Hallo everyone, this weekend the 14th-16th of February my host family and I went to Leukerbad which is located in Southern Switzerland in Kanton Wallis which is in the middle of the Swiss alps (same kanton where my language camp was except higher up the mountains !!) We left mid-day Friday and arrived at 9:00pm at night so I couldn’t see anything except for the faint outline of the mountains towering over us in all directions. Due to our late arrival, we didn’t do much other than go for dinner (I had Spaghetti which was pretty good) and then we went to bed.
The next morning we woke up and immediately I raced to the window to see the mountains and snow in the beauty of the early morning light. On the way to breakfast, I learnt the hard way that the ground is very very icy and if you’re like me this is an extremely dangerous combination. At about 10am I started my snow skiing lessons with my host dad teaching me how to ski, I should say right now that he is an amazing ski teacher and helped me so much. The first day was just learning the “basics” of skiing and picking up things like Pizza for stopping and Spaghetti for going. Originally I was very hesitant and scared of falling over, especially with the three-year-olds skiing around my like pros. By the end of the first day, I was able to go down the little kid slope, which I was very proud of.
Towards the end of the day, we took the cable car up the top of the mountain where the advanced skiers went, unfortunately, this was a bit above my ability but I still went up and took in the view. From here I could see the outline of the Matterhorn (Toblerone mountain), the Swiss alps and the masses of snow around us.
That night we went to a cheese restaurant that sold traditional Swiss dishes that had cheese in them. We had traditional Raclette which is common for the kanton that we were in. Raclette is molten cheese on top of boiled potatoes served with a type of onion salad. The way it works is you pay a base fee and then eat as much as you want, I was in heaven…. We stayed until about 11pm and ate more cheese than I’ve ever seen in my life. The only downside is I was very very tired the next day.
When we got back to our rooms we were all very tired and asleep within minutes. The next morning we began skiing even earlier and I made more progress than yesterday, eventually, I managed to work my way up to the slightly bigger slope. After skiing all day I was absolutely exhausted and my feet were killing me after being in the ski boots. After skiing my host father and I went to the thermal baths which Leukerbad is famous for. Rising up from the mountains is water that had a temperature of 51 degrees celsius. There was something special about swimming outside in warm water while looking at the snow and mountains surrounding you. We left around 6:00pm as the sun started setting and began our 4-hour drive back to St Gallen. Rather than driving straight home, we stopped in Bern to get something to eat. Despite it being dark I still got to see some of the beauty and incredible architecture that lies within the country’s capital.
That just about wraps up most of my weekend and I’ll stop now to prevent further rambling. Without my incredible host parents, this amazing weekend would have never been made possible and I’m so grateful that they made this weekend possible. This coming weekend if my winter weekend with ROTEX so hopefully around this time next week I will have another blog recounting that weekend!!
Until then, tschüss!!
Chloe B.