Engelberg from the merry side

I just came home from my “ski trip” to Engelberg and in a matter of hours I am going back to the Arlanda airport for a long-haul trip to the US, but that will be the topic for another blog post.
I almost gave up on the idea of skiing in the Swiss Alps and went to the bar Yucatán in Engelberg to drown my sorrows on Thursday night. I had a couple of beers and watched the good-looking bartender make drinks for an increasingly festive crowd. Then I sat talking for a while with the son of the man running Engelberg’s horse and carriage business, who also told me about his brother’s adventures as a blacksmith, competing in the Swiss national horse-shoeing team – imagine that there are competitions for such a thing; I thought that this trade was almost extinct.

I ended up partying the whole night with some Norwegians and Danes.



In true Scandinavian Viking spirit we called upon the old Asa gods to bring us some snow – and lo and behold! – when the bar closed at 3:00 am and we had to leave, it was snowing heavily! I can’t begin to describe how utterly happy I felt in that moment! I was humming and smiling all the way back to the apartment.

Although my skiing sucked the day after – the first few runs each winter are always a little stiff before I get into it – the snow was wonderful! I took the Titlis Rotair lift up, crossed Trübsee over to Jochpass and skied there the whole afternoon. So I got one wonderful day of skiing, then it rained again…

Engelberg

Titlis

After ski and parties
After ski is a given on any ski trip, and the Chalet at the bottom of the Titlis – Trübsee lift is a good place to go for some fun after skiing. It’s usually packed with people from different countries, and Friday and Saturday were no exceptions. On Saturday they had a cover band playing so the place rocked. People were dancing on the tables and the wooden benches in their ski boots and sang along to familiar hits from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.






I made friends with some Germans who worked for a transportation company and were in Engelberg on a company trip. We later went for dinner and Kloster-Bier at Yucatán and sat talking for a couple of hours while the place got absolutely jam-packed.


Wolfgang, Roman, George, Tommy and I at after ski


Left: Tommy, Anja and I at Yucatán
Right: Wolfgang with Kloster-Bier

There were two bands playing at Yucatán last night, so all the young and crazy snowboarders as well as older ski tourists were there partying. The Germans and I were seated in an outer bar room so we didn’t quite notice the state of the other guests until much later. I had a good time talking to various people until I decided to check out the bigger bar area where the bands were playing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen people so incredibly drunk! I was dancing for no more than two songs when I noticed two male guests engaged in sexual activity right there on the dance floor. The party had hit a low-mark (!) and I decided it was time to leave.

Perfect weather when leaving Engelberg
Today I cleaned the apartment and packed my gear to leave Engelberg. Of course the sun was shining and there was not a cloud on the sky! A beautiful day, the first sunny one all week, and I had to leave! How typical!

Below you’ll find a few photos from Engelberg in all its sunny glory.








Beautiful Luzern
The cute, small, red, two-wagon Zentralbahn train took me from Engelberg to Luzern in an hour and I watched the beautiful landscape pass by. The scenery was quite breathtaking with mountain cottages and green hill sides against a backdrop of snowy Alp tops. I couldn’t help but thinking of the Sound of Music.









I spent 50 min in the sun by the lake in Luzern (see photos below) before I continued to the Zurich Flughafen with my connecting train. In the end I was wishing that I could have stayed a while longer in the Swiss Alps to enjoy the now much improved weather. I would imagine that it’s beautiful to go hiking in the Swiss Alps in summertime.

Luzern

Ski trip to the Swiss Alps turned into rain season

Quite tired from a very active salsa weekend in Zurich, I took the train to Engelberg this past Monday to spend the rest of the week skiing. The train ride took about two hours with a change in beautiful Luzern. There was hardly any snow in sight along the way. Weird leaving a snow-clad Sweden with chaos due to all the snowing in many parts of the country (not to mention Stockholm where big, fluffy snow-flakes were falling) for quite unexpected spring weather in the Alps... I was sadly disappointed since I had expected there to be a lot of snow this time of year in the Alps! It must be an effect of global warming – how sad.

Engelberg (http://www.engelberg.ch/) is situated at 1050 meters above sea level in the Swiss Alps and has 24 different cable-ways and 82 km of ski slopes. My friends Anneli & Bosse own an apartment in Engelberg and had been good enough to let me borrow it this week. It’s quite conveniently located about 5 min from the ski lift (and after ski!) and 10 min from the train station. I have been in Engelberg before over New Year’s 2005/06 and the skiing was excellent, including some great off-pist skiing in knee-deep, fresh powder snow.

Pouring rain in Engelberg

Upon arrival to Engelberg this time, though, the birds were chirping quite like in spring-time, the little snow there was on the ground was melting and water was streaming in the creek. Nonetheless, the ski lifts were running and people were indeed skiing, so I figured that it can’t be that bad (check out the webcam from the ski resort: http://www.engelberg.ch/Aktuell/LiveCam/index.php). The second day, I realized it can be that bad, because the rain was pouring down! Not exactly ideal for skiing. Quite depressing actually.

I had to resort to a good book by the Swedish author Jan Guillou and TV programs in incomprehensible Swiss German or familiar American shows dubbed into somewhat understandable German instead – well, I don’t speak German either, but at least it’s similar enough to Swedish that I could pick out a word here and there…After zapping through some 30 channels I finally found a couple of Swiss TV channels in Italian, tsi (televisione Svizzera italiana) 1 and 2 as well as the Italian Rai Uno, and felt more comfortable when I could understand the language, although what they were broadcasting was quite silly.

The restaurant/bar Yucatán in the ground-floor of Hotel Bellevue was quite happening, nonetheless. It was filled with happy, beer-drinking people when I went there for dinner and to write the postcards from Zurich I hadn’t gotten to yet. So after some good pasta and a couple of Swiss beers I went back to the apartment with my groceries, including my favorite coffee confect Raffaello-Kugeln (crispy cocoanut covered confects with creamy almond filling), less bothered by the rain than before.

The third day I woke up at 8:00 am to have breakfast and get ready for what I hoped would be at least one day of skiing, but the Titlis Glacier, Laubersgrat, Rindertitlis and Jochstock were closed “due to strong wind” and all ski-lifts and slopes were closed but the cable-car to Ristis, perhaps to be able to look at “the view” because skiing must have been impossible… My God, it was raining! I’m not talking about some gentle drizzle here, but a steady and heavy pouring rain washing away all remaining evidence of snow. The temperature in Engelberg was +4° Celsius. The below Live Cam pictures from local TV yesterday morning show you just how depressing it was.

So what does a girl do when alone in the Swiss Alps in winter-time with no possibility of skiing? She goes in monastery…

Engelberg Kloster

Given all the raining I thought I’d enjoy some ‘history and culture’ instead of skiing. Engelberg has a large Benedictine monastery (http://www.kloster-engelberg.ch/) founded in year 1120 which made for an interesting visit. Apparently the singing voices of angels in some revelation on the monastery grounds influenced the name of the village here in the mountains, hence ‘Engelberg’. Due to a fire in the 18th century, the monastery had to be rebuilt and it has subsequently been restored into its current state and is quite modern. The latest restoration started in 2005 and is expected to be finished in 2009.

The monks are supposed to spend their life in prayer and labor. One of the monks (Colomban, I think his name was) was famous for his exquisite wooden work, and spent ten years finishing the Room of Virtues in the monastery, depicting 24 female virtues in wooden panels on the wall.

The monastery also has a school with 250 pupils (roughly one third living in boarding houses) divided into ten different classes.

The Great Baroque Hall, used mainly for various musical events

Hallway on third floor

Guest Hall – guests are not allowed to have meals together with the monks

Monastery garden

The beautiful monastery church in its bright colors is currently under restoration and will be opened again to the public at the end of March.


Walks in Engelberg
Today is the forth day of steady raining and now I’m seriously getting bored beyond belief. Only a couple of ski lifts were open, but all the top ones where the snow was likely to be found were closed again today due to strong winds. I didn’t even bother going to the ski-rental shop or buying a day pass for the lift with the outlook of skiing in mud.

After walking round Engelberg ten times (doesn’t take that long), snapping a few rain-saddened photos and visiting just about every café there is, I am now on the verge of giving up on the idea of skiing on this trip. There are only two things I can do now: party like crazy at one of the local bars or leave this rain-pit. If nothing drastic happens to the weather and it starts snowing heavily tomorrow, I will have to do something else over the weekend.

Salsafestival Switzerland

I spent this past weekend in Zurich in Switzerland for my first salsa congress this year. The Salsafestival Switzerland is an excellent congress, well-organized with quick and smooth ticket pick-up and with a good line-up of performers and instructors. This congress is quite big – a rough guess is that about 700-1000 people attended the Kongresshaus every night – but the atmosphere is very friendly, the bar staff attentive and cloak-room staff pretty quick.

I had been home with a terrible cold and light fever the days before the congress, so I was not exactly in best form for the congress, but it was good to sweat it out on the dance floor. It was a true pleasure to meet some of my congress friends again: Jonas and Sarah (his dance partner) from Bern - the former just came back from traveling in South America for five months making everyone visiting his blog envious thanks to fantastic photographs of nature and the locals he met, and the latter is running a ballroom dance school in Bern; Bernard from Holland; Hamidine from Nice; Abdellah from Marseille; and Lautaro (or “Latte” as we call him in Sweden) who is from Stockholm but has lived in Zurich for the past few years leading a dance school in the outskirts of Zurich with his dance partner Candice.

Jonas and his dance partner Sarah

On Friday night there was a very good band, Mercado Negro, playing. The main party lasted until about 3:00 am and then roughly 100 of the most salsa fanatic people moved into the adjoined bar/club “Le Bal” on the ground floor of the Kongresshaus for the after party. I was pretty beat so I didn’t stay more than an hour or an hour and a half.

I was supposed to attend workshops on Saturday but due to my cold, I desperately needed a long sleep-in to be able to enjoy the social dancing at night. The rest of the weekend I actually felt a lot better and regained some of my usual energy on the dance floor, but the coughing lasted. I took a walk from my hotel – Rex Hotel, a simple but decent hotel on Weinbergstrasse – to the Zurich center and the river Limmat to get some fresh air and do a little bit of shopping. All of a sudden the skies opened and it started raining heavily so I hopped into the nearest café, which happened to be the Central Bar & Café, for some soup and a glass of wine while I waited for it to stop raining.

Saturday night I had dinner with Jonas, Sarah and a couple of their really nice friends, Christoph and Jenny. We arrived at the Kongresshaus in time to see most of the excellent performances by big names like Johnny Vasquez and his group from Los Angeles, Tropical Gem from Milan, and Yamulee Dance Company from New York. But as usual, I was eager to start dancing myself, so I got a little impatient. The DJ’s played really good music so I had a good dance night until 4:00 am when the after party started. After an hour of reggaeton – not my favorite – Jonas, Sarah and I gave up and left.

I slept late on Sunday and then walked around in Zurich taking photos. It was quite cold but after a couple of hours the sun peaked through the clouds and it turned into a quite beautiful afternoon. I had thai food from a street stand and walked over to the picturesque Old Town. There was some sort of festival or carnival going on so the streets were filled with confetti and people in colorful costumes. Children were using the silver-colored street-blocking plastic bands for pulling competitions. On the square in front of the Fraumünster Church there was a beer tent and marching bands were gathered for festivities.

You’ll find a selection of pictures from my photo excursion below.

Grossmünster

Old Town

In the afternoon, I met Bernard and some Dutch friends for some hot chocolate at Starbucks and then we all walked back to the Old Town and had a look at the view over Limmat and the rest of Zurich and the surrounding Alps.

Dutch friends with Zurich in background

Storchen-Gasse

View from the Old Town

Sonder, Mimmis & Bernard

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant across the street from the Central Station and then I headed back to my hotel to get ready for the Sunday night salsa party at the Kongresshaus. I arrived at midnight in a new dress I had bought (Zurich is really good for shopping) with only an hour to go before the after party. The latter fortunately turned out to be a lot of fun with high energy levels from the remaining salsa congress participants, a lot of fast mambo, a mix of bachata, good old disco, hip-hop and R&B music. I was bold enough to invite Johnny Vasquez to dance for the first time and found him nicely supportive and I wished the song had not been so short. Some people gave an improvised hip-hop dance battle on the floor with other congress guests cheering. I had a great time and stayed until the party ended after 5 in the morning.



Filled with new energy from all the dancing but also tired and slightly dehydrated, I left Zurich with a sense of having made the most of it for a short and intense weekend.

PS. Those who are interested in getting a glimpse of the congress glamour, check out the below links for professional photos of the shows and parties:

• Friday at the congress
• Saturday at the congress
• Sunday at the congress

I actually found one of myself and Bernard on the dance floor, copyright Salsapictures.ch: