29 Mai-What Color is Your Cowbell?

I awoke with a thud, smacking my head neatly on the hardwood ceiling three feet above my head. Udo had led a tour around the lovely old log-built chalet where we would be staying when we arrived, and he’d mentioned that these adorable little cabins had been built in the 1600s, when Swiss people were apparently much smaller.

My head would soon enter a state of perpetual throbbing from the constant forceful encounters with low thresholds and arched ceilings. A small price to pay to stay in an Alpine chalet.

The rest of the place brought back all kinds of happy recollections from days of playing house: fixings for tea and hot chocolate, stacks of warm blankets, old childrens’ books on every shelf. We had a bedroom, living area, a roomy kitchen, and thankfully, a bathroom with an enclosed shower, a sufficient supply of warm water, and among other wonders, a toilet in which you could flush toilet paper.

Eri and I shared this apartment, with the two other girls across the way in a similar set-up, and the boys a floor below us. In the center lived Edith Schaeffer, the widow of Francis Schaeffer, and a prolific author in her own right. She lived with a full-time caretaker, and though we did not see much of her, we all soon thought of her as “mother.”

After the stars around my head cleared from my abrupt wake-up call, I went to the tiny double doors that opened from my bedroom onto a long balcony.

I gasped. While we were sleeping, someone had installed an Alp outside the window. It towered above me, exactly like I’d thought an Alp should. It was lush with trees and had traces of snow at the peak. I heard cowbells. And around me was a  neighborhood of ancient chalets, intricately carved with lacy wooden fringe around the balconies and eaves. It was more than breathtaking.

I was born in New Hampshire. I had visited Montana. I had never seen mountains like these. They were dramatic, pristine, and immediate — I felt I could nearly reach out through the crisp air and touch them.

And though Udo and his wife Deborah insisted to us that the mountains were carefully cultivated for pasture by the dairy farmers who lived in them, they looked virgin, untouched by human hands.

Everything I saw reminded me of Heidi, but as usual, the Hollywood version of the Alps had nothing on the real thing. In my excitement, I woke Eri (actually, I woke everyone I could find, but only Eri stayed awake) and we decided to leave our cabin, still pajama-clad, and go in search of a bakery we had heard Udo mention. I should say boulangerie, for we were in the French-speaking part of Switzerland now.

We climbed an impossibly steep path for a short ways (beaming as we panted for breath: we were in the mountains!) and then we were on the main road. Eri maid what was probably an illegal chain of daisies, considering that everything is either protected or prohibited in Switzerland. (Later, even sweet, innocent Rachel would commit a violation by plucking a protected dark-blue Gentian off a hillside. No one was safe.)

Regardless of our bizarre pyjamas-and-daisies getup, everyone we passed would smile and say “Bonjour” as we went by, from the woman biking up the steep slope with her child in carriage to the old man at a little tobacco stand in town. It was for all the world like the opening scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, except for the sad lack of people popping out of windows and chimneys. And except for the handsome, arrogant Gaston — for the dairy farming region of Switzerland has the population of a very spry and vigorous retirement community.

We became a little high on the outpouring of perceived goodwill and began to frolick and sing, bidding cars and houses “Bonjour!” as we passed them.

Later, we were saddened to learn from Deborah that strangers greet each other in this fashion in conformity to a strict local standard of etiquette, and are thought outrageously rude if they do not. The more we learned about the Swiss, the more we found that they favored the stick over the carrot.

Finally, we reached the small village of Gryon, withits bakery and tea room, offering  a tantalizing assortment of goods for astonishingly high prices, posted in the local currency of Swiss Francs, which value at just under a dollar. We ordered piping hot cafe au lait and croissants au chocolat. I successfully asked for a glass of water in French and was beginning to feel a rosy glow of oneness and goodwill with all mankind the world over, when the check was brought to us.

Eri produced a 100-Euro bill to pay our tab, which in terms of smoothness was like trying to ask a Starbucks barista to make change from a one-pound bar of gold bullion. The servers refused to countenance the bill in no uncertain terms, and my contented smile was replaced with a blush of shame as I muttered “pardon” and tried to figure in my head how many hours of dishwashing was roughly equivalent to our breakfast bill of nine Swiss francs.

But I didn’t even know how to say “dishwashing” in French, so I slid guiltily out of my chair and proceeded to inquire at every other establishment in town (there were five) if they might change my bill.

Finally, a man at the Maison de Tourisme grudgingly took the bill and handed me back 140 Francs, shorting me about 10, as it later turned out, on account of my wanton ignorance and poor language skills. We were allowed to leave the bakery at last, and our good spirits rapidly returned. Before walking back to our chalet, we stopped at a market to gawk at the vast selection of world-class cheese and chocolate and to purchase some Gouda.

In spite of the way the picturesque village eerily reminded me of Duloc from Shrek, I was fairly certain I’d like it here.

Jill, a King’s grad from 2007, joined us at lunchtime; her brother Tim, who just finished his Freshman year, had moved in before we arrived. Lunches here make Albanian lunches seem like eat-and-dash affairs; we sat down to rice salad and crusty bread at 1p.m., and rose from tea and cookies at 4:30 out of sheer practical necessity.

But there are no pregnant pauses or awkward silences throughout the three-and-a-halfhours that lunch discussions usually run; Udo and Deborah fill every moment with expansive discussion on subject ranging from true Christianity to the Tower of Babel. To join the conversation, one must assert oneself most vigorously, which we at first attempted only rarely and timidly. Actually, we never really moved past that phase.

Between lunch and dinner, we were all appointed to carefully chosen garden tasks. I got the thankless job of nettle-pulling, which I did with a will until they stung through my gardening gloves, and then shifted to half-heartedly shoving them around with my shoe.

Dinner was just like lunch, with copious amounts of bread, excellent lasagna, and salad, followed by tea and hour upon hour of a very Swiss kind og conversation, centering on gun laws, home schooling, and self-defense, all from a very different perspective.

But they released us at 9:30, only three hours into the onversation. This was an early night, they sai, because tomorrow Udo would take us on a six-hour hike in the Alps. We crept back in silence, as noise between 10p.m. and 6p.m. violates local statute, then all convened at one apartment, where, strangely enough after hours of talking, the conversation flowed like wine.