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| Gare du Nord, Paris |
We went to Switzerland in the summer of 1966 when we were living in Paris. We took a train from the Gare du Nord at around 10 pm. We had sleeping cars, but I couldn't go to sleep, it was too exciting. I remember when we crossed the border into Switzerland, there were a lot of voices and ringing bells. People came down the aisles of the train, but they didn't wake anyone up. I guess we were stopped about 30 minutes.
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| The Mountains |
Then in the morning, we stopped and got into a really small train, it looked like a toy, and the track wound around the mountain. I was sure we were going to fall off! The snow was like nothing I had ever seen before. It looked like whipped cream. The trip in the little train was like something out of a movie, it was spectacular.
When we arrived at the town, we rented a car and drove to a house that was one of a group of several rentals in a valley. Then some friends of ours from Paris came to join us with their two daughters (Val and Irene Dale). Val was Russian, and I always loved to listen to him talk.
When we arrived at the town, we rented a car and drove to a house that was one of a group of several rentals in a valley. Then some friends of ours from Paris came to join us with their two daughters (Val and Irene Dale). Val was Russian, and I always loved to listen to him talk.
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| Samedan |
One day my mother and Irene went to St. Moritz shopping. We got mad at being left behind, so we started walking along the road, in the snow, with no idea if we were even headed in the right direction. Finally, someone picked us up and took us back to the house.
One of Val's daughters, Valerie, and I did not get along and she and I got into a horrific physical fight. After that, our families pretty much went our own separate ways, only seeing each other in the evenings.
One day, we went to a ski resort. We didn't ski, but I remember sitting outside in the sun on a huge wooden balcony surrounded by the most amazing mountains. It seemed like I could reach out and touch them, they were very tall and jagged. One of the ski instructors came and sat down and talked to us, telling us about how the air was so thin that everything seemed very close. He said the sun also felt very hot the reason. He also told us we were very close to the area where Buddy Werner* had died two years before in an avalanche. I remembered him as an Olympic skier I used to watch it on TV, and how sad it was when he died.
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| Buddy Werner |
Then we took the little toy train back around the mountain, and the big train back to Paris. It was an amazing trip. I remember my mother, before the trip, wondering if we should have stayed in St Moritz, which was a huge tourist area, but Val had convinced my parents to go to the small town of Samedan and I think we had a lot more fun.