THE VIEW from my bedroom window across the village to the mountains beyond can
hardly have changed for a hundred years, since Thomas Mann began The Magic
Mountain, set in Davos, the neighbouring commune.
All it needed was a train to bring the patients to the sanatorium... and, oh
yes, suddenly there was a train - a red one at that - going through the fir
trees. Here in Klosters, I looked over the lights of the distant church, the
houses and to the mountains behind and, above them, the stars of the cold,
clear night.
The outlook could not have been more promising. We had been warned that the
temperature might be as low as minus 15C , but if you keep moving and don't
get left hanging on a chairlift, that's quite tolerable, especially in
modern ski clothes. The heavy snowfalls of early December had given
Switzerland the best start to the season that anyone could remember and we
arranged to get started early in the morning.
The strange thing is that the British have fallen out of love with
Switzerland, and take only five per cent of their skiing holidays there. It
is hard to see why, when you consider that between them the two countries
pretty much invented modern skiing. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made the first
Alpine ski tour from Davos in 1894; Sir Henry Lunn organised the first
package tours to Adelboden in 1903, and the modern slalom was invented by
his son Arnold in Mürren in 1922.
In the second half of the last century, St Moritz was a name that evoked
glamour of an almost proverbial kind, while Ian Fleming took the name Piz
Gloria from a revolving restaurant at the top of the Schilthorn in Mürren as
that of Blofeld's eyrie in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Now British holidaymakers look elsewhere. The French Trois Vallées have much
larger ski areas and many Austrian resorts are better geared to the other
British national winter sport, binge drinking. There's perhaps a feeling
that the Swiss don't take ski-ing holidays quite seriously enough; they see
the sport as just a pleasant pastime and are outdone at food by the French,
at shopping by the Italians and at partying by the Austrians.
The British may be missing a trick here. Klosters gave us as good a skiing
holiday as anyone in our party of 12 has ever had. Some of this, admittedly,
was to do with the chalet itself, Chesa Falcun, set high above the village
and accessible only by four-wheel drive. It had only just been built, and we
were the first guests.
Although the exterior was of traditional design, indoors it had a lift to
whisk you between its four stone-clad floors, a resident cook, a driver,
manager and two other staff. There seemed no end to the extent of the
service. As my daughter said, “I've got this great new way of carrying my
skis, but I never get to use it because Andy from the chalet always carries
them for me.”
It wasn't just the unaccustomed swank of our domestic life, however, that made
Klosters such a success. The village may not have the old-fashioned charm of
Mürren in the Bernese Oberland, where I have spent the past three New Year's
Eves, but it has a magnificent setting, ringed by mountains, and far better
skiing.
The main area, the Parsenn, crosses over to Davos and links into miles of
regular Alpine pistes.The best part is the summit, where, at almost 3,000m,
you can look down on the ring of mountain tops beneath you, eat the boiling
tomato soup at Bruhin's blizzard-lashed restaurant and rewarm your legs with
a steep little black run before linking in to the long trail home.
I liked the Madrisa on the other side of town just as much. It's smaller, but
it has the sun all day and the runs have more character, especially the
charming riverside piste back into the village. We were lucky enough to be
shown around by Tommy, the best ski guide I've ever come across (you can
find him care of Davos Dreams).
It was off-piste with Tommy on Madrisa that my sister-in-law procured herself
a 50mph snowdrift facial, while Amit, the fearless Times photographer, gave
a really searching examination to the waterproof properties of his digital
Leica.
I previously knew nothing of Klosters, except that the Prince of Wales goes
there with his sons. The village is dominated by a four-platform railway
station, which connects to Zurich and on to Davos. The rest is functional
rather than beguiling: ski hire shops, banks, a jeweller, a large Co-op.
The big hotel Vereina dominates one end of the village, though the Chesa
Grischuna offers charm on a smaller scale with an archetypal Alpine dining
room (wood, thick embroidered linen, dirndls, stifling heat) and a cute
cellar bar. I half expected noisy clubs for Prince Harry and his pals, but
it all seemed rather sedate.
If other Brits prefer the heaving bars of Saalbach and Sauze d'Oulx, that's
fine by me: I'll take Switzerland. I have only two quibbles with the
country. The first is that I had always understood that it was bilingual,
but no one ever seems to speak French, only German; in fact, they look
affronted if you begin “Bonjour...” The second problem is the food, which is
plain to the point of ugliness.
Klosters offered us a way round this, however. James, the Chesa Falcun chef,
cooked anything you asked for, including sea bass, salads, Chinese
stir-fried beef, grilled lamb and roast turkey. While hiring such a resident
pro is beyond the regular means of most of us, the Co-op sells almost any
fresh food you can think of, so there's no need for every evening to be a
stodge endurance test.
One of the other great features of the chalet was an outdoor heated tub with
powerful jets and whirlpool bath effects. Our party included six children,
and they so enjoyed being immersed in hot, bubbling waves while the
temperature in the air about them fell to minus ten degrees that they
started asking to come down the mountain soon after lunch.
I preferred the steam room with its variety of baffling control buttons and a
shower that came at you from all sides, like a carwash. In his attempt to
boost the steam a little, my brother told me he'd administered himself an
ice-cold enema, but he's never been very technically minded.
And afterwards - cleaned, waxed and wheel-washed - it was up to the top floor
and that inspiring night view of mountains and stars, seen through
uncurtained floor-to-ceiling windows with a log fire burning. A Swiss
Christmas at the Chesa Falcun was the best one I've had since I rumbled
Santa back in the great English freeze of '62.
NEED TO KNOW
Descent International (020-7384 3854, www.descent.co.uk)
offers a week at Chesa Falcun in Klosters, from £1,333pp, based on 12
sharing. The price includes chalet-board and gourmet chef, house wines and
champagne, chalet manager, four-wheel-drive and chauffeur. The price does
not include flights or transfers from Zurich airport, which can be arranged.
Ski guide Davos Dreams (www.davosdreams.com).
