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Chapter Nine The Fondue Party

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I guess at this point I should say a little about the preseason nightlife on the mountain. For the sophomore guys and some more adventurous coeds, Le Nord was pretty much it. It was a good sized bar with one Swiss Franc beer (about twenty-five cents for a half litre). The center of attention was the foosball, or zim-zim, table. There were pinball machines and tables where people could meet and talk, but the focus of the room was zim-zim and beer. There were other bars but none as close to our dorm.

There were other entertainments to be had at Le Nord. The beer bottles had a gasketed white ceramic top mounted on a wire clip. There were several ways of opening the bottles, but the most fascinating and difficult involved a bit of slight-of-hand. It looked like you struck the ceramic top with the side of your pointer finger, causing the top to pop out. In reality, you hit the side of the wire clip with your thumb, unhooking it before your finger struck the top. It took a lot of practice to perfect and involved accepting some finger bruises before you got it right. Then again, if you didn’t know the trick and tried to really do it – especially drunk – you could do some damage to your finger! I imagine that you could break it – although the worst I saw was Dick, the sergeant’s son from my army base. He managed to crack the top of the bottle and cut his finger as he smacked the top out of the bottle with brute force. Did I mention that ice was at a premium on the mountain? When I went to the bartender for ice for Dick’s finger I got the standard two sugar cube size pieces that went into their warm cokes. Wrapped in a cocktail napkin, they did little to relieve the swelling on Dick’s finger.

Cokes – the other beverage – were tiny! I hadn’t seen a Coke this small since elementary school – and they cost the same as a half-litre of beer – and they were super sweet, warm and nasty with the two tiny ice cubes rapidly melting inside. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that – beer was the drink at Le Nord! Oh, other entertainments included coaster flipping, coaster puncturing, ahh… salt shaker balancing; lets see, there had to be other fun things to do…– maybe not!

Around the village there was supposed to be a bowling alley, although I didn’t find it for some time, many other more distant bars and restaurants, a movie theatre – although the movies, even the American ones were dubbed in French with German subtitles. When we went to movies we snuck beers in and sat in the balcony making rude noises since most of us had no clue what was going on. More than once a kid snuck in some of the dinner soup or gravy and pretended to barf off the balcony on the unsuspecting viewers below. My input to the revelry was a little subtler. I brought in a small but loud European cap pistol to a James Bond movie I had seen a half dozen times in the States. I waited until Bond had looked around his hotel room unsuccessfully attempting to find an intruder. Then as he lowered his gun to return it to his holster, I fired! The audience jumped as one! That moment captured the rumor mill for almost an entire day. Have I mentioned that preseason weekday nightlife was pretty boring?

The weekends were a little better. There were a couple of places, like the Messange restaurant and nightclub just up the street from the main, that had jukeboxes and dancing. Have I mentioned that the college girls brave enough to leave the dorm after dark walked by me like I didn’t exist? So, in order to dance, and I loved dancing! – I needed to find someone at the Messange who spoke enough English to understand what I was asking.

While trying to find dance partners, I got to know the Messange’s owner, Herr Dietrick, a German. I ordered a German beer one night and he brought it down personally to meet the buyer. I suspect that he had hoped to find a fellow German and may have been a little disappointed at first, but we struck up a good friendship after I expressed my love for his country’s beer. Over the year I even gave him some English lessons. Well, he had a good vocabulary, but he kept putting the verb at the end of his sentences, like they do in German. I helped him practice the English placement. In turn, I got a few complementary German beers. A fair trade! Anyway, back to nightlife, there were more than occasional parties…

As a matter of fact, the second Saturday of the semester, the school decided to start the year off right with an introduction to the mountain and to Swiss foods and beverages. They reserved a famous Swiss Fondue restaurant called “L’Horizon” for a cheese fondue fest and gave the students directions for finding it. We hiked for miles up the switchbacks to and through the upper village, then out a dirt path that ran south along the mountain face. Wilds, Gil, and I strode along the long dirt path following several girls and scanning the distant peaks and the nearby pastures. Actually, calling the downhill slope “a pasture” was generous because grass was just barely clinging to its side. There were a couple of cow paths cutting across it, but the slope had to be greater than forty-five degrees. And when you included the drop from where the path had been built up on the side of the slope, the pasture had the appearance of a grass-covered cliff with a stand of trees in the distance that just hid the valley below.

The cow paths on the steep slope reminded me of a story my dad had told about a joke he played on my mom when they were dating. They were driving from her home in Columbus to meet his parents in Salem. The ride took them through a particularly hilly part of Ohio with lots of farms. When mom pointed out some cows on the steep slope of a nearby hill, dad, having been raised on the farm and just graduated as a veterinarian, took on a scholarly air and told her that the cows in this part of the State were breed for the hills. They had been developed with two legs on one side shorter than the other to help them walk on the hills. According to dad, they drove in silence for several miles until mom turned with a questioning look on her face and asked, “What happens when they turn around?” That memory stuck me as funny just then, and I tried to explain and expand on it with my friends saying that in Switzerland they could develop cows with two small legs on the side to hold them away from the slope. I expounded with, “The cows won’t even have to lean over to eat; they could simply turn their heads to the side.” Wilds and Gil just stared down the slope and looked at me as if I had lost my chips. Admittedly there weren’t any cows on that particular slope, and the guys may not have recognized the small dirt trails as cow paths.

We rounded a turn and saw the restaurant. It was single-story building with a large sloping roof. Tables had been set up outside on a level area. I wondered how a tourist would even find the place. There were no signs, and parking, such as there may have been, was a good half-mile down the path. We gathered around the tables containing baskets overflowing with bread chunks as bowls of molten cheese were set on sterno-heated food warmers. Then, as the waitresses went around taking drink requests, Willie told everyone at our table that you had to drink wine, beer, or hot tea and that cold soda was not an option. He explained that the molten cheese tended to cool and harden to a ball in your stomach, but alcohol and hot beverages would help keep it liquid. He didn’t have to twist my arm. The school was paying, and the waitresses were already bringing out bottles of Yvorne, a local Swiss wine. I can’t imagine any stateside college buying the booze. Unreal!

After we had had massive quantities of the molten cheese-soaked bread and the requisite glasses of wine, the party got started. Several of us left the tables clutching almost full wine bottles. Stallone, Cliff, Spyder, and a few others had chased down a cow and were trying to ride it. I stayed out of it because I had done my cow riding in boarding school, and they are not horses; they are just too bony to be a comfortable ride. Besides a cow can get pissed and chase you off the pasture, which, in this area could mean off a cliff. Then someone got the bright idea of trying to knock the cow down. Cliff bounced of its side several times before a running shoulder block from Stallone knocked the cow to its knees. They took turns sitting on the cow while Bernd took trophy pictures of their success.

I ran into Dick, the sergeant’s son from Landstuhl, at the party. He was hanging around with a group of freshman guys and seemed to be the center of attention. It looked like he would be okay. He said the freshman dorm was a dump in the lower village, quite a hike uphill to the main building. He offered to give me a tour later, but he was a little boastful for my taste. Besides if it was below our dorm, it was a very long hike! I quickly rejoined Wilds and Gil.

Stallone had brought a football, and the level area became the playing field. When the game turned coed, I joined in. There was plenty of throwing, running, blocking, and tackling, but I doubt anyone knew or cared about the score. Late in the merriment, Dee Dee, the brown-eyed one of the fab… ahh… two grabbed the football and ran past me. I caught her around the waist, and we crashed to the ground. Unfortunately, I landed on her leg, spraining her ankle, so she christened me her official “beast of burden.” I carried her piggyback from place to place watching the dwindling revelry. Soon it was time for the long hike back to the school. Showing off, I helped Dee Dee up onto my shoulders and handed her our wine bottle. Sam, the cute all-American partier, decided to join our group as we staggered down the dirt path toward the upper village. Sam, like Wilds, had hair that fell into her face when she was drunk, and at this point, except for her feet and lovely breasts, you couldn’t tell which way she was facing.

As we walked, Sam started saying how fun it would be to roll down the pasture on our side. I strongly suggested it would not be a good idea because she wouldn’t stop rolling before she hit Aigle, four thousand feet below. She laughed, threw her hair out of her eyes, took a swig from her wine bottle, and tucked her arm under my arm and Dee Dee’s leg.

The walk along the path began to take on a surrealistic edge as my alcohol and exhaustion started to show. It seemed to stretch on forever, and I was viewing it in small fragments as my eyes closed and opened every few steps. Suddenly, I was brought to my senses as Dee Dee clonked me on the head with the wine bottle. As my eyes opened, I saw Sam was starting to lean over to roll down the green cliff. Without loosing Dee Dee, I grabbed Sam and pulled her up and along the path. As we walked further down the path, I once again lapsed into darkness. Then a thump on the head, and my eyes would pop open in time to see Sam dancing on the edge of oblivion or squatting on the side looking down, and it would start over again.

It seemed like I had walked for days, and it was dark before we got to the main building. I fought my way up the stairs carrying the one girl and dragging the other to the entrance of the girls’ dorm. As I set Dee Dee down, she gave me a quick peck of gratitude on the cheek. Then, not to be outdone, Sam laid a big, sloppy, wet one on my lips. Her breath smelled like vinegar, but she was a cute drunk! Arm in arm, Sam and Dee Dee helped each other up the steps into the dorm.

I staggered and slid my way back down the path to our dorm, then up the elevator to my room. Tiny hadn’t returned yet. I peed forever, brushed my teeth, and slid into bed. My stomach was roiling as I lay on my back in the darkness. Had I had enough wine to keep the cheese from solidifying? Was my bed rocking? Then it happened; my bed rose from the floor and flipped upside-down on the ceiling with me clinging to the mattress! OH SHIT! I turned my head to the side to look at the floor, ceiling, or whatever, and the bed righted itself! That was it! The floor was down, and I was sprinting across it toward the bathroom. I made it just in the knick of time. All of that wine and bread and cheese came shooting out of my mouth! Again and again it came until I only had dry heaves left. When those ceased, I just sat on the floor in my misery hugging the porcelain bowl. It felt cool against my flaming cheeks. After a while I staggered back to my room. Tiny had returned and was sprawled fully dressed across his bed. I didn’t try to wake him. I just brushed my teeth again and lowered myself carefully onto the bed worried that I might soon be hanging from the ceiling. Later, I was awakened as Tiny went running out the door, no doubt on a mission similar to my earlier one.

The American College of Switzerland Zoo

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