Scaling the Alphubel Mountainpeak at Saas Fee, Switzerland (August 2016)

Whilst studying at European Graduate School in Switzerland, I got to spend the month of August in a charming little ski resort village. The village itself, named "Saas Fee," meaning "Site of the Fairies" after the now-extinct blue butterflies that used to be seen on the hills, has a population of 2000.  

Attending class, I would often daydream about the surroundings which are idyllic enough they could serve as illustration of a children's fairy tale. Twenty snowcapped mountaintops, 12,000-13,000 feet tall, surround the village itself, which even in the summer are sheathed with ice.  The village has a number of quaint coffeeshops, bakeries, ski stores, pubs and bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, and hotels.  It is frequented by travelers that include students, and athletes. I had the privilege of staying at Hotel Allalin, a group of buildings run by the Zurbriggen family.  My lodging was Everest. My classes were at the top of a hill lined with lavender, at a building called Steinmatte that had been exclusively built for the European Graduate School, whose seminars I was attending. There are cows grazing on the hills, and French-speaking, German-speaking, and Italian-speaking locals living and working throughout the village.  One of my favorite bars was Metrobar, which my student friends and I frequented, and was run by an Italian named Marinko. Many lively conversations took place there.

On my penultimate day in the Saas Fee village, I was able to scale the Alphubel peak with six friends up on the gondola.  There were six of us in one skilift car, watching the prehistoric moss below on the stones as we ascended nearer to the snowcapped peaks.  There was a tour guide, a local worker at a ski shop, on the peak, who took us down to a restaurant with local wine pressed from the rows of a vineyard we could see on a distant valley from the restaurant. There we sipped the wine, as the guide told us about local habits and customs, such as meeting nightly at Happy  Bar, and growing bushes of  medicinal herbs in families, which were regulated by local law.  He then led us down the rest of the way in hiking down the mountain, which took another hour. The hike took us down a sandy valley, and then through the forest, where we witnessed small burrowing holes where the local marmots, which resemble prairie dogs or groundhogs, live.  A bit further down, we passed a cabin from 1888 that had been renovated in 1956.  This cabin was partly demolished, and contained a bed and fireplace, with hay for livestock, presumably sheep, in the basement. There were pine trees overlooking this hill that when viewed against the sky, were scenic. As we got closer to the village ground, we approached some cattle grazing near a local fountain where it is customary for visitors to wade.  It is surrounded by the pine trees, and there is a stone drinking fountain nearby.