The American College of Switzerland Zoo. James E. Henderson
then five hundred. I stopped watching when the mountainside became a sheer granite wall that extended up into the clouds above and down to the fog that had hidden the stream. The road couldn’t be carved into the wall; instead it was supported by large pillars set into the granite face below. I had seen similar roads in the Rockies, but this structure had a concrete roof above it. Dad speculated that the roof was to keep rocks from landing on the road. The road was wider inside this structure, and at that moment God smiled on us because that is where we met the truck. We passed each other slowly, measuring rearview mirrors and door handles to be sure we wouldn’t loose anything. At least the truck driver wasn’t one of the rally drivers we had met before.
After a while, the valley actually appeared to start coming up to meet us, and we seemed to meet fewer cars. Perhaps we were just growing more accustomed to the shrill interruptions. The road was relatively level when we reached the turn to Leysin. We drove over a couple of rolling hills and saw the village in a little notch on the side of the mountain. Gingerbread-decorated houses and larger buildings were dotting the flat area, and the buildings spread up the slope of the mountain toward a shear escarpment that guarded the peaks above.
Leysin is two distinct villages; the lower where the college is, which includes a flat area and cow pastures, and the upper, which has the grand hotel, the bank, and many of the businesses. The two villages are divided by an area that is too steep to build on but has a dramatic staircase built into the face of the mountain. Since most of the buildings are built on the side of the mountain, all of the living space faces the mountains across the valley. The European practice of not numbering the ground floor in a building had not made any sense to me before Leysin. Here, the bottom floor was below ground level on the back, or uphill side; therefore, it might as well be the basement. In fact, in the steeper areas the first two to three floors of each building had no windows on the back because they were below ground level.
The views from each building were of the Alps. Across the valley was the peaked wall of the Chamossaire. This edifice would become a constant backdrop to all the events of the coming year. To the south were the jagged peaks of les Dents du Midi. These multiple, eternal peaks seemed to change minute by minute as the sun moved across the sky, week by week as the snow flowed down from their summits, and month by month as the earth’s orbit changed its angle relative to the sun. In the north up the valley, the steep flat pyramid-like side of the Eiger was just visible. Many climbers had lost their lives on that shear rock face.
The clouds also constantly changed the view. Often in the morning they would fill the valleys below the village and make the peaks appear to be floating volcanic islands. Later they would be sail wispily above us, making white paintbrush strokes on the intensely blue sky. Occasionally a small cloud would get hooked on the top of one of the peaks and would stay there like some jaunty white beret. The clouds would often come up from the valley as the sun hit them, climb the sides of the mountains, cross the little flat area in the lower village, and invade a hotel or dorm room through an open balcony door. Their cold chill would haunt your room until the interior heat warmed them and turned them invisible.
The sounds that carried to the rooms were not the shrill horns of the cars negotiating the winding road below. They were sounds of cows calling for attention, or the ringing of the bells that hung from their necks. Occasionally you would hear the call of a Cuckoo among the trees, although, try as I might, I never saw one and would often wonder if some Swiss youth was playing a great trick on the students and tourists.
We stayed at the Hotel Primevère, where I had stayed when I first discovered Leysin. It was directly across the street and down hill from the college. We parked in back and walked up the back side from the parking below. Each balcony had colorful gingerbread cutouts on the corners and across the top, and each railing had a window box of beautiful flowers. The owners had also planted flower gardens in the small open area below their hotel. Mom and my sister were thrilled! I knew they would be. Just the sight was enough to make them forget the terror of the trip up the mountain.
The owners were friendly. I only remembered meeting the wife during my last stay, but both she and her husband seemed to remember me, and they welcomed me back. It turned out that he was the chef for the evening meals and had a fair grasp of English. He said that we had talked about the journey up on the cog train. I didn’t remember him; but once I had seen this beautiful village my only focus had been getting accepted to the college.
In the hallway coming back from the bathroom to my room, I met the first ACS student, near the stairs. Donna was almost my height with blonde hair that was a little poofed at the sides and curled near her shoulders. Her eyes were strikingly blue, and her smile was infectious. She was round where girls should be and very friendly. Things were definitely looking up!
Mom found the second student. She came down the stairs from her room with a tall, lean, deeply tanned, bleached blonde football star. He must have been a real sweet-talker because mom was prancing like a schoolgirl. Mike Stallone was his name. That he was muscular was evident, even in his shirt; he had a chest that Donna would have been jealous of. Well, maybe not Donna, but half the girls in my stateside college. And his broad shoulders and powerful arms – they weren’t really big, like a weight lifter, just sharply defined. My years of gymnastics had never provided a look like that! With me Mike was more reserved. There was a hint of danger in his stance, and something in his eyes that said, “I am here, keep your distance.” His eyes were heavy-lidded and drooped to the side of his face. On a less carved and intimidating face, they might have given him the appearance of a sad puppy, but he was definitely a Doberman. He talked out of the side of his mouth in a slightly mumbled accent that had to come from Jersey or Philly, but you weren’t invited to ask. At mom’s request, he offered to show me around the school. Personally, I would have rather had Donna for an escort.
School wouldn’t start for a couple of days. I had to register for classes, get a room assigned, find a bank, and my family wanted to explore the area. Stallone, as I started calling him because Mike just didn’t seem adequate, was helpful. He took us on the long switchback road to the upper village, where I opened my Swiss bank account. If only my boarding school buddies could see me now! Stallone disappeared when we were in the bank, and we found our own way back down to the school. This involved a long daring trek down the flight of stairs built into the mountainside. I started to count but lost track after 150, and we weren’t half way down. The stairs wound down behind the college’s main building.
The main building was more utilitarian than many in the town. It had once been a hospital when this area was know as “The Magic Mountain” and tuberculosis patients came from all over the world to be cured by the sunlight and the clean mountain air. The patients’ rooms, complete with balconies on the southeast side of the building, had become the girls’ dorm. The lower floors also housed single teachers. The vertical monolith that made up the rest of the building held the classrooms, the dining area, and offices.
From the main building, someone pointed out the sophomore dorm. It was down a steep hill across the street from the school, perhaps a block east, a block south, and a block down, if blocks had anything to do with this village. The most direct route was a tiny trail no bigger than a cowpath that started at an opening in the fence across the street from the school just past or up the road from the Hotel Primevère. The trail wandered diagonally across and steeply down a grass-covered slope to the front of the dorm. The dorm, like every other building, was built into the mountainside. From this perspective I could imagine being able to step out a backside window on the European second floor to the grassy slope behind the dorm.
But we weren’t ready to head to the dorm yet. Instead, my family zigzagged our way down the roads through the lower village. Where the upper village had several businesses and larger stores, the lower one had small shops, churches, bars, and restaurants. The Patisserie Parisienne, a pastry and bread shop, was the first stop. We had almond croissants, small warm buns with a cross of frosting on top, which Millie called “hot cross buns,” and hot tea in clear glasses held in metal frames with a metal cup handle to keep the glass from burning your hand. Then we went past Le Nord, a large bar with foosball tables, called zim-zim in French Switzerland, and pinball machines. Le Nord would become a regular hangout. Then there were cheese and wine stores and a butcher. Like German villages, groceries were bought one day at a time from many different