London, Schwarzenberg, Verbier,: Long Gown, Short Dress or Hiking Shorts? Where Am I?

Tramp son 1 departed for the US in his sandals, and shortly after the tramps headed to London for the trampess’s 35th (I never lie) reunion from business school and events both informal and very formal (a certain heir to the throne was being awarded an honourary degree by the school and your trampess, a former long-serving governor and honouree herself, was invited to the ceremony, which not too surprisingly – security reasons no doubt – took place in St James’s Palace instead of the school; none of the guests objected to a change in protocol!). As luck would have it, with most of her clothes in storage, and only a winter evening dress in the cupboard, the trampess had no choice but to nip around the corner and acquire a new gown for the occasion. In contradistinction to this extravagence, we walked to the Palace (well, said the tramp, it is only just down the road and we have plenty of time) – can you imagine just how funny it is to see someone skipping through Mayfair with her below-floor-length gown hitched up to reveal walking shoes (you can’t possibly walk even 200m in the 5 inch stilettos that are de rigueur nowadays so the Tod’s had to do until a strategic switch was made at the cloak room in the Palace) while clutching a bag carrying the evening shoes, a hand bag, and a stole wrapped around the bare shoulders (not exactly a picture of calm elegance). I won’t mention that the wind was awful and that it was threatening rain (so much for having the hair done that morning – not a normal event in the trampess’s life but I thought it was the least I could do on the occasion – the new dress really did demand better than the usual quick brush).

Notwithstanding the modus transportandi the evening was splendid: lots of champagne, the best vegan food in town (HRH does take his food seriously and he is big on organic, so one did not expect a few carrots slung on a plate with boiled potatoes – standard European restaurant solution to the v word - and one was not disappointed), a very good speech by Himself, and a wonderful concert by Danielle de Niese afterward (she of the sexiest Cleopatra on the operatic stage fame). The evening was the end of a long weekend: class dinners, a panel on Corporate Greed Vs. Public Good: What Part Should Business Schools Play? (your trampess was one of the 4 panel members so a bit of preparation required for that!), plus the global summit. After all that heavy lifting it was a relief just to try and squeeze in seeing friends, re-organising the flat (the tramp applied all the WLW rules – rebuilt the bed, re-organised the kitchen and bathroom and generally had the staff at Muji greeting him with open arms on a daily basis) and making it to theatre and museum must-see-exhibitions.

At the end of 3 weeks the tramp was eager to get back to the mountains – London, he proclaimed, is just too fattening! (Many people have said many things about London before, but that is one I doubt you will have heard until now!) Luckily the tramps had a full week of hiking before the first concert at the Schubertiade – the lifts were working and there was no excuse for missing a quick bolt up the mountains and getting back into shape. And happily, the cows in Mellau, while frequently on the narrow path the trampess climbed, were altogether friendlier and more subservient than the cows in Bezau, so weight-loss was un-traumatic. The concerts, were quite, quite wonderful: Mark Padmore’s Schwanengegang was outstanding and Ian Bostridge’s Winterreise was the best the tramp has ever heard (given his devotion to Fischer-Dieskau, this is quite a statement) – he is, as the tramp calls him, the urban guerrilla lieder singer, so no concert by him is remotely similar to anyone else’s – his is not just a pretty voice, it is a voice with a brain, and an unusual one at that. It is impossible to take your eyes off of him for one second during the entire performance (including in between songs) – he is totally mesmorising (did I mention he did his doctorate in witchcraft? No really, and from Oxford. And if that weren’t enough the TLS said it was an influential work in the study of the pre-Enlightenment, "achieving that rarest of feats in the scholarly world: taking a well-worn subject and ensuring that it will never be looked at in quite the same way again." I won’t even mention that before university, when he was in school he developed a unified theory of gravity and electromagnetism but then became disillusioned with physics and read history at Oxford and Cambridge where he received a first. Somehow he managed to take up music, and if you are still with me, it will not surprise you to know that when he first gave a solo concert he won the Royal Philharmonic’s Debut Award). He is also the only Don Ottavio I have ever seen who is not remotely a wimp but is more attractive than Don Giovanni could ever be.

But with die Winterreise behind us, the tramp was eager to get to the higher altitudes of Verbier – and longer, tougher hikes. It has to be said though that Verbier has its own little temptations: master classes the entire day (does one hike at 6 am before Alfred Brendel’s 8am master class???), concerts where there are friends to meet over drinks and nibbles in the 40 minute intervals, and post-concert dinners in friends’ and patrons’ chalets afterward. A bit more like London and a bit less like Schwarzenberg (where the music is serious and the socialising is not). But arriving almost 2 weeks before the first concert (even allowing for a side trip to Geneva and the Belle Rive festival) meant that once again, the tramps could get in some serious hikes before the serious music (and eating) began. And serious they were, too. The tramp, in one of his many trips to Muji, found some sweet little insulated canteens – perfect for packing a hot lunch he said (made by you-know-who). Thus has a new cooking routine emerged: bulk cooking (as bulk as one can achieve with a small kitchen and not exactly family sized pots) on the non-hiking, rest day with reheating on the hiking day and rapid filling of canteens thus allowing a post-breakfast bolt up the mountain, frequent texting as lunch time approaches (it is to be remembered that the tramp and the trampess do not hike at the same speed and indeed, often do not follow the same trails to a given destination) and agreement on the rendez-vous point for lunch. Occasionally, your trampess finds she is sufficiently far ahead that a strategic stop at the friendly Chez Dany for a coffee and a refill of the camel makes the waiting time at the top less, um, tiresome. There are lovely benches along many of the higher paths so it is possible to have lunch with a view before heading upward (or sometimes in the tramp’s case back down the lift leaving the trampess to add a few hundred more vertical meters to her climb to another, higher, lift station). The tramp is very proud of the lunches – he has declared there is absolutely no reason to eat in a restaurant in Switzerland again (something to do with the disbelief that anyone could want just vegetables combined with the fact that the variety of fresh vegetables is very limited - the secret to the succulence of the trampess’s curries is that there are very good organic frozen vegetables in the supermarket as well as occasional, fresh, organic peppers for ratatouille – a bit of variety from Indian to Mediterranean is also welcome). The tramp’s insistence on hiking, hiking, hiking did pay off and the trampess’s dresses were all loose at the beginning of the festival. London is definitely behind us!

And a good thing too! The classes (no time for hiking) and the socialising (too much time for eating) began with a vengeance from day one where the trampess was expected to show up at two after concert parties (luckily too many people had accepted the first and she was let off the hook and only had to eat once for God and country that night!). Not to mention that the newly invigorated British Friends had a lunch which, even though it was not in the WLW (the tramp is thinking though that with the aid of a small marquee your trampess could host a dinner party for 20 or more – the tramp doesn’t quite understand the volune limits of the trampess’s pots and pans – he must think they are like the magic pasta pot where Strega Nonna’s pasta just keeps coming - I love the Italian version of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice – does he really think I am a witch??? Is IB’s influence colouring his judgement???), found the trampess and a dear friend chefs for the day (the hostess had just arrived with two babies from abroad and it was more than enough that she lent her kitchen). Then there was the post-Kiri te Kanawa master class lunch which thankfully we didn’t have to cook (just organise) but which nonetheless was a full blown meal with wine and pudding (that required another full day hike to work off!). Add a few working lunches and you can see where this is all heading . . . But we did add another routine to our day: hiking up and back to the master classes (and taking our little Muji pots with us) – normally with full back packs so we could even do the shopping on the way down (and I am sure the extra weight of the back packs burns more calories). 40 minutes is not the same as 3-5 hours but it is definitely better than nothing and seemed to do the trick.

The best, for me however, was yet to come. On the last day of the festival, at the post-concert dinner in the chalet where we had cooked for 20, your trampess met a most interesting woman: a Canadian lawyer specialising in strategic environmental issues (for example of the kind that arise when rivers/lakes are shared by neighbouring countries who don’t always have the same pollution standards) who consults to the UN, NATO etc and who by the by, as one does, plays the cello (she comes from a musical family and all of them seem to play or sing). Of course, she is also a hard-core fitness fanatic and insists that her interns join her for 3 hours of physical exercise every morning before work! (This could limit the pool of interns she gets!) We agreed to meet for a hike later in the week and had such a good time that she invited me to join her 20 year old interns for one of their morning work outs – which took the whole day (it was a Saturday – obviously she doesn’t give them days off from the physical activities even if they don’t have office hours). I took the cable car down to le Chable (hiking up to Verbier first, of course): we hiked, swam in the lake (spring fed so absolutely freezing – not as bad as the ocean in Maine but you get the picture) - only 1km but still, returned to do some power yoga and then had lunch. The swim included her two golden retrievers (who swam close to us – I thought with my swimming lessons this year in Miami that I would have inspired more confidence but perhaps they were worried that I was not used to cold water) and of course we changed into our dry clothes on the side of the lake, (no changing rooms but then I had the joy of being assured of the water’s purity – she is an environmentalists after all and checks these sorts of things) a towel held up for modesty – although if the fishermen on the side of the lake had binoculars no modesty would have existed – as it is I am not sure it really did but then I doubt we would recognise each other again from that distance. Lunch of course wound up taking hours (not because of overindulgence – only a salad) just because the interns were all interesting and the conversation went on.

Refusing to pay the outrageous charge for the cable car up hill (and the strength of the Swiss franc of course makes it much worse), your trampess hiked back up – making it just in time to make supper for the tramp (who decided these extreme activities were too much for him, though he had been invited!). Having passed test one, I was approved as tough enough to join them on a guide-led glacier trek near Chamonix. I drove as there were 7 of us including the guide and his car only held 5, but the little Smart, like the little engine that could, dutifully climbed the long tortuous road over the mountain and we arrived at our destination in good time. One great advantage of a Smart becomes obvious when one reaches a tourist trap with overcrowded car parks: it is possible to squeeze into a non-space space. And there were millions of tourists in Chamonix all wanting to go up to the glacier (ugh). Happily that is precisely all they wanted to do: go up, walk into the exhibition area inside the glacier, and buy souvenirs and junk food (we brought our own food – those little Muji canteens are getting a workout, too). Meanwhile, once out of the train taking us to the glacier, our team walked confidently past the “defense d’entrer” sign (this being France there was no one there to stop us); hiked across the rocks (tricky) and made it to the edge of the glacier where we put on our crampons and learned how to walk on ice (with your feet not too close together). As we moved farther and farther onto the glacier we then roped up and learned to belay down a crevasse and hike back up – with the aid of the trusty ice axe we had been carrying (conveniently behind our necks -!- wedged into place by our backpacks). I thought that was going to be the most challenging part of the day but later, with crampons off and ice picks returned to the precarious position just mentioned, we did ladders and ropes – i.e. climbed the sheer rock face up ladders (some ropes to help when reaching a ledge) then along very narrow ledges to another set of ladders. Repeated several times till we had reached the place were lesser souls walked down 350 steps to the glacier. Quite a day and one which allows me to say without excessive exaggeration , it would appear I have conquered my fear of heights. (I admit that facing a rock wall is different from coming down it facing out – as some did to get to the glacier– but I did look behind me several times just to check progress and convince myself that giving up mid-way would be a very bad idea). After riding the train back down to Chamonix, we all repaired to one of the local cafés to recover. Being the health fanatic that I am, my choice of restoratives was a citron presse (your trampess would have been very glad of a glass of red wine to fortify herself at that point but with a long, tortuous road home to negotiate, thought better of it).

You might have expected a little break, a day of rest perhaps, after all that hyper-activity. Guess again! Two of my nieces (one working for Medecins sans Frontieres in Geneva, the other for the Peace Corps somewhere in the depths of the Bulgarian countryside) plus one boyfriend arrived in Verbier almost immediately after the glacier adventure– so massive cooking effort plus me as lead guide on the hiking. The younger one, despite being incredibly fit (perhaps she has no car in deepest Bulgaria) decided to call me Drill Sergeant Aunt P. (I take this as a compliment – not everyone would). Her older sister having just finished a 30 day hot yoga challenge is no slouch either, but her boyfriend, who runs a night club in Geneva, had not subjected himself to quite the same rigourous preparation for their hiking holiday and seemed to suffer under DSAP’s uphill pace (or maybe it was just the uphill).

The last night they were here, after the morning hike, I indulgently allowed a spectator sport to enter the programme: the annual Hippique which took over from the Festival and by the end of the week (which it was) the show jumping was impressive. It was also a rather festive event and (remarkably given this is Switzerland) free – though replete with opportunities to spend money on food, wine etc (all the local restaurants setting up little tents adjacent to the main event). A totally different crowd from the Verbier Festival. The tramp, having been a keen rider when he was growing up, enjoyed it enormously and was very kind in explaining what the riders were doing wrong when they missed a jump. (your trampess did not grow up on the backside of a horse and her Girl Scout riding badge was over her dead body and at the demand of the rest of the troop). The tramp, tough love to the core, says it is always the rider’s fault when the horse misses a jump. Apparently, he told me, some years ago, show jumping used to be quite boring because the Germans always won (something about thinking they had to control the horse’s approach to the jump – the other countries’ riders concentrated on staying on the horse in the least intrusive way possible and letting the horse do its thing, which allegedly was jumping; of course, sometimes jumping is not what it wants to do – especially as the jumps became higher over the course of the event, too much like hard work at the end of an already trying day); once everyone noticed the Germans were winning with boring consistency, the others decided maybe switching to a German style of riding might produce some gold medals. And voila, now everyone is riding German style and the competitions are less boring! I might not have taken this story at face value if it weren’t for the fact that a) you have to admit it is totally believable, b) I have too many English friends who have sent their seriously competitive children to Germany to improve their riding and c) the tramp’s father’s lawyer (with whom he and his father rode) won two gold medals in the Olympics for dressage (I know, dressage is not show jumping but it is about control). I will leave you to draw your own lessons from this little parable – it is quite possible to wind up missing the jump if one is not careful!