March 22, 2007: Switzerland.

Three weeks after returning from Switzerland, I finally have time to post the pictures and do a little write-up.

Basically, Oleg and I visited Mike for what was supposed to be a week of skiing. However, this winter in Europe is apparently pretty horrible snow-wise, so the trip turned out to be a skiing-partying-sightseeing trip.

We spent all week in the French part of Switzerland, arriving to Geneva, spending a couple evenings in Mike's apartment in Lausanne, and the rest in a chalet near an alpine village named Nendaz, part of the 4 Vallées ski resort.

Lausanne

Lausanne turned out to be a nice cozy little town with some amazing views of Lake Geneva and the Alps. Walking around it I couldn't stop thinking that it was nowhere as crowded as I would expect a town of that size to be. Well, I guess with the total population of the country being 7 million, that's not much of a surprise.

A few international organizations are located in Lausanne, of which the most notable (to me) is the International Olympic Committee. They have a nice Olympic Park in there (which we walked around), complete with an Olympic Museum (which we, unfortunately, didn't have time to visit).

And yeah, it's a European town — with some narrow streets, working public transportation and beautiful architecture (kind of like Québec City, I thought :-) ).

Also, somewhat surprisingly to me, Switzerland looked reasonably diverse (thanks to tourism and those countless international organizations, I guess). An interesting piece of statistics is that in Geneva, about 55% of the population hold a foreign passport. Also, about 38% of the Geneva population are originally from outside of Switzerland.

Skiing

With the amount of propaganda the European skiing industry and the various airlines put into the skiing media, the short conclusion is that the Alps are severely overrated. That's not to say they are bad, though.

First, 4 Vallées is plain huge. I don't know what the largest North American ski area is... Vail? Whistler? I've never been to either, but looking at the stats, I believe that size-wise they don't come even close to 4 Vallées. Let's put it this way: last year, the Ski Magazine said something to the effect of "Whistler numbers look like typos: 33 lifts..." Well, how's 92 lifts for a typo? 4 Vallées is a bunch of ski areas which happen to be interconnected — that is, you can get from one to another using lifts or skis. And you can buy one very reasonably priced ticket that covers the whole thing. Nice.

Second, it's high up in the mountains. The highest point (named Mont-Fort) is at 3800 meters (roughly 12500 feet). Combined with the size, that means you don't need a morning snowfall to find untracked powder in the afternoon...which, as I found out looking at Mike, would do wonders to your deep-powder skiing :-)

Third, it's the views. Don't get me wrong, I still clearly remember Crested Butte, which is at about the same altitude. The views there were amazing, but the difference is the elevation of the lowest point you can see from up top (in clear weather, that is :-) ). In Crested Butte the base is at around 9100 feet (roughly 2800 meters), and that's about as low as it gets around there. In 4 Vallées, you can pretty much see down to about 500 meters (roughly 1600 feet) above the sea level. That's 3300 vertical meters (10800 feet)!

So, why is it overrated then? Well, when the snow sucks, which it does after it rains long enough, you turn your attention to the little details, such as lifts, food, grooming, how crowded the slopes are and what you can actually do if they close a key connecting lift due to an avalanche danger. And here, my theory is, the Swiss population being 7 million is the key factor, in two ways: first, they almost all ski, and if you add the damn foreigners such as us, that's already more business than they can handle; second, each of the 7 million has a theoretic maximum of approximately 7 million other people competing for their job, whereas here it is that times 42. As a result, here they shovel snow unto the lift loading/unloading areas, and there they don't, to the point that you can unload unto a plain, dry concrete (that happened to us). Here the lift lines are organized, polite and managed, there it is "who pushes harder and steps on the others' skis faster". I saw groomers there, but every marked run was essentially a bump run (I guess that contributes to the relatively low number of snowboarders on the slopes, though :-) ). And the food...well, it can probably compete with most of the U.S., but not with Québec.

Before I get to the pictures, here's one other good thing: when the snow sucks, you can still find stuff to do, and I'm not talking about après-ski partying. Switzerland has been there in the middle of Europe for a long time, so it has plenty of beautiful castles and museums, plus the surrounding mountains and lakes provide for beautiful views. I'm actually fully intent on returning there for another visit.