Slow Train to Switzerland

by Diccon Bewes

  For all their reputation for being a bit cold and distant, the Swiss really can be a friendly bunch sometimes. Of course, with the bus drivers it might be seen as courteous formality, although without the superficiality you might find in other cultures. They’re not about to show you photos of their grandson or ask about your holidays, but they will be welcoming up to a point, and usually bid you goodbye as you leave their vehicle. It’s one of the things I love about riding in the yellow Postbuses that criss-cross the country. That and the three-tone horn, which gets a lot of use on twisty mountain roads. The notes, taken from Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”, were first used in 1923 but quickly became a Swiss institution.

  On our bus ride up from Leuk to Leukerbad (Bad means “bath” in German), I begin to think we won’t hear the horn at all. The problem isn’t the road, which is suitably winding and steep, but that the driver can see round almost every bend, so doesn’t need to give a burst of Tell as a warning. Instead we have two little girls counting the corners as we swing round them, and this long bus really does swing round the bends, making me glad to be sitting down at the front and not throwing up at the back. The first few corners are no problem for the girls, as they can quite easily manage drü, vier, füüf (three, four, five in their Bernese dialect), but when they reach the thirties they get a little lost. The old lady sitting across the aisle from us gives me a knowing smile when they jump from sächsedriissg straight to nüünedriissg (36 to 39). By the time they get to the sixties, I don’t think anyone’s sure what number they’re really at, particularly not them.

  Their melodic chanting fades into the background as I enjoy the view. This must be one of the most scenic bus rides in Switzerland. We leave the valley behind, watching the hills of Sion and braided riverbed retreat into the hazy distance, and climb up through dark forests and over crashing water. The road hugs the side of the Dala gorge, zigzagging its way up so that we have rock on one side of the bus and a precipice on the other, only to switch round at the next hairpin. A graceful arched bridge to the other side of the gorge isn’t wide enough for a bus and anything else, so an oncoming car wisely decides to reverse slowly off it to let us pass, though only after our driver blasts his horn (at last!). Wisps of mist and cloud drift across the road, offering fleeting glimpses of stone way above our heads. A few locals get on and off the packed bus (so full that a second bus had to be organised and is somewhere behind us), but most people stay on for Leukerbad. And our first sight of it duly appears through a cleft in the cliffs, a flash of grassy meadows and wooden chalets that disappears again almost immediately behind a protruding flank of rock.

  Miss Jemima was equally amazed by the (then still relatively new) road – or, as she described it, “another example of Swiss engineering prowess” in “one of the finest gorges in Switzerland”, where at some points “the rocks on either side of the ravine seem almost to embrace”. It must have been quite a hair-raising experience to travel this switchback road in a horse and carriage, swinging out close to the edge at every turn. Perhaps that’s one reason an electric railway was built up the gorge in 1915. By the mid-1960s Leukerbad had become so popular that the slow train could no longer cope with the numbers – almost 134,000 passengers in 1966 – and the road couldn’t be upgraded with the train line in the way. So the railway was dismantled in 1967 and a bigger, better road created to deal with the annual influx.

  As we round the final bend (number 134, according the two girls who have counted themselves to a standstill), Leukerbad appears in its entirety. The village itself is attractive enough, with the usual Swiss mix of wood and concrete dotted across the slopes, but the setting makes it spectacular. The gorge ends in a cul-desac, a towering semi-circular wall of rock that almost encircles Leukerbad and casts a long shadow over it morning and evening. But the sheer mountain wall of the Gemmi is not actually a dead end: there is a cable car and, almost unbelievably, a hiking path up to the top. It isn’t for mountain goats and Spiderman, but a regular path, albeit a seriously vertiginous one.

  This was once the quickest and shortest route from Valais into Canton Bern – it was either walk up over here or go the long way round via Lake Geneva, a 200-mile diversion. That, and not the famous hot springs, was the principal reason our first tourists came this way. There was no real alternative until 1913, when the Lötschberg rail tunnel opened further up the Rhone valley.

  It takes 40 years for the rain that falls on the surrounding mountains to percolate through the rock and bubble up in Leukerbad. During its long journey it doesn’t gather any speed but ends up piping hot: 51 °C, to be precise. Too much for even a hot bath, so the water is used to heat normal shower water (and keep the car park snow free in winter via underfloor pipes) before flowing into the 30 spa pools in the village. There it’s a relaxing 36 to 40 °C, perfect for therapy of one kind or another. Visitors have been coming up here to soak since Roman times, but it was really only in 1501 that spa tourism took off, thanks to Cardinal Schiner from Sion. He transformed Leukerbad into an international hot spot, with proper baths and hostelries for guests from across Europe. He went on almost to become Pope and died of the plague in Rome; perhaps he should have stayed at home.

  Leukerbad has been a popular spa resort for over 500 years

  For centuries, Leukerbad was essentially a summertime resort. Reaching it in winter was no mean feat and avalanches periodically swept through the village. The one on 17 January 1719, when 53 people died and barely a building remained standing, is still commemorated on that date every year. Nevertheless, avalanche-protection ditches were built, as was the precarious path up the cliff to Gemmi; oddly enough it was constructed by Austrian workers from the Tyrol, not the Swiss. And still the bathers kept on coming in their thousands. Long before Zermatt was really on the tourist map, Leukerbad had large hotels to cater for its visitors, most of whom stayed for three weeks.

  With so many wanting to take the waters, in 1825 it was necessary to introduce strict bathing regulations. For example, those entering the baths not wearing the right apparel (a long, loose shirt of suitable material) were fined two francs, as was anyone who entered a changing cabin when someone else was in there. Men and women sat in separate baths, and it was forbidden “to splash others, to spit in the water, to whistle or smoke, to sing, to have religious discussions, to conduct immodest activities or argue”. In other words, people had to sit still, be silent and soak – for hours, day after day. The usual “cure” was an hour on the first day, two hours on the second, three on the third, until the patient was sitting in hot water for eight to ten hours a day for three weeks, along with up to 20 other people. They must all have looked like giant prunes.

  By the time Miss Jemima came along, things had changed. Modesty still applied to the apparel, but mixed bathing had become the norm. Not that she would have gone into the baths even if they had been segregated by sex. That was something for heathens and foreigners, although she couldn’t resist going to take a peek:

  “There are two bath-houses, each containing four large tanks and a gallery where the friends of the bathers can pass through and converse with them whilst in this amphibious state. The patient is often doomed to sit four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon. Further to relieve the monotony of such an existence the ladies and gentlemen bathe in common and may be seen sitting around the bath, engaged in the various pursuits compatible with their adopted element.”

  Her fascination got the better of her again the next day:

  “Accordingly in the morning we rose at five o’clock and already saw the bathers, in semi-toilette, crossing to the baths, to commence their day’s soak. We followed them, not as bathers but as observers. It was difficult to shake off the feeling that we were indulging in an excess of curiosity, and still more difficult to maintain a sobriety consistent with good manners.”

  Manners went out the steamy window, probably at the same time Miss Jemima was pressing her nose up against it, and the whole group went insi
de to stare at the unnatural goings-on. For them it was a human zoo:

  “She was taking her next meal up to her shoulders in water; on a wooden tray was placed a tiny coffee-pot, a pat of butter and slices of bread. We could discern the seat or benches running round the bath on which were seated persons in dark blue or dark red gowns. A moustached gentleman, who would consider himself in the prime of life, was cutting leather work on his floating table, other bathers were preparing for a game at draughts, whilst one portly round-shouldered party of sixty summers was executing a roving commission across the water to salute some ladies in the opposite corner. Not being very careful of others, in his transit he received as fair a share of splashing from various mischievous maids en route. Judging from the array of work-baskets on the ledge of the bath, the ladies dry their hands for knitting and crochet, though we saw nothing accomplished in this line.”

  Mr William was more succinct, simply writing, “It is a most ridiculous sight.” It couldn’t be more different today. For one thing, although there is a large rehabilitation clinic, most people are there to relax rather than recuperate. Now it’s all about wellness not illness, indulgence not endurance. The two principal public baths are pleasure palaces where skiers and walkers come to soothe aching limbs and the rest of us simply slide into the hot water and forget about the world. We only have time for one session of hedonism, so we have to choose our bath. The larger Bürgerbad (recently rechristened Leukerbad Therme to try to add some style) puts the emphasis on family fun, with giant water slides alongside the outdoor pools and bubble baths. Its style is so 1980s that I’d feel underdressed in swimming shorts instead of a leotard and leggings. So we plump for the smaller, newer and slightly more elegant Alpentherme, where the average age is older than the water we are stewing in – apart from one toddler who’s quietly enjoying his inflatable armchair-cum-lifejacket. One of the indoor pools is so hot I feel like a lobster being slowly cooked to death without noticing and my glasses keep steaming up. So I paddle outside and instantly promote the Alpentherme into my Top Ten of public spas.

  Lying neck deep in hot water on a bed of bubbles and looking up at the mighty cliffs, I realise why people travelled across Europe for centuries to do exactly this. It’s not necessarily the water, which can be found in many natural spas, but the location, 1411m above sea level and surrounded by natural splendour. It helps as well that every bather is clad in swimwear, unlike one spa I visited in Stuttgart where everyone had to be naked. No choice and no segregation. That was revealing, to say the least. I’m not advocating a return to Victorian prudery and long shirts, but there’s only so much sagging, wobbling, unwrapped flesh I can sit beside.

  This spa does indeed have a section where swimsuits are swapped for birthday suits, but I decide that today isn’t the day for saunas and steam rooms. Instead, we opt for the full-on wellness experience and book a massage each. Wellness is one of those “English” words the Swiss love to use even though it’s not exactly in common use by most English speakers. Where they say wellness hotel or wellness weekend, we would say “spa”, although in America wellness can take on a medical sense. Oddly enough, it encompasses both meanings for me today: after the pleasure of the pools, the pain of the massage. It isn’t the candles-and-incense experience I was expecting but something much more medicinal. To make things worse, the masseur is wearing what appears to be hospital scrubs and we’re in a large, echoey room divided into long cubicles, rather like a hospital ward. Perhaps these solid beds were once mortuary slabs in a former life.

  Miss Jemima and her companions stayed at the Hôtel des Frères Brunner, but alas, the Brunner Brothers are no longer around. Maybe it was their food that killed the business, although hopefully not the customers. Here is our heroine’s description of their “repast of seven courses”:

  “The soup was decidedly watery – the slices of beef with its border of fried potatoes – starved – the mountain trout had exchanged its natural element for one of oil. The fowl and rice were passée. Slices of chamois, alias chèvre, were served in a vinegared gravy and were evidently an important and popular course. But we never loved the dish, and here we rejected it to the contemptuous astonishment of the waiter, who with a pity for our ignorance of its superior merits, entreatingly asked ‘N’aimez vous pas le chamois?’ … Other novelties were peas in the pod and an ice that exactly resembled half-pounds of butter.”

  As hard as we try, we cannot find vinegared chamois on any menu. The disappointment is crushing, so we comfort ourselves with a plate of Rösti; it seems only fitting now we have crossed the Graben. But we do at least uncover the modern incarnation of the Frères Brunners. Their hotel was knocked down in 1982 and re-emerged as the Hotel Grichting & Badnerhof, run by Angela and Klaus Bauer-Grichting. She comes from a family of hoteliers (three sisters who married three chefs and run a hotel each) and for the anniversary of that night once served a modern version of that infamous dinner, with lamb instead of chamois. It was a feast to remember.

  Chatting to the owner, it’s clear that in the grand scheme of things Cook wasn’t important to Leukerbad. Admittedly the man himself didn’t come here on that first tour, which by then was Self-Conducted (only without an audioguide), but it’s more that a group of eight British travellers who stayed one night was a mere drop in the ocean. Not even that, given that the springs pump out the water at the rate of 1400 litres a minute. Leukerbad was a resort long before Cook was born and the British have never been its main market. Today, 75 per cent of visitors are Swiss and the new five-star hotel being planned by Kempinski, with a thermal jacuzzi on every balcony, is most likely aimed at them, or at Russians in Versace swimsuits.

  The A-framed building in the centre of Leukerbad is the Hôtel des Frères Brunner, where the Junior United Alpine Club stayed

  Any British visitors who do come might be tempted to stay in the most English-sounding hotel in town: the Derby. It is, however, English in name only and very Swiss in nature, with bedrooms completely decked out in wood and menus that include half the butcher’s shop. The strange thing is that there are Hotel Derbys dotted all over Switzerland and no one can agree why. One manager told me it was because the original owners were Anglophiles and loved visiting Derby; another because when the Earl of Derby was on his Grand Tour, every place he stayed renamed the hotel after him (it beats a blue plaque with “Derby slept here”, I suppose); in this case, the owner explained that his predecessor was a football fan and in Switzerland, as in Britain, a match between two local teams is a Derby (with a capital D and pronounced the American way, with an -er not an -ar). As for the numerous Hotel Bristols (including one in Leukerbad), I won’t go into any theories at all.

  Leukerbad has never been a typical Valais town. It exists purely for one reason, tourism, albeit a very specific, water-based sort. Without the hot springs, visitors would simply have passed through on their way to or from the Gemmi Pass; once the rail tunnel was built, even that passing trade would have vanished. This town of 1500 people survives (and thrives) now thanks to the regular influx of tourists; without them the only jobs left would be the few farmers who make a living from the fields. Speaking to David Kestens, the marketing manager of the tourist office, it’s clear that the locals know how much depends on keeping the tourists happy. He says:

  We go into the schools and talk to the kids about the economy in the town and the role that tourists play. When some children say, “But my father works in a shop, or is a doctor, or a bus driver,” we explain that without tourism to pay the bills none of those jobs would exist. The town would die.

  The irony is that Leukerbad did almost die in the 1990s. An excess of optimism in the 1980s resulted in the new public baths along with a sports hall, bus station and many other tourist projects, all financed on credit. The cards eventually came tumbling down and in 1998 Leukerbad was declared bankrupt, with 340 million francs of debt, and the receivers were called in; until 2004, the town was under the direct financial control of the canton. This
wasn’t all down to overexcitement – the town president went to jail for fraud – but it was a lesson in not counting your chickens, or your tourists. And that in a place with 500 years’ experience of tourism. Even the naturally cautious Swiss can make mistakes with money – and with architecture. As David Kestens points out, “The boom years in Leukerbad were great as long as you don’t look at some of the things they built, such as the clinic. At least we now build things in keeping with the town, in chalet-style.” It’s never too late to look to the future by learning from the past.

  Perhaps just as ironic is the fact that after being so dismissive of it, the British soon got used to the idea of wellness, even if they have never used the word. Far from being “treated with utter neglect”, in the late nineteenth century Alpine cures became the trendy way to treat all manner of ailments. This didn’t necessarily incorporate bathing, which still involved an uncomfortable degree of nudity and familiarity between the sexes, or even some of the weirder cures Miss Jemima described:

  “We heard too, of other ‘cures’ adopted by the Swiss. There is the ‘grape cure’ near Vevey, where a patient eats six pounds of white grapes in the forenoon, and near Neuchâtel there is the ‘curd whey’ establishment where the prescribed diet is one of milk, left after the cheese has been made.”

  Instead of taking the waters, or anything more exotic, the British started taking the air. It was clean, fresh mountain air that was dry and smog free, perfect for those suffering from tuberculosis, emphysema, bronchitis and all manner of lung disorders. For late Victorian Britons, whose air was increasingly thick and dirty, being able to escape to the sunny Alps for weeks or months of treatment must have been a godsend, if not a lifeline. High Alpine villages reinvented themselves as health resorts and quickly expanded thanks to all the fresh-air visitors and patients from the industrial cities of Britain, Germany, France and beyond.