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You are here: Home / Archives for Leysin

Leysin

Firmly Perched on the Mountain

October 15, 2009 by admin

After four days in Leysin, we feel a peculiar effect: no desire to go down the mountain. Do we want to visit Lausanne? Gruyeres? No, not really. What is it about this sleepy mountain town that lures us, that seduces us, that has caused us to lose interest in anything else? I have no idea.

I think the yogis would say that the place has strong prana, or life force. There is a reason it became a healing place for TB patients early in the previous century. Even though I have had a cold, instinct tells me that getting outdoors is my best cure…and we have.

Today we took a long but gentle hike through rolling hills, forest-cushioned paths, and the occasional climb to pathways filled with hard ice. Our total walk time was about four hours, but it felt as effortless as an afternoon stroll. We didn’t take a lot of pictures. Most of the views we saw are views we have already recorded in some form. So it’s not like we are making new discoveries on our walks. They…just…feel…good.

Hiking paths in Switzerland are marked with yellow signs, and some intersections display an impressive number of options. On the right-hand side of each sign, the side with an arrow, a color-coded indicator tells us whether the hike is easy, moderate, difficult, or prepare to die, fool. On today’s adventures, our path was not so clearly marked, and we took several wrong turns. We shrugged our shoulders. So what? We found our way back, often without having to totally backtrack. In Leysin, meandering matters. There are no goals here, no accomplishments to be had, no place we have to be, other than to make sure we get to the restaurant while they are still serving lunch.

So we walk and we eat and we rest. We stay in the apartment in the evening, eating lightly after a big lunch. It also keeps our food bills down…restaurants here are profoundly expensive if you don’t like the fixed price option (which is a bit high, but more reasonable). Today’s fixed price options at our restaurant of choice included horse meat or baby pig, so we decided to order from the regular menu! We see horse troughs everywhere but no horses, seeing them only on the menus. We have eaten other meats we wouldn’t normally, such as veal and venison (both excellent, I might add), but neither of us is ready for horse. Funny how we’ll eat a cow without question but feel indignant about other animals. The cows around here are mighty cute, especially with their bells.

We have internet television, but channels are limited, and as I write this the internet is down, so we are even more isolated. I had tried, during my convalescence, to pull up a few American television shows, but most prohibit viewing outside of the U.S. The Daily Show is the only one I successfully watched.

So, here we are, isolated, away from civilization, cut off from our usual toys and distractions. Henry, who needs the internet to work, busied himself after our hike fixing the problem (which he did, obviously). For me, though, there was not much to do. I spent some time writing, letting new characters introduce themselves to me and whisper their stories in my ear…I read…I just stared out the window and watch the clouds drift by the mountains, sometimes at our eye level. Time to breathe. Time to dream. Time to invent.

The Type “A” part of me, which I honor as important, can take over every now and then and wreak havoc. Here in Leysin, with its fresh air and absolutely nothing to do, there is balance.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: creativity, Leysin, memoir, nadine feldman, nadine galinsky, novels, switzerland, travel, writing

Loving the Lord (Byron, that is!)/Leysin

October 11, 2009 by admin

Henry has wanted to visit a castle in Montreux and has talked about it for some time, even before we left Houston. Although I felt certain I would enjoy such a visit, I have focused more on being outdoors in my beloved mountains. Castle? Okay, whatever.

Then, last night, I leaned over as he looked at their website, and a word jumped out at me. Chillon. THE Chillon? The word transported me back to seventh grade in DePue, Illinois, and the poem that made me fall in love with words.

My hair is gray, though not with years, nor grew it white in a single night as men’s have grown from sudden fears. My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, for these have been a dungeon’s spoil.

That poem, Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon, was inspired by a friar who was imprisoned in the castle for six years. I imitated his style with my own epic poems written in the privacy of my room, pages and pages long since discarded. For me, the lonely New Kid in Town at an age when everything about me felt awkward, Byron’s poetry took me to a place inside where only grace and fluid joy exists. It would take me many years to understand that I must write, if only for the sake of writing, to access this special place from which the rest of my life springs forth.

We have bumped in to Byron previously on our travels. Between he and Mark Twain, we will have decades of traveling to do to keep up with their adventures. However, this visit today, this castle visit, takes me deep into the heart of Byron. What a blessed life I have to be able to walk in his footsteps.

Getting to Chillon was an adventure in itself. Yesterday, we traveled for five hours from Grindelwald to the village of Leysin, where cow pastures are replaced by vineyards up and down the hills, and even in the middle of Aigle, another village on the way here. For two hours of the trip, we rode a panorama train, elegant with wood trim and tables on the inside. On each table sat a small lamp that illuminated the interior of the car with soft light during trips through tunnels. We ate cheese (what else? It’s Switzerland!) and drank Swiss wine on our journey, and chatted with three Swiss ladies who were planning a ladies’ day out in Montreux.

From Montreux it took two more train trips of about 40 minutes total to get up the mounain to Leysin, a sleepy French-Swiss village. We know we’re in the French part, because the restaurants open late for dinner!

Our apartment is beautiful, and where the Grindelwald chalet was quaint and cute, this one is sleek and modern, with every techie gadget one could dream of. Henry is in hog heaven! We have a 1.2 mile walk into Leysin for all our needs, so we get a good walk in just going to and fro.

To get to Chillon, we went to the village of Villeneuve and walked another 30 minutes or so to the Castle. Our Swiss Rail Pass gave us free admission, and we splurged for the audio guide. Henry took all the pics today, so I will bug him to post his on FB.

From there, we took a bus to Vevey to walk around. Vevey is a curious place, and not entirely pleasant. It’s supposed to be very upscale and lah-dee-dah, but I saw evidence of some creepy drug use around the train station. Still, we had a nice walk along Lake Geneva and found a hotel with some awesome desserts.

This evening we are staying in and cooking at the apartment. Our host left us wine and other goodies, including eggs, so we will have an elegant French omelette dinner. In fact, Leysin lends itself to relaxation. For many years tuberculosis patients came to Leysin to recuperate, and we feel a sense of moving into the “slow travel” mode. We have a fabulous view to enjoy. This is a great place to just “be.” So, while we do have some hiking and other activities planned, we are slowing our rhythm…and it feels good.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: creativity, Leysin, literature, Lord Byron, memoir, Montreux, nadine feldman, nadine galinsky, switzerland, travel, writing

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