, I have to ask him to repeat it about three times before I actually understand what the hell he's saying. It's been the same with just about everybody, especially when they speak in some rubbish accent I've never heard.
the boring english the most difficult thing for me to handle when dealing with all these English people is their long-windedness these people seem to have spent their entire lifetime discussing every little detail of their day and everything behind the scenesand then twice as long (always over beer or wine) planning every minute detail of the next day and next ten years.
sausage and french fries for only $25! now the wierdness of switzerland first the food ain't all that great. After having come from Bulgaria where for like $5 you can have all the wonderful dinner and drinks you ever wanted (some of the best food in the world) swiss food is a disappointment. Part of it comes from being in a tourist town, but all the mediocre food here is about twice as much as would be in the US, and say 7 or 8 times what it would be in Bulgaria
orange hair and poodles then there's the characters at the Hotel Central Continental in Interlaken the ber fashionable guy behind the desk always in ripped up jeans and sport jackets and his little dachsund that follows him around the hotel and poops around the corner. In the bar they always play Alpine polka, and the frizzy orange-haired bartender, as sweet as she is,
serves every local first, then cleans the ashtrays before she serves an outsider a really weird vibe. Always happy to take your money! so all in all this place kind of feels like disneyland and mcdonalds turned upside down and played backwards at least that's whtat the swiss german language sounds like.
swiss (german?)
the swiss do not speak German they read it and understand it but never speak it unless to a tourist. the swiss speak swissand write swiss in their text messages and emails which is about as close to German as Danish is usually even the German germans do not understand the Swiss when they talk
So although the Swiss can understand standard German perfectly, they prefer to speak English before they'll speak German unless they've been to university in which case they probably do speak actual German.
racism in paradise one night Tom the Englishman and Christian who works in the restaurant at the Hotel Neuhaus went out to Thun to see some action. We get to this pretty hoppin club and the bouncer asks for our id's the guy looks at our drivers licenses and asks us in english if we're on holiday, we say yeah, he waves us in and says welcome then Christian shows the guy his passport, which is from Kosovo, and the guy says in German that he's very sorry but he can't let him in Swiss passports only. Christian says he's lived in Switzerland for six years, works here, and he had just been in the very same club the week before! The bouncer says I'm very sorry, but Swiss passports only. So the American and the Brit are okay, but the Albanian is trash and needs to leave. The bouncer points at a notice on the door in German that states that the management reserves the right to refuse entry on an individual basis I mean I could kind of understand if Christian were some trashy kind of menace to society but he's a pretty smart and good looking guy. It really makes me sad to see people be so ignorant and racist.
so we retreat to some other clubs on this street in Thun that kind of looks like New Jersey if you blur your eyes right what a redneck town. Lots of shaved heads, thick earrings on the guys, wifebeaters, and an impenetrably thick swiss german dialect a sure sign of backwardsness
drunk albanians and car accidents
Thun wasn't happening so we drove back to Interlaken and came across some of Christian's albanian friends. we pile into a little compact hatchback and race up to Grindelwald where the clubs are full of ski tourists We were going like 90 miles an hour up this narrow winding road into the mountains the three albanians speaking of course albanian, the albanian music blasting, and the driver sipping his smirnoff ice.
and as we screech around one particular bend in the road Christian tells me in German (he doesn't speak English) that this is where he had his accident, going 180 km/hr my knuckles turn white and Tom the Lusc Posh pees his pants what a retard
