Geert's barrack 17 April 2009

It is very early in the morning on the day we leave, I woke up too early and when I look out the window I see the snowplovers already busy. Last night the Maloja pass was made inaccessible by a car without snow tires, but that lasted for about half an hour.
With morning breaking I can see all the mountain tops are covered with snow again, like the day we came here.
It is time to pack.
Usually the last day is a very busy day, but not this time. The hotel is going over into the hands of another proprietor. It’s good for me, because enough snow has fallen to cover everything with a white cloth and makes it all very fairy tale like. Time for some snapshots!
I could finally get the hotel front façade with the sun on it, the sunterrace with the sun on it, my favourite tree at the lake covered in snow.
In the afternoon I thought of going to sit on René’s bench, which is in the sun and you can see all the mountain tops from there. Mariette was lying on a bench in the sun, but decided to walk with me.
Everywhere on the trails you find benches, which were donated by people for various reasons. Most are there in memory of a loved one and the one we were going to was in memory of a certain René, so we just call it René’s bench.
We were not even sitting down for 5 minutes when Germaine walked past us, she was going skiing. We decided to keep her company. She’s only a beginner and have to stick to the small pistes and today all the kids have packed and she had it all for herself. Not all of Geert’s barrack is broken down and we could sit there. We enjoyed the sun, the view, had a good chat, but no beer this time.
Geert worked with Intersoc and decided to stay in the village. He has a small farm and come winter he opens a little barrack near the ski pistes, where you can drink something. It’s like a half-way between a good mountain walk and the hotel. In the afternoon you almost always find some people from the hotel there.
Winterseason's over and so Geert's place must be vacated too.
The holiday is over ...... till next time!

A snowy day - 16 April 2009

My teabags are finished, it’s time for me to go home. Not being a great coffee drinker and that being about the only brew you get free most places, I always pack some Rooibos teabags. That part of the afrikaner has never died in me.
I always have enough with, but this time I did stay away longer than usual.
Back to my reliable internet connection!
The snow is mushy and very hard to walk on. Now it’s waiting till it all has melted and then summer season can start.
The shops are closing down and winterseason is over.
“Winterseason” the very ideal Count de Renesse strived to achieve. Now it is not a fantasy anymore, it’s real.
On our last day it snowed heavily and everything is covered with a layer of fresh snow. The kids could not ski very well on their last day, because of the snowfall and they were back early. On their last night they had a big party, a “going nuts” party. Well, sometimes parties must be given names!

Sils-Maria - 15 April 2009

Already Wednesday! The kids where gone up the mountain to test all the skills they know by now, to do some real skiing.
When my job was done, René and I hiked to Sils-Maria. We heard that the Fextal has great hiking trails and as our holiday is almost over we need to get our last hikes in. The weather reports for the next few days are not so good.
Sils-Maria is another typical Swiss village with houses built in the style of most houses of the Engadin. What is worth mentioning is the way they like to paint their houses in soft pastel colours and then draw special frames round the windows or they love to paint scenes depicting certain aspects of every day life. Like a bakkery will have scenes of the process of how a bread come to be. The ibex is a figure they love to paint somewhere on their houses and birds, all different birds I’ve see

I still have to see my first ibex.
Sils-maria has one famous house, Friedrich Nietzsche lived here for a while or rahter spent his summers

The house of Friedrich Nietzsche

Wooden sculptures of Beatrice Guyer

Where the horse carts leave, there is a nice walking route up the mountain. It’s quite a steep route up the mountain!

A road into nowhere

Finally we were up a plateau where a few houses stand, they seem to be lived in. Many houses I have seen in these villages look like holiday homes with shutters closed and with snow heaped up around it, but here the snow was cleared and you can reach the houses. The valley is extremely scenic, not only in winter with the snow on it, but it must be just the same in summer.

Hotel Sonne

The little church next to Hotel Sonne

We walked up a hill to a hotel, Hotel Sonne! On top of a hill like that it must be getting sun all day long. We both had to be back on time so we decided to turn round at the hotel. Walking down the snowclad trails we slipped and slided all the way down. It was funny.

Soglio - 4 April 2009

Another day off and three of us decided to go to Soglio and walk back to Stampa. Everybody said it’s such a beautiful village. It is!

We think this is a little walkway for a cat to get inside.

We set out and tried hitchhiking, but three is a crowd in lifting. We were still trying when the bus stopped and we all jumped on it. From Maloja to Promontogno and from there with a smaller bus to Soglio. It was rather expensive in swiss franks.
Soglio is high up in the mountains and a normal bus won’t be able to get there. It’s another one of those mountain villages, where you must have been born in to live there. The streets are narrow and the houses high with very thick walls. History is all over the village. I did notice in many of these small villages how many new houses were built recently. You have the old heart of the village and the new houses rising up like mushrooms around it.

In most of the shops around here you can buy all kinds of ointments and health products made from herbs from Soglio. I never found out who makes it.
There is a little shop on the town square where there is no shop assistant. You go in and when you buy something, you write the product on a list and put your money in a box. It works very well. Maybe because of the novelty value, nobody ever cheats.

In all of the older villages you have a town square with mostly a restaurant with tables and chairs outside. The villagers sit there in their spare time and talk to everyone who passes by. Everybody knows everybody.

Here too the shops were closed from noon till 2:30pm, but there were few shops. It was not for me, but Ria wanted to go to one specific shop,but it was already closed for the season.
We passed a very old house where a lady was brushing the floor in the entrance to a building. René walked into the house, thinking it was a museum or something, but it was a private house! I can understand René’s mistake, it’s a four-story beautiful old house, built a few centuries ago. A house that was built to last.

At the breakfast table this morning someone told us, if we go from Stampa to Soglio not to do the roman steps, it’s very hard. One of our group, René has been to Soglio before, but from another village and he said not to do that route either, because it was very hard. We decided to start in Soglio then it’s downhill most of the time.
After we drank our beer, coffee and water and went to the loo we set out on our journey down the mountain to Stampa. At a very scenic spot we stopped to have lunch and we could look out at Soglio from there. It was warm and sunny, what a breathtaking lunch.

When you walk so high up in the mountains and you look down at the tiny villages, you have such a different feeling. It’s like looking at a toy village with toy houses and cars, you want to reach out and touch it.
We were not far on our walk when the steps began. Made from large and small stones worked into the mountain to form steps. It went on and on and on ……..

It is not such a long walk, on the signpost it said 1h 15min., we did stop several times for me to make photo’s and for René to drink from the mountain streams. We crossed many of them.

The church at Stampa

The castle at Stampa

Someone selling artwork in wood

In Stampa we decided to split up this time when lifting. Ria and I will stand at one spot and René is going further up the road. We did not wait long when a friendly schoolteacher picked us up and when we saw René, she picked him up too.
She lives higher up in the mountains and when I made a remark about the friendliness of the people living in this area, she told me they are with only 1500 inhabitants in the Bergell and that everybody knows everybody.
She dropped us off in Cassacia where she lives and we had to hike from there again. Again we split up and soon an Italian from Lugano picked us up. Oh boy! I sat in front and what a treat his car was. It’s some kind of very posh Mercedes and when we went through the corners of the Maloja pass, the seat moves in the direction of the corner. My initial thought was that the seat was not fixed to the car, but soon I realised, this car is alive! It was great fun to go through corners in this car.

While we waited for a lift I took this photo of crocusses with the dam in the background.

That was another day with Intersoc in Maloja.

Sunday, 13 April 2009

Today was a bit of a hump day and nothing went my way, so I made sandwiches for lunch and left at noon to go on a good intense hike all by myself. Sometimes I need my “own” time and I needed a good walk too.
There is a lake closeby, Lägh da Cavloc, but the way there is uphill all the time and with the snow beginning to melt it is hard walking, it’s like walking in thick sand, except sometimes you step up to your knees in the snow. On such a mountain path it is scary when you step in a hole like that.

Maloja seen from the path up the mountain

Zoomed in closer and you can see Geert's barrack in front.

Actually the biggest scare for me was the people doing cross-country skiing down that mountain path. When one of them on speed comes round a corner! They must be very experienced cross-country skiiers. At least some of them shout how many are still coming then you can wait till all of them has gone by.

The mountain path.

In the shade the snow is still hard, but it soon became warm enough to walk in a T-shirt. The sun was shining and the uphill walking must have contributed to the heat. This winter I had more sun in Switzerland in the 5 weeks I have been there, than all winter in BE.
In one and a half hour I was up at the lake. There is a small restaurant which is only open in summer, but most people take a picnic there. No loos of course!

Lägh da Cavloc

I sat there quite a while watching the birds and just enjoying my good luck to be able to do this. Many people throw bread for them and they come to feed about two meters away.

The way down was a easy walk. Somewhere down the path a few italian guys (cross-country devils) stopped and called me, “Signora! …. “ and some things I didn’t understand, but they were telling me to look on the other side of the valley, there were 13 chamois. Nice guys.
When I was down the mountain path I met up with René, someone I have met at another Intersoc hotel before. He was walking with snow rackets. It is funny to see people walk with them and he insisted I try it. After going up to lake Cavloc my legs were a bit jittery and it was rather heavy walking with the rackets.
We ended up at Geert’s barack again. For Intersoccers all roads lead to Geert’s barack. We had our usual large beers and Geert gave us a liquer glass with a very tastefull greenish brew. An older lady who lives somewhere in the mountains picks daisies from very high up in the mountains, above 2000m and put them in vodka.

The daisy brew and the one in the dark cap is Geert.

All in all my day ended very pleasantly.

Saturday 12 April 2009

Today was a very hard day. It is the day the kids go home and the next group arrives.
We didn’t start early, only at 9:30 and I wanted to photograph the front of the hotel, because that side gets the morning sun. It was foggy and overcast!
I finally got a picture of the front façade coloured slightly by a watery sun. Apparently it is the second longest front façade of a building in Switzerland, the Parliament being the longest.
When the groups change it is always hard work for everybody. Everything has to be cleaned better than in the week when they are here. The kids don’t take much time to tidy their rooms and I wonder how many pieces of clothes are packed wrongly when I see the mess during the week.There are rooms with up to 9 persons, but there are rooms for 2 persons or 4 or 6. I asked a few of them how they enjoyed the week and none of them wanted to go home yet.
This morning I walked through the restaurant and the tables were laid pretty with chocolat easter eggs and bunnies. It was for the kids leaving.
Maria is going home too, she has been such a good partner to work with. Being single I never know who I work with and sometimes we work very well together and sometimes not at all. Mostly they are total strangers to me. Tonight I saw her arrive, in a bermuda in this weather ……..
We finished the rooms at about 7 pm and the kids arrived at 10 pm. They have been on the train all day. They were served spaghetti and will be off to their beds in no time.
Martina, Fien and I went to watch them arrive. Busloads full of them. Martina was sorry she didn’t have her camera with to make photo’s of the last busloads of kids arriving at Maloja Palace. It’s the end of 52 years of kids visiting Maloja. The last group arrived tonight.

Swift news:
Beijing, 1 was seen on 9th april
Amsterdam, 3 were seen on 11th april

A quiet day in

Today I stay inside, it's overcast and yesterday my face got burned! The picture is of yesterday when I went to Geert's place after my walk to the damwall. I will tell more about him later. It's such a character. On the picture you can see Micheline, me and Lutgard.

I also stayed in to finish the last pages of my book, the first one of the Millenium series by Sieg Larsson. What a great writer, now I will have to read the other two books as well.

Maria must pack today, she's going home tomorrow. She's such a great person to work with, I know her from previous visits to swiss, but I have never worked with her. I'll be sorry to miss a good buddy.

I don't post my blog entries every day, but I write them every day, so sometimes I will post a few on one day.

This morning it was so funny. Skiing is not the easiest sport and some of the children do get hurt. There is a doctor and nurse to tend to their wounds. Today there were a group of them sitting together playing cards. They were listening to loud music with mostly basses and when you looked at them, they all had a thick, white layer of flamazine on their faces, except their eyes and mouths. Their faces were sunburnt too!

Today more than a 100 swifts were seen in Montpellier in Southern France and 1 in Paris!

Small tortoiseshells

Where the snow melts the crocusses appear, even all over town. The town is not more than a main street going to Italy and a few hotels and holiday homes and the very few who has a shop or work in the hotels. After Easter most will close and only open in June for the summer season.
With the sun setting I can hear the children still play outside. They had a wonderful week, sunny days all the time. Good friendships must come out of this week. On Saturday they will go home and the next load will arrive, for us it will be an extremely busy day, because the new kids arrive in the morning and the old group leaves in the evening.

Today I walked to the damwall. It is just a tiny damwall to stop flooding. It was such good weather to stay inside and I had a new bird to add to my list, the northern wheatear and I saw great display of the common redstart.

On my walks today I went into Maloja’s information office to buy a map of the hiking trails. I talked to a guy there about which birds I might see here. Before on several walking trails I’ve seen places where someone is feeding the birds. He told me then that him and his wife are feeding the birds from November till almost into May. So far this year they have distributed about 400kg of bird food over these feeding spots.
These last few days I have seen many darkish butterflies flying through. Today the mistery was solved and I finally I could see which butterfly it was. It is the small tortoiseshell/kleine vos. At first I thought it was a migrating butterfly, because it is a pass here and I saw so many of them. After googling I saw it is the first butterflies that appear when it heats up. I must have seen about 15 of them!

Speaking of migrations, I see on the swifts-martins and swallows mailing list that the Common swift is already seen in various places. On the 6 april one was seen in Bordeaux and 3 in Saint Quentin. On the 8th one was seen at Breskens in Holland and also in the province of Brabant in Holland.
I’m scared they will be home before me.
On the 8th april the first one was seen in Western Swizerland.
Now the fever is rising!

Chiavenna in Italy

Yesterday we heard we had the day off today. It might sound that we often have days off, but we only have one day off in a week.
This morning we decided to go to Chiavenna, which is in Italy. It’s one of the first villages you find when you go down the Maloja pass.
Maria and I thought it best to start early and try our luck by hitching a ride. If we didn’t get a lift we could always take the bus. The third car passing us took us all the way into the city centre of Chiavenna. In Switzerland in the mountains it’s so easy to find a ride.

Our chauffeur was a very pleasant person who lives in St Moritz and was on his way to Lugano. He was full of knowledge and told me that it’s not likely that I’ll see the golden eagles very easy. He also told me they’ve set out Lammergeiers, but I don’t know where exactly. This winter they even had a bear that came over the mountains from Italy, but it was shot because of safety reasons. There are no lynxes either. Talk of man being invasive!

Chiavenna is a quaint old village with narrow streets and high buildings, about 2 or 3 stories not counting ground floor, but no more than that. A colourfull village built long before there were cars. It’s surrounded by mountains and the temperature is much higher than up in the mountains, but in spite of that the italians were wearing coats – even when they sat in the sun, while we carried ours.

Every piazza were taken in by tables and chairs of little bars or gelateria, giving it all such a pleasant and relaxed sphere. We sat down to enjoy the sun and watch the people on the Piazza Rodolfo Pestalozzi which had a fountain in the middle. The water must be drinking water, because I saw a grandmother letting her grandchild drink from the fountain. I was told that it becomes very hot here in summer and then a fountain must be refreshing.

Maria can’t walk too much because of her bad knee, so we rest often when we find benches. It is so pleasant in the mountains and in this village in Italy, they have clean benches all over. It gives me time to look for birds and I can add new ones to my list. I especially enjoyed seeing barn swallows flying in the narrow little streets. You would expect them to fly in the country. I did see one swallow which I couldn’t identify. I will have to google seriously to try and find it.
All shops close from 12 till half past two! Only eating places stay open.
We had our lunch near the market square amidst hugh old trees. We are such frugal people and always take sandwiches with. haha!

It’s remarkable to see how many old and tall trees are there in this village.

Spring has really made it’s entrance below the pass. We were enanamoured by the camelias we saw blooming in the gardens on our way into town. Along the river Mera which cuts the town in half we saw many blossoming trees. Also when you look up the mountain there are many trees covered in white blossoms which we thought might be cherry trees. We wondered if they got there because of birds?

We were not that lucky in finding a lift back to Maloja and we took the bus. Spring has sprung on the mountain slopes too. It was covered with tiny alpine crocusses. From the bus I could see them only in white and the occasional purple one.
Ag, another shitty day in the mountains!

The Belvédère

Today the kids arrived, 350 of them and we are between 50 and 60 personal. Now the serious work starts, but we also have set times to work and to be off.
This afternoon we walked to the Belvédère. From my room I can see it and I was told that this was supposed to become the residence of the Count Camille de Renesse, but it was not finished. It is situated on a hilltop and overlooks the Maloja pass and on the other side it looks out at the majestic hotel he started building in 1882. It was to become a health centre for the rich. It was opened in 1884, but he was also declared bancrupt in 1884. That’s one of the reasons why the castle never came to be. I have to find proper information about the Belvédère, because what I know is what I find on the internet and I'm not always sure about those facts.

Here are the mountains as seen from the Belvédère

I especially wanted to go that route, because there are more trees and I might see more birds. I was not disappointed and saw a few nutcrackers and they were not that far-off. I was also told that there is a pair of golden eagles in this valley and I might see them best from the Belvédère. Fingers crossed!