Читать книгу The American College of Switzerland Zoo - James E. Henderson - Страница 5

On the journey up, we passed by one more castle in Aigle, the Château d'Aigle. It appeared to be in very good shape with turrets at each corner and tiny window slots high up on the walls. We stopped at a gas station, and dad walked in to ask about it. Dad’s German was rusty, and when he came back, he said that he was told it wasn’t a castle. It was a prison. He said that didn’t make sense but he hadn’t had the energy to argue the point in German. It turned out to be a castle used as a prison. What a frightening experience it must have been to be locked up in that massive stone edifice with the tiny slit windows.

Dad drove as we started on the windy road that left Aigle and headed up the side of the mountain. The road was so narrow that two cars could just pass, and there was no centerline dividing the lanes. Our station wagon felt like it took up more than half the pavement. I was glad that dad was driving. Each of us prayed that we would not meet a truck or a bus coming the other way. We quickly climbed out of the valley. I looked down out my window to the right as the stream below fell from ten feet to fifty. There were no guardrails; only occasional stone posts.

As the stream dropped another fifty feet, we saw our first car – or rather heard it. A shrill two-tone alpine car-horn screamed, then tires squealed as the nose of some small black sedan came sliding around the rock face ahead of us. The car sailed by, just barely fitting between us and the rock face; and then with another burst of shrill horn, it rounded the next turn. Just as the car passed, the right side of our car dropped off the pavement onto the small gravel shoulder that marked the edge of the earth, the only thing between us and the stream below. Dad quickly got us back onto the pavement and around the corner. My eyes flashed back and forth between my dad who appeared frozen to the steering wheel and the shear drop. I could hear my sister crying in the back seat. As the next car screamed past, we realized that we were in for a long ride. All the drivers on this mountain drove as if they were in some Alpine rally.

We picked up the habit of slowly approaching each blind turn, then honking our horn and listening for return horns. The road rose another hundred feet, then five hundred. I stopped watching when the mountainside became a sheer granite wall that extended up into the clouds above and down to the fog that had hidden the stream. The road couldn’t be carved into the wall; instead it was supported by large pillars set into the granite face below. I had seen similar roads in the Rockies, but this structure had a concrete roof above it. Dad speculated that the roof was to keep rocks from landing on the road. The road was wider inside this structure, and at that moment God smiled on us because that is where we met the truck. We passed each other slowly, measuring rearview mirrors and door handles to be sure we wouldn’t loose anything. At least the truck driver wasn’t one of the rally drivers we had met before.

After a while, the valley actually appeared to start coming up to meet us, and we seemed to meet fewer cars. Perhaps we were just growing more accustomed to the shrill interruptions. The road was relatively level when we reached the turn to Leysin. We drove over a couple of rolling hills and saw the village in a little notch on the side of the mountain. Gingerbread-decorated houses and larger buildings were dotting the flat area, and the buildings spread up the slope of the mountain toward a shear escarpment that guarded the peaks above.

Leysin is two distinct villages; the lower where the college is, which includes a flat area and cow pastures, and the upper, which has the grand hotel, the bank, and many of the businesses. The two villages are divided by an area that is too steep to build on but has a dramatic staircase built into the face of the mountain. Since most of the buildings are built on the side of the mountain, all of the living space faces the mountains across the valley. The European practice of not numbering the ground floor in a building had not made any sense to me before Leysin. Here, the bottom floor was below ground level on the back, or uphill side; therefore, it might as well be the basement. In fact, in the steeper areas the first two to three floors of each building had no windows on the back because they were below ground level.

The views from each building were of the Alps. Across the valley was the peaked wall of the Chamossaire. This edifice would become a constant backdrop to all the events of the coming year. To the south were the jagged peaks of les Dents du Midi. These multiple, eternal peaks seemed to change minute by minute as the sun moved across the sky, week by week as the snow flowed down from their summits, and month by month as the earth’s orbit changed its angle relative to the sun. In the north up the valley, the steep flat pyramid-like side of the Eiger was just visible. Many climbers had lost their lives on that shear rock face.

The clouds also constantly changed the view. Often in the morning they would fill the valleys below the village and make the peaks appear to be floating volcanic islands. Later they would be sail wispily above us, making white paintbrush strokes on the intensely blue sky. Occasionally a small cloud would get hooked on the top of one of the peaks and would stay there like some jaunty white beret. The clouds would often come up from the valley as the sun hit them, climb the sides of the mountains, cross the little flat area in the lower village, and invade a hotel or dorm room through an open balcony door. Their cold chill would haunt your room until the interior heat warmed them and turned them invisible.

The sounds that carried to the rooms were not the shrill horns of the cars negotiating the winding road below. They were sounds of cows calling for attention, or the ringing of the bells that hung from their necks. Occasionally you would hear the call of a Cuckoo among the trees, although, try as I might, I never saw one and would often wonder if some Swiss youth was playing a great trick on the students and tourists.

We stayed at the Hotel Primevère, where I had stayed when I first discovered Leysin. It was directly across the street and down hill from the college. We parked in back and walked up the back side from the parking below. Each balcony had colorful gingerbread cutouts on the corners and across the top, and each railing had a window box of beautiful flowers. The owners had also planted flower gardens in the small open area below their hotel. Mom and my sister were thrilled! I knew they would be. Just the sight was enough to make them forget the terror of the trip up the mountain.

The owners were friendly. I only remembered meeting the wife during my last stay, but both she and her husband seemed to remember me, and they welcomed me back. It turned out that he was the chef for the evening meals and had a fair grasp of English. He said that we had talked about the journey up on the cog train. I didn’t remember him; but once I had seen this beautiful village my only focus had been getting accepted to the college.

In the hallway coming back from the bathroom to my room, I met the first ACS student, near the stairs. Donna was almost my height with blonde hair that was a little poofed at the sides and curled near her shoulders. Her eyes were strikingly blue, and her smile was infectious. She was round where girls should be and very friendly. Things were definitely looking up!

Mom found the second student. She came down the stairs from her room with a tall, lean, deeply tanned, bleached blonde football star. He must have been a real sweet-talker because mom was prancing like a schoolgirl. Mike Stallone was his name. That he was muscular was evident, even in his shirt; he had a chest that Donna would have been jealous of. Well, maybe not Donna, but half the girls in my stateside college. And his broad shoulders and powerful arms – they weren’t really big, like a weight lifter, just sharply defined. My years of gymnastics had never provided a look like that! With me Mike was more reserved. There was a hint of danger in his stance, and something in his eyes that said, “I am here, keep your distance.” His eyes were heavy-lidded and drooped to the side of his face. On a less carved and intimidating face, they might have given him the appearance of a sad puppy, but he was definitely a Doberman. He talked out of the side of his mouth in a slightly mumbled accent that had to come from Jersey or Philly, but you weren’t invited to ask. At mom’s request, he offered to show me around the school. Personally, I would have rather had Donna for an escort.

School wouldn’t start for a couple of days. I had to register for classes, get a room assigned, find a bank, and my family wanted to explore the area. Stallone, as I started calling him because Mike just didn’t seem adequate, was helpful. He took us on the long switchback road to the upper village, where I opened my Swiss bank account. If only my boarding school buddies could see me now! Stallone disappeared when we were in the bank, and we found our own way back down to the school. This involved a long daring trek down the flight of stairs built into the mountainside. I started to count but lost track after 150, and we weren’t half way down. The stairs wound down behind the college’s main building.

The main building was more utilitarian than many in the town. It had once been a hospital when this area was know as “The Magic Mountain” and tuberculosis patients came from all over the world to be cured by the sunlight and the clean mountain air. The patients’ rooms, complete with balconies on the southeast side of the building, had become the girls’ dorm. The lower floors also housed single teachers. The vertical monolith that made up the rest of the building held the classrooms, the dining area, and offices.

From the main building, someone pointed out the sophomore dorm. It was down a steep hill across the street from the school, perhaps a block east, a block south, and a block down, if blocks had anything to do with this village. The most direct route was a tiny trail no bigger than a cowpath that started at an opening in the fence across the street from the school just past or up the road from the Hotel Primevère. The trail wandered diagonally across and steeply down a grass-covered slope to the front of the dorm. The dorm, like every other building, was built into the mountainside. From this perspective I could imagine being able to step out a backside window on the European second floor to the grassy slope behind the dorm.

But we weren’t ready to head to the dorm yet. Instead, my family zigzagged our way down the roads through the lower village. Where the upper village had several businesses and larger stores, the lower one had small shops, churches, bars, and restaurants. The Patisserie Parisienne, a pastry and bread shop, was the first stop. We had almond croissants, small warm buns with a cross of frosting on top, which Millie called “hot cross buns,” and hot tea in clear glasses held in metal frames with a metal cup handle to keep the glass from burning your hand. Then we went past Le Nord, a large bar with foosball tables, called zim-zim in French Switzerland, and pinball machines. Le Nord would become a regular hangout. Then there were cheese and wine stores and a butcher. Like German villages, groceries were bought one day at a time from many different stores, all of which were within walking distance of the homes.

The small alleys that spread from the main switchback road held the homes. They were smaller than the hotels, and many were on the flatter area so they did not look out over the buildings across from them at the mountains. But most had upper balconies where the family could view the mountains on one side or the other along the alley. The ends of these alleys led to pastures dominated by other homes. These pastures beckoned, but they were fenced and experience in the farmland of Ohio had taught me to be wary of crossing people’s property. More than one friend had told stories of having a load of rock salt shot at him by some irate farmer afraid of loosing a single apple from his trees. I had no experience with the Swiss but had no desire to upset anyone. Besides, the mountains beyond the pasture were what truly drew my eye, and walking across one pasture would get me no closer than I already was.

We got up close and personal the next day. But before we did my folks had a surprise for me. Dad had learned that one of the sergeants from Landstuhl had dropped off his son that day and left. Mom was a little concerned about his being abandoned so quickly, so she had taken him under her wing. I met my third ACS student. Dick was a little shorter than me with straight light brown hair that hung in his eyes, a stocky build, and a round face. He had a big smile, eyes that seemed to flash with more than a hint of deviltry, and a boastful attitude that seemed to make him larger that life, or so he thought. I had seen his type before. As a freshman he was either going to fit in as the prankster, or he was going to be quickly ostracized. Alan at boarding school had been in trouble from the day he arrived, but Squeaky at Earlham had been adopted as the mascot of the football players on our hall. The five of us drove up the valley from Leysin toward Gstaad. Dad said that the Kennedys had a place in Gstaad because it was so intensely beautiful. He wanted to see what was so special about the town.

On the way, we spotted the Diablerets ski lift and decided to go up. As we stood waiting for the lift, I stared at the shear rock face that the cables ascended. I couldn’t get a handle on its size. There were trees at its base, but they looked more like bushes in comparison to its enormous height. The lift itself, called a teleferic, had two cars; one was about halfway up when I first saw it, and the other about half way down. As the one descended, its size grew. By the time it settled into its stall, it was the size of a small Winnebago. We got in with a dozen or so other tourists. Then the attendant got in, and the car started to move.

We left the security of base pylons and began the ascent. The next pylons were several thousand feet above us on the top of the cliff. Should the cable snap anywhere in between; we were dead! Dick seemed to brazen it out by talking about roller coaster rides he had been on in the states as we watched the cliff towering in front of us. When we looked back at the mountain peaks rising around us and stared down at the shrinking lift housing below us, we all got quiet, even Dick. Around the lift housing were scattered green bushes that we had last seen as full-sized trees, and those little bushes were disappearing as we watched them. As we approached the top of the cliff, the car appeared to speed toward the shear rock wall and then slow slightly before jumping up and clearing the top edge. At this point, the lift housing was a toy Monopoly house, and the trees were a vague dark green smudge around it. We finally relaxed as the teleferic rumbled over the rollers of the cliff-top pylon, sending us sailing across the upper fields.

This lift was only the first of two. The second took us between a lower peak and an upper snow-covered peak. The view from the second lift was unbelievable, rock and snow-covered mountains in all directions! Once out of the lift, we walked through the snow on the very top of the world. The air was thin and cold, and we immediately wished that we had brought warmer clothes. Millie grabbed a snowball and pitched it at me. I dodged, and it hit Dick. The next thing I knew, we were in a pitched battle on top of the world. At this point, Millie seemed to be throwing more snowballs at Dick than me, so I ducked back into the relative warmth of the upper lift housing. I watched as dad took some pictures, and we quickly returned to the teleferic for the ride back down. Millie was shivering in the lift as we started to descend. Dick offered his jacket. Hmmm… None of my business, I guess.

As we passed from the upper peak, I thought about the snow and of learning to ski. This area wasn’t too steep and might be fun, but what if I got lost and went too close to the precipice? I’d end up like that Bond villain in “On her Majesties Secret Service,” falling and spinning forever.

As we got into the second lift, the attendant was joined by a maintenance man who opened a hatch on the top of the car and climbed up onto the roof. My first thought was that we would be stuck there while he checked some of the bolts, but the lift started to move with him on top. We all stood fascinated as he crawled up the armature holding the car and sat next to the cables. I hadn’t realized that there was more than one cable. His job seemed to be inspecting and occasionally painting some red grease on the cable, and he was still there as we fell off the cliff-top pylon and watched the earth drop beneath us. He sat up top the entire ride down. I kept checking through the open hatch to be sure that he hadn’t fallen off, but he just sat there focused on his job. I silently bet that he was one of the rally drivers that we had met on the road to Leysin. I even thought for a second that I might have the nerve to change places with him, but a look down from inside our steel and glass car quickly dispelled that fantasy. Millie and Dick seemed to be in quiet conversation on the other end of the teleferic.

I took over the driving from there to Gstaad. It didn’t really impress me, just another pretty village with larger homes surrounded by giant mountains; and if we saw anyone famous, we didn’t recognize them. Besides I was already in love with my little Swiss village and had yet to fully explore it. I couldn’t wait to get back.