Disconnected

This posting will be the first and only news from me most of you will have had in a week. Starting last Friday morning the internet stopped working. After two days of trying this and that, I called Eric in New York, and being a computer genius, he advised me to "refresh" (F5) - and lo and behold it worked. After we hung up, I set out to check my email, but immediately noticed that the internet again wasn't working, although my computer was saying that I was connected and had excellent signal strength. I called Eric back... and somehow we got it working again. However, as soon as I hung up and tried to go to a new website, it didn't work. I gave up. Later that night Claire called. I told her about my troubles - and since she too is a computer genius, she told me how to "repair". And it worked beautifully. While I had her on the phone, I tested Skype, IM, downloaded my email... it all worked, I was so pleased. We chatted for a while and hung up. But when I tried to go on Facebook I was already disconnected. This is when I started suspecting that I had internet access only while on the phone... not ideal! On Monday morning I called SwissCom, the provider. A technician was scheduled to come to my home on Thursday!!! I am now drafting this posting in a Word document so that when the internet works again, hopefully tomorrow, all I'll have to do is paste it into the blog. Since a friend is arriving tomorrow for the weekend I won't have time to be on the computer over the next few days.

I lost the internet just as my friend Pierre arrived last weekend - so for the first few days I didn't mind. The upside of no internet access was a lot of time to read. I admit that once Pierre left, between the again quiet house and no connection, for the first time I felt alone. Not lonely, but I definitely felt cut off from the rest of the world. At least the ghosts in the apartment are keeping me company: I definitely feel my father all around me. I am using his fountain pen, his binoculars, the whole place is him. Peering over my shoulder I sense Jocelyne, my frather's partner who, unfortunately, has cut herself off from the family even before he died. She loved to clean and I can hear her comments, because of course, I am sure that I am unable to keep the place up to her standards. My father coudn't stand a messy place either, so I am actually making an effort to keep things more tidy than my natural inclination would be. It's true too, that I do have enough time to clean up after myself!

I miss my kids, with whom I have spent considerable time here over the years. This is where Claire, at age 11 months, learned both to walk and eat spaghetti! Granpa would revert into a kid himself on Swiss National Day, to help Eric with fireworks. Here, I also feel closer than ever to my sisters. As a family we have been coming to Zuoz since 1965, often for a month at the time. Streets, stores, houses, trails... they all are heavy with family memories - memories of my mother, of Dad's second wife and her son, my aunt who loved to visit, as well as so many friends of my parents, most of them now dead, who would join us here to hike with us for a few days.

Pierre and I were in high school tegether, and he still lives in Neuchatel, our home town. However, he lived in Seattle as a post-doc (botany) and climbed and traveled all over the world. He does conservation planning, both in Switzerland and abroad, both as an employee of the federal government, and as a consultant. He sits on the UNESCO World Biosphere commission. All the above information is relevant because Pierre came to Zuoz for work and he invited me to join him in his meetings. He arrived shortly after noon from Neuchatel. He had less than an hour to drop off his bag and skis at my house and scarf down some lunch before we caught the next train. The first meeting was in Zernez with the head scientist of the National Park, at the headquarters in the old Zernez castle! Then we took the postal bus to the Val Mustair (the postal busses go where there is no train access, to the highest and most remote villages). This was my first time through the National Park in the winter. The road is the only access from Switzzerland to the Val Mustair, via the Ofenpass, and therefore stays open all winter - at least most of the time. Indeed, we had been on the bus just for a few minutes, when it pulled over at a roadside restaurant. We were going to stay there for a while: there had been an accident on the road, which was now closed until it was cleared. Except for the pass road, the Park is closed and inaccessible in the winter. The drive was extraordinarily beautiful and impressive with the narrow road winding above precipitous cliffs. The whole landscape was in black and white, as this was the only day since my arrival when it snowed non-stop.


In Tschierv (Val Mustair) we met with the coordinator of the biosphere project, Gaby Binkert. She is an energetic and interesting person - and tonight on TV there actually is a show about her - I am planning on watching. At this point I don't see how I could fit either into the National Park staff, or into the biosphere project, but it was interesting to attend the meetings and hear about the issues and how they deal with them. At both meetings the subject of the Olympics came up: both kids of the head of the National Park are in Vancouver, competing as snowboarders (they did ok but didn't win any medals). The Val Mustair was ecstatic, as their own Dario Colonia won a gold medal in the 15K cross-country ski race. For such a small and remote valley, it's a huge deal and they are already working on his home-coming party. We missed the earlier bus home, so had dinner in Tschierv (capuns, a local specialty of rolled-up Swiss chard, stufffed with ham and other goodies) and crossed the park in the dark. In Zernez we had half an hour wait for the train - enough time for a cup of coffee. It was 9:30pm when we finally got home! I am no longer used to such intense and long days. However, it was very refreshing. Pierre is an amazing source of information on the Park, the Biosphere proposal, and all things natural and political in the area. I loved dipping my toes back into the world of conservation.

At long last I have posted a series of pictures on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/irenevlach/ZuozJanuary2010#

The birds and the bees

I promised a more factual posting, so here we go. When I registered as an inhabitant of Zuoz, they gave me a handy booklet with important information about the municipality. The town of Zuoz is located at 1,700 meters (5,600 feet). The municipality's highest point (Piz Kesch - I climbed it several times wtih my father) is at 3,417 meters (11,200 feet). Its area is 66 square kilometers (16,300 acres). In the year 2000 (the info obviously is somewhat outdated!) there were 1,353 inhabitants, 46% of which speak German, 34% Romantsch and 12% Italian.

In addition to these human inhabitants, there also are 243 cows and calves, 561 sheep, 24 horses, 85 pigs, 5 goats, 83 chicken, 25 rabbits and 43 bee hives.

The languages are a constant source of confusion. I am reading an English book, Time Magazine, and of course most of my email correspondence is in English. In town I speak Swiss German, although I am often answered in high German. TV is either in Swiss German, or in high German. The cashier at the store speaks Italian, and everywhere there is much banter in Italian. I spent the weekend with my sister, and so French was the only language, although the hills were full of Brits. I subscribed to the local paper, Engadiner Post, which is written both in German and in Romantsch. A free magazine is written in German, English and Italian. Most of the time I can keep the languages in their proper place, but it becomes very difficult on the train. On Monday, returning from my sister's I went from French to German, then boarded a train coming from Italy, switched back to a Swiss train with mostly German, and eventually returned to the Romantsch/Italian area. Greeting someone always is a guessing game, and I usually get it wrong! It is all much fun though, and I am looking forward to finally picking up some Romantsch: enough students have registered to make the next course viable, and so the first class will be held next Monday night - from 8:15pm to 9:45pm! I don't know how I'll be able to focus so late at night. The class will be in another town, some 15 minutes up the valley by train, and the train schedule does not at all coincide with the timing of the class... I hope one of my class mates will come from Zuoz and be the proud owner of a car!

As I mentioned above, I spent the weekend at Brigitte's - at the other end of Switzerland, in another beautiful area in the Alps: Villars. It's a long day on the train, and I got up at 6:30am to catch an early one. It was hard to get out of bed in the dark (hint: this is where you are supposed to feel sorry for me) but the reward was the sunrise tinting the tops of the mountains with pink. This was the first time I wasn't crying when leaving the valley... and when I returned, late on Monday night, my relationship to the area, to the town, to the apartment, was changed: all of a sudden it no longer felt like my Dad's vacation place, but like my home. A good feeling. I had mentioned that while here it's always nice, there was a lot of snow fall on the north side of the Alps. The whole country was under snow, and in Villars the quantity of snow is astounding - much more than here, and much fresher, hence cleaner, whiter, even more beautiful.


This is the end of my hermit period: this weekend the first of many visitors will arrive, my high school friend Pierre. He is working on extending the Swiss National Park (park boundary is 2 miles from my house) and invited me to join him in a meeting on Friday afternoon in Zernez. On Saturday we hope to ski together... If the weather is good I might give downhill a try.

The above picture is of the vineyards near Lausanne under the snow. I will soon publish a set of pics on Picasa - promise!

Zen or the art of living in Zuoz

I have lost track of time. Eric left just one week ago, but it feels like I have been here much longer. I don't mean this in a negative way. Despite the fact that I am alone, there hasn't been a minute of loneliness or boredom. I have settled into an easy routine. My days are relaxing and delightful. My biggest challenge is to train myself not to worry about the future. It is a strange feeling to just be and enjoy. On one hand I feel like I should be looking for work. On the other, I know I can survive for a while without income, and I want to take advantage of this privileged time to figure out what I want to do. I am afraid that if I rush the process I'll find myself pegged into a position I didn't really want in the first place. Then again, being Swiss and catholic (since they say so!) the idleness goes against my very nature and is saddled with guilt. Yet, I also know that I need to heal from the traumas of last year and that finding a new route for my life will take time. I will have to learn to be patient. I am repeating this to myself like a mantra.

I am also battling a major case of cultural schizophrenia, as I knew I would. I left Switzerland 32 years ago. You know me: I am happy in Portland, I love my community, I treasure Oregon's wild landscapes. Yet, during all this time, whenever I would go to Switzerland even for one week, I reverted into a true Swiss. I would use other languages, eat differently, walk or take public transportation. I would visit old friends, and always thought that I could stay and quickly ease back into a Swiss life. Many times it felt like the only reason I was going back to Oregon was that plane ticket in my purse. And then the plane would approach PDX and I would see Mt. Hood or the other volcanoes and wonder how I could ever think of not living in the Pacific Northwest - this is my home, this is where I belong.

Eventually I have accepted that I will have to live with this duality. Some immigrants never fully adjust to their new country, nor want to go back to the old country. I am fortunate because I love both, feel comfortable and at home in both places. Because of this history, I knew that spending an extended amount of time here would exacerbate the quandry. But I wasn't expecting it to hit me so early and so hard. Already I am catching myself thinking about how I can stay here forever. Or at least come back every winter for several months. Or at least one month... Relax - breath deep - exhale... One day at the time, you barely got here, live in the present, enjoy what you got without worrying about the future. I need my friends who are more zen than me to help me get a new approach to life, help me learn to live without a blueprint.

As for the less philosophical, day to day aspects of my life, I have now a rather well established routine. The alarm clocks go off at 8am. I sip the orange juice in front of the big living room window, gauging the day and checking the emails arrived from the West Coast during the night.



It usually is 9am before I have breakfast. By the time I am done the birds have started moving around and I try to identify them through the windows of the various rooms - which in effect give access to all 4 directions! Every morning I find an excuse to walk up to the village to buy something or ask for some information. Lunch and then it's off to do some cross-country skiing. I make exceptions: Monday it was a long walk, today snowshoeing with a group and a guide. I return home around 4pm for more relaxing time, tea with the special carnaval pastry, reading, watching a movie or TV. What a life!

Spending time up here must be the best remedy against seasonal depression: there is so much light and sun. Since I arrrived it has snowed pretty much non-strop on the north side of the Alps. Here we barely got a couple of dustings. The weather alternates between cloudless skies, sun with a few clouds, or clouds with sun! The valley is an oasis of beauty and peace. Unlike in Africa, here I do keep up with the world's news, but everything seems so remote, it doesn't gnaw at me the way it does in Portland.

I'll leave it at this for today. The next post will be more factual - I promise. Thank you for your comments and messages - they are always appreciated.

This is it

Eric is on this way back to Zurich, and tomorrow he flies back to New York. It was a strange feeling to all of a sudden be left alone at the station while the red train with Eric in it was pulling away. So this is the official beginning of my new life in Switzerland. As of now I have no idea what it will look like. I am taking this late afternoon as a good omen. The sun set about 15 minutes ago, and the sky is perfectly clear, sending a bluish/pink reflection onto the snowy landscape. It was the most beautiful sunset since our arrival, as all other afternoons were overcast. We thought we had the weather pattern figured out: sunny in the morning with high clouds moving in around noon. Today was different: it snowed a little in the morning, then cleared around noon and the afternoon was downright warm with big puffy clouds making interesting shadow patterns on the white slopes. I will not bore you about the weather in all postings. However, the contrast between here and rainy grey Portland is so striking that I can’t omit it for now. On Monday morning it was -20 C! It’s very dry and a lot of lotion is required. The unusually big and bright full moon offered a true spectacle several nights in a row, with our living room window being the perfect observation spot for its rise and then light over the snowed in mountains and valley.

We arrived in Zuoz on January 27 at 12:27 after an unusually pleasant and quick journey. It was snowing hard when we landed in Zurich, and it kept on snowing until we entered the tunnel through the Alps. When we emerged on the other side we found blue sky. As we got off the train I sent Eric running to the store across from the station to get us some lunch, while I stayed with the bags – tough luck… it closes at 12:15 and was not going to open again until 2pm. So we went home hungry, and were back at the store at 2:01pm to get supplies for a late lunch. I had described our anticipated arrival to a number of you, one of us having to get the sled at the house to haul the bags. In the end it was not necessary: the snow was packed hard enough so that we could pull the suitcases. Less fun but more effective

That afternoon Eric took a nap while I unpacked everything and stashed the suitcases in the basement: I was home. I decided that the next few days with Eric would be a vacation – I felt I deserved it after the stress of the last few days – actually of the last 14 months! We slept in, bought enormous amounts of food, cooked, ate, took long walks in the snow. Eric set up the internet in no time. He helped me buy and learn to use a Swiss cell phone (I’ll get really good at texting since calls are expensive here), he showed me how the cool but complicated alarm clock I received from the pool ladies works, and last, but not least, he had me rehearse how to turn on the TV. Indeed, for the first time in my life I’ll have a TV. The programming here is much better than in the US (almost no commercials, just a $40/month fee!) and I hope that the exposure to German will refresh that part of my brain.

Since Eric didn’t bring skis, we went on long walks every day. There is a large network of plowed trails throughout the valley, making for varied and easy walking. One day we took a cable car to Muotas Muragl, above the tree line and with a view down to St. Moritz and over to the 4,000 meter high peaks. Up there too, there are trails plowed into the snow. However, a bitter cold wind was blowing and after walking for some 45 minutes we chickened out. Actually, very few people were as brave as us! The next day we took the train to the north side of the Alps, and went sledding on the closed road of the Albula Pass. It’s very steep, narrow, icy and with hairpin turns. To say that the run is exciting is an understatement! Of course we dumped. We laughed so hard my abs were hurting. At one point there is an electronic radar: we clocked at 39km/h! Each run takes some 30-20 minutes. You can do it again by taking the train that runs every 30’ – just for the sledders

My friends keep on being supportive of my undertaking. My previous post describes all the help I got with the move on the Portland side. When I got here I found a few welcoming cards in my mail box, both from US and Swiss friends. The phone has been ringing steadily. Both my sisters called, and pretty much every night one or another Swiss friend calls. Of course I have also skyped with daughter Claire – I am sure that now that I am alone there’ll be much more of it.

I have taken some steps to initiate my new life: I introduced myself to the building manager and his wife. They lent me their papers so I could decide which ones I should subscribe to. I knocked on the door of the apartment above ours: a Swiss lady and her partner. She will be here alone for most of February – so we might keep each other company. I started the registration process with the town. Today I got a phone call to clarify my religion. Despite the fact that I have not been a practicing catholic since 1977, the town clerk declared that because I have never written to the CHURCH to the effect that I resign, I am still a catholic and as such I will have to pay the required church taxes. I have started the painful process of choosing a health insurance plan and I have inquired about rumantsch lessons (the local language). They will offer a class whenever they have 7 interested people.

Eventually I’ll post pictures of our adventures on my Picasa site. I’ll let you know when they are ready. I am as curious as you are about my next posting. Who knows what the next few days will bring?