Gstaad: A German Christmas market style Disneyland in Switzerland

If you’ve ever been to Disneyland, or even seen any pictures of it, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Think of the mock cobblestoned roads, the castle on a hill, the cheerful brightly coloured flags flapping in the breeze, the eerily clean exteriors, and the discordantly busy yet uninhabited streets. The town of Gtsaad in the Alps is the Swiss answer to that strangely family-friendly, but sterile, phenomenon. Granted, it’s the 5 star Palace Hotel looking down upon the town, and the jarringly fake facades of the buildings are actually accommodating high class consumer stores of the likes of Prada and Ralph Lauren, but I still wouldn’t have been surprised to see a cartoon character decked out in an elaborate lederhosen costume waiting to wave me off as the chocolate train drew out of the station.

Gstaad is one of those places that many people have heard of but to which hardly anyone has actually been. And for good reason, as far as I can see. It’s an “exclusive” town. So exclusive, in fact, that they have even made the name virtually impossible to pronounce correctly. Apparently, as anyone “in the know” will inform you, it’s not G-staad but gSTAAD, with the first letter almost hiccoughed away into oblivion. Now, this “semi-silent G”, as they call it, is almost certainly not an unfortunate by-product of the sing-song Swiss Germanic pronunciation but much more surely an affectation dreamed up by the stuck-up so-and-so’s who made this town what it is today.

Winter in the Alps is the “high” season. The usual things spring to mind when you imagine such a holiday: early morning starts, skiing far and wide in the daytime, après drinks when the lifts close, busy restaurants serving fondues and raclettes, and packed out bars in which you can party until the early hours. Well, if you were looking for any of these, then you would be disappointed in Gstaad. The people who come to Gstaad definitely look the part in their Moon Boots, fur hats, and matching padded ski suits. Yet when you get onto the slopes, you very quickly realise that things are not quite as they seem. The mountains are EMPTY. It is impossible not to marvel at the lack of lift queues, smile when an attendant hands you a blanket to cover you knees and keep you warm on the ride up, gawp at the piste that still bears the marks of the grooming machine three hours after the mountain has opened, and take immense pleasure in the fresh, unspoilt snow on the way down (if you are lucky enough to be out on a good day, that is). And this is where the main enjoyment of this once little farming village lies.

However, you will soon find yourself back where you started; right at the bottom, wondering where you can ski to now. More often than not, the only answer is to go back up the same lift and repeat the same runs over and over and over. Whilst this is fine for the pathetic skiers like myself, it will not been enough to satisfy to all-out adrenaline junkie boyfriend, who will look on in horror and anguish as you potter around on one little mountain for a couple of hours before heading home. The only other alternative is to walk all the way to your car (if you have one), pack away your skis and boots, don normal shoes, drive yourself to the next mountain, put all your gear back on and then repeat the process again. There is a bus service linking these disparate mountains, but it is infrequent and honestly unreliable. Quite frankly, this is annoying to say the least.

Yet, for most of the visitors to Gstaad, this grief will pass them by completely. Visitors do not come to Gstaad to ski, it seems. Visitors actually come to pose around the Bavarian-style Christmas market that is the town from December through to the end of February. Now, have not experienced any problems over tourists in heavy ski boots clogging up the aisles in the Co-op, as is usually the case with residents of a ski resort. Rather, my gripe concerns the other places that I have to frequent out of a lack of all other viable alternatives, such as the pharmacy. All I wanted, one time, was a toothbrush to replace the one that the boyfriend had mistakenly taken with him when he left to go away for a week on work. I was forced to wait 45 minutes for this, resulting in a subsequent mad dash to work to avoid being late, as the three women ahead of me were all monopolising the staff with their struggles to control the adverse effects of the extreme cold of their collagen filled, surgically altered, plastic bodies. Now, I wouldn’t have minded so much if they were actually ill, but the fact that it was all self induced caused in a me a reaction of such bile tasting rage that when at last my turn came, my tongue was practically acid and I feared that my foul, sour breath coupled with the item I was purchasing would alert people to fact that I’d been unable to brush my teach that morning.

Although the plastic people melt with the snow, the summer season is not a whole lot better. The winter season has the skiing. The summer season has… beach volleyball. You might just be wondering what on earth beach volleyball could possibly have to do with a land-locked country such as Switzerland, or with a town in the Alps, set at an altitude of 1000 meters, miles away from any sandy coastline. Well, as the Gstaad website will tell you, in the Swatch FIVB World Tour 1to1 Energy Grand slam, the world’s best beach-volleyball teams battle it out against “the exotic backdrop of the Alps” with an “all-out beach atmosphere, even on the adjoining car-free promenade”. How they can hope to bring a “thrilling beach atmosphere” and “hot rhythms” to a small village in the mountains, with only a meandering river running beside it, and to which they have even attributed the tagline “Come Up, Slow Down”, is beyond me. The place is so sleepy, in fact, that you could easily come up and just g-stop due to lack of stimulation. The gently rolling hills of the valley, with the little wooden houses perched on the side, are so peaceful that they are more reminiscent of Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings than an Alpine “capital” of major tourist events. I do not know what mind-altering drugs the people organising events in Gtsaad were taking when they came up with these things, but the fact that they are also advertising a program of cow exhibitions in Saanenland may give some indication as to their grasp on reality.

As you may have gathered from, Gstaad is an odd kind of place. In winter, it forms a bizarre mixture of Disneyland crossed with a seriously expensive German Christmas Market frequented by the Plastic People of this world. In summer, it takes on more of the feeling of a sleepy village inhabited by characters from Middle Earth, with someone who has taken a lot of acid organising the program of entertainment. Surreal, to say the least.