"Gstaad – My Love"
the ubiquitous bumper sticker that everyone, who has ever visited, sticks on the back of their car
Copyright Vladimir Kagan, February 6, 2012
Snow, snow, snow… (better than rain, rain, rain as reported from Paris). Add to this mix a bevy of glamorous women and chic men and you have a glimpse of what this amazing resort town is all about. Davos may flaunt its financiers and VIP Diplomats; Gstaad thrives on glamour and glorious skiing.
My son Illya, who was cajoled into accompany his father on this trip, enjoyed the solitude of skiing in deep powder snow, often in pea-soup fog and zero visibility… Three days of solitude since sensible Gstaaders don’t go out in those conditions. But Illya’s easel and paintbrush are never far away and he captured some amazing snow scenes in oil on canvas. (I am not allowed to show you these, as he is adamant that they are still works in progress and won’t allow me to photograph them.)
Driving into Gstaad from any direction, you are overwhelmed by the sight of the majestic Palace Hotel, perched atop a hill, visible from miles away - the Hotel is ubiquitous to Gstaad.
The drawing is from a candy wrapper dating to the Hotel's origin in the 1913
This was the view from my bedroom balcony... Lots of snow, but the tops of the mountains were perpetually shrouded in clouds
While Illya was skiing, I was basking in the lap of luxury at the Palace Hotel and dining with friends and a plethora of European nobility including a Prince and Princess, a Baroness, a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) and an Italian Duke in their glamorous Chalets tucked into the hillside of often hard to reach single-lane treacherous mountain roads.
(discretion prevents me from showing photos)
The Kagan family are old Gstaad hands and have been going there winter and summer for over forty years… this visit was different: I can no longer ski.
The one remaining sport left for me was people watching… more precisely: “girl watching”. (Mind you, this was only in the interest of writing this Blog!) There was no dearth of beautiful women dressed to the hilt in fur, body-clinging jeans and boots. Boots are an absolute necessity for trekking about in ankle-deep snow. However, while in other alluring watering holes like New York, Palm Beach and Miami the women wear five-inch heals, in Gstaad heels are attached to knee-high boots. (I wanted to take photos for your edification, but was thwarted by my conservative family who prevented me from being so “gauche”.) Hence, I am reduced to drawing a cartoon.... a poor substitute for the photos I wanted to take!
The hip Jet-set enjoying cocktails at the Palace bar
Gstaad was the final stop of our three week long sojourn of Europe. However, Switzerland is more than Gstaad and we loved the drive from Geneva into the Berneser Oberland.
I always marvel at the impressive Architecture of the factories we pass on the road into the mountains
And once in the mountains, the tranquility of the snow scenes
Even Geneva was covered in a blanket of winter-wonderland snow.
This is the view from my bedroom window in Geneva
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I am writing this little farewell to Europe on a comfortable SWISS airliner flying at 36,000 feet back to the real world and the exciting design work that awaits me.
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