The Paternal Optimist

The Boy Wonder Travels In Style

The PO spent an hour this afternoon with a very nice man from the Human Resources department of the company that, amongst other things, puts food on his plate and pays to keep the BW at Hogwarts, discussing the terms of the PO's imminent expatriation to the Far East.  The deal on offer was a standard one, though no less satisfactory for that. However, putting his interpersonal skills to good use, the PO did manage to negotiate one special, additional benefit not generally included in the standard package : a return air ticket from London to Singapore, Business Class, every year for the duration of his stay, in the name of the Boy Wonder.

Seven Days In The Valais

Wednesday
The PO arrives at Cointrin airport on time to discover that the BW's flight arrived early. Fortunately, he has only been waiting for five minutes, in the company of a nice man from Swiss Air Lines.
The drive to Zermatt is uneventful and speed camera flash-free, to the accompaniment of The Kooks, Camille and The Arctic Monkeys.
At Täsch station, the PO fails to lose his parking ticket before leaving the car park.
On arrival at the Zermatterhof, the PO and the BW enjoy a Buck's Fizz and admire the view of the Matterhorn from the balcony of their room before adjourning for dinner and an early night.

Thursday
A leisurely breakfast at nine is followed by the morning's chores : buying ski passes; waiting for twenty minutes behind a comically linguistically challenged Russian family before finally booking ski and snowboard lessons from the delightful Jennifer, who, alas does not give lessons; hiring skis and boots for the BW.
The weather is variable - grey, low-hanging cloud, occasional light snow falling, occasional sunny breaks - and the snow conditions just about OK - nice on top, skimpy below.
The PO and BW find their snow feet in the course of a couple of long but not too challenging runs, punctuated by a rustic lunch of soup, bread, cheese, sausage and a phone call to the Principal and the Recluse who are laving the next day for a holiday in Mexico.
On their return to the hotel, the pattern for the next few days is set : the PO leaves the BW to snooze in the room, while he goes down for a jacuzzi and sauna; when he gets back, suitably relaxed, they settle down to watch three episodes of The Simpsons (series 5) on the BW's portable DVD player; the day is then rounded off with an excellent dinner in the hotel restaurant... and an early night.

Friday
The PO and BW wake up at 7h45 to find it snowing. The PO consults the booking receipt and confirms that the instructors of the Zermatt Ski and Snowboard School "operate in all weather conditions".
By the time they arrive at the meeting-point on the slopes, the skies have cleared and there is four or six inches of perfect powder on the pistes. Keen to loosen up, they decide to get in a quick run before their lessons start. The BW, despite never having seen snow like this, survives pluckily and even gets involved in a battle of wills with the driver of the snowplough preparing the pistes for the day.
The BW's instructor is Franziskus. The PO's is Crazy Harry.
Three hours later, the PO is dead on his feet, having been given an intensive off-piste powder skiing lesson, and succeeding on one occasion on making seven turns, leaving one of those beautiful snaking traces in the snow behind him - before falling with all the charisma and elan for which he is known.
The BW returns from his lesson quietly confident.

Saturday
The conditions are greyer and colder.
Today, the PO is supposed to be having mogul training. Crazy Harry takes him to the top of the Stockhorn, watches him fall over within fifty metres and decides to refocus the day's class on basic skills. He works the PO to death once again.
Meanwhile, Franziskus takes the BW up to the top of the Stockhorn, and back down again - via a mogul run. The BW has officially been off-piste for the first time.

Sunday
Conditions are perfect again. It has snowed lightly overnight, and the skies are now clear and blue. The views of the Matterhorn are breathtaking.
The BW is supposed to have a lesson with Crazy Harry, while the PO is to spend the morning skiing at his own leisure. But Crazy Harry suggests that the PO come along too. And so the Dynamic Duo have a joint lesson. Crazy Harry lives up to his name by making them pretend to be airplanes, ski without poles, or twiddle them as they ski, like a pair of deranged idiots leading an invisible marching band down the slopes. Naturally, all of these exercises are good for one's balance.
In the course of the lesson, Crazy Harry reaches the conclusion that if you were to combine the BW - who skis too upright, and too stiffly - with the PO - who bends over too far and sticks out his backside too much - you'd have the perfect skier. The BW and the PO try, not entirely successfully, to take some pride in this judgment.
In the afternoon, while skiing back down the mountain, the PO accidentally takes the BW down the wrong piste. A few minutes later, theBW has officially completed his first black run.

Monday
Another beautiful day - all the more beautiful for the fact that the PO and the BW get to lie in bed for an extra hour : after three days of ski lessons at 9h30, today they have their first snowboarding lesson at the much less ungodly hour of midday. After breakfast they even get to spend an hour reading before heading out to hire the equipment.
The walk to the funicular that takes them up to the slopes is considerably more comfortable in soft snowboarding boots than in the rigid ski boots they have been wearing until now - both the PO and the BW have a good feeling about snowboarding.
It feels great to be learning something together - sure, yesterday they both followed Crazy Harry, but the PO has been skiing for several years, whereas this time he and the BW are genuinely starting out on an adventure together.
And who better to point them in the right direction than Matthias, the architect-photographer Roma supporting snowboard instructor ? With his gentle encouragement, his insistence that this should be fun - not to mention his tiny teddy-on-a-board, used to demonstrate the theory he is obliged to give us at the outset - he creates just the environment the BW and the PO need.
Of course, being father and son doesn't necessarily mean that they do things the same way - as it turns out, the BW is regular (in other words, he likes his left foot to be pointing forward), while the PO is goofy (his front foot is the right); and while the PO finds it easier sliding on the back edge (i.e. going forward, and seeing where he is going), the BW is mysteriously more comfortable sliding on the front edge - in other words, going backwards.
And funnily enough, their problems are precisely the ones they have in their skiing : the PO needs to stand up straighter, while the BW just needs to loosen up.

Tuesday
Yet another beautiful day in paradise. And the BW and PO so enjoyed their first snowboarding experience yesterday, they have decided to book a second lesson today.
The main objective of the day is to learn how to turn... and you can see how well the BW and PO managed in these short clips, kindly filmed (and saved on to a CD presented to his pupils later in the day) by Matthias. (Attention : they're all pretty hefty and take a minute or so each to load).

The BW sliding on the back side (i.e. forwards)
The PO sliding on the back side
The BW sliding on the front side (i.e. backwards)
The BW performing a basic turn
The PO performing a basic turn

Oh, and for those of you who find the pratfalls of others amusing... here's a clip of the PO falling over. Who said the PO couldn't laugh at himself ?

Wednesday
Today was to have been a day for exploring some of the areas of the Zermatt station the BW has yet to see. However, waking to snow and high wind, the PO and BW quickly realise that their activities today are likely to be limited. And so it turns out : after a late start, they ride the cable car up to Hohtälli, where they are told that the pistes there are closed due to the elevated avalanche risk. As if to reinforce the point, a fellow skier points cheerily to a spot below the cable car and informs the PO that three people have died there so far this year.
The PO and the BW make an executive decision : they ride to the hotel at Gornergrat (3100 metres), eat an excellent lunch, and then browse in the shops (picking up a genuine Swiss Army Knife for the BW's imminent 13th birthday) before slowly meandering back down to the village. It's a low key end to what has been a fabulous week, but they have been truly blessed throughout their stay - and the PO even manages to snap some footage of the BW skiing (unfortunately, this is a big file and takes an interminably long time to load - sorry) before the clouds descend and engulf the pistes.

Thursday
A final walk around the village, and then it is all over for this year. But somehow both the PO and the BW know they will be back in Zermatt again soon...

Searching For The Matterhorn

It may look as though the Boy Wonder and the Principal are just staring gormlessly into space in the picture above, but in fact they are engaging in the activity that dominated the three days we spent this week in Zermatt : peering through the clouds in the hope of catching a glimpse of the elusive Matterhorn, perhaps the most satisfyingly archetypically mountain-looking mountain in the world.

Unfortunately, the vague shape you can half make out in the middle of this picture is as good a look as we got - not counting the several hundred desperately kitsch paintings that seem to adorn every inch of wallspace in our otherwise wonderful hotel, the Zermatterhof.

In fact, the sun did not properly come out until ten minutes before we left yesterday afternoon, and virtually all of our skiing was done through the mist and in near blizzard conditions.

Not that this deterred the BW or the PO, of course. Oh, no. They are made of hardier stuff than that. And more to the point, they were both kitted out with brand new goggles, which had the effect of adding to their already impressive list of superpowers a new one : the ability to see even in the most treacherous of weather.

As you can see from the smiles in the pictures above, the lack of sun certainly did not detract from the enjoyment (though it does account for the total lack of "action" photos).

The PO gave himself a good physical workout on Friday morning while the BW was taking a lesson, and the rest of the time they spent skiing together - including successfully negotiating on Saturday morning an extremely long red run that took them from over 3300 metres down to under 2200 metres, a real achievement for the BW.

As for the Principal, in between making the most of the facilities in the hotel (swimming pool, jacuzzi, steam room, massages), she joined the PO and the BW for lunch each day in a restaurant up on the slopes - and in the hotel for breakfast and dinner, where the highlight was undoubtedly the Crêpes Suzettes cooked at the table by the maître d'hôte.

Unfortunately, like so many good things, the holiday came to an end all too soon. And though the blow was softened by our being taken to the station not in one of the electric taxis that hurtle almost silently, day and night, through Zermatt's tiny streets, but in the hotel's carriage (see the photo below), the Principal is already hatching a plan to return one summer, while the PO and the BW are considering making a return visit much, much sooner...

PS You'll find additional photos of the BW here, and a positively scary picture of the PO here.

Grand Hotel, Gromit !

Some of you may have noticed that the Boy Wonder Yearbook 2006 photo album is so far conspicuous only by its absence.

Well, with a bit of luck in a few day's time that will have changed : the Boy Wonder and the Principal arrive in Geneva tonight, and tomorrow we're off to picture-postcard-pretty Zermatt together for three days. A perfect place to take lots of pictures.

Naturally, the BW and the PO will be looking to spend as much time as possible on the slopes. As for the Principal, when she's not at her easel or soaking in the sun on a terrace, the PO rather suspects she may be found in the sauna, in the jacuzzi, or on the massage table in the magnificent hotel where we will be staying. And while obviously the PO will not be looking to capture the Principal in any less than flattering situation, he looks forward to sharing a photographic record of the trip with you all very soon.