30 august 2023, Villars-sur-Ollon
We now come to the original purpose of this trip: a gathering of former students at Institut La Villan, a Swiss boarding school. My younger sister and I were here for the 1960-61 school year, and until now I have not been back.
A reunion was planned for 2020, and Dan and I had arranged for a full trip to Switzerland and France built around that plan. By spring of 2020, it was clear that the reunion would be postponed, maybe until 2021, but maybe longer. Early this year, enough of us — most importantly, the hard-working organizers — finally felt comfortable resetting the plan for 2023.
On Monday, Dan and I left Lausanne by train, passing vineyards rising steeply up from Lake Geneva, then heading up into the mountains. The school closed in 1967, and the building has been renovated for different uses in the past years. It’s in the village of Chesières, near the larger town of Villars (HQ for the reunion), above the larger town of Ollon. We left the train and switched to a bus for the final part of the trip. Though trains do make the steep climb up to Villars at 1253 meters elevation, I hoped that from the bus I could recognze the surroundings where I had lived for a year.
Well, that was 62 years ago, and although I think my memory is still mostly intact, those surroundings have changed and I didn‘t recognize much except the names of the nearby towns. I could try to claim that the chilly fog was hiding familiar landscapes, but no. All along the twisty, sometimes steep road, we saw new construction like this
. . . as well as zillions of similar homes built in the past 50+ years.
It was chilly and drizzly, when not socko fog, in Villars when we arrived. This is the view from our hotel room, located very conveniently opposite the train station. The grand old Villars Palace hotel is uphill beyond the station. I did recognize that.
The group gathered at the hotel that evening, and the reuniting and reminiscing began. Most of the ~30 people had attended the school the same year as my sister and I had, so there were very few new faces. More like about 30 old people.
I had seen some of them 10 years ago at a gathering in Maine, but there were a few whom I had not seen since the previous century. Catching up with them was a mental and emotional juggling act between remembering the good friend from my girlhood and talking to that same person as his/her current self.
Tuesday dawned still foggy, putting a small damper on our scheduled trip up to the ski area where we used to go almost every day in the winter. I was very happy to see that the area is still served by a cog-wheel train. The cars have changed a lot (for the better), but the propulsion is still the same. So Swiss, so charming.
In the winter, Bretaye is an active ski area. (Well, it was in 1960, and if all the lifts are any evidence, it’s a lot busier in winter these days.) In the summer, even when it’s cold and foggy, hikers and wacko sightseers like us come up to walk around.
There are some nice buildings up here. I don’t know if they are sort of summer cabins, winter cabins, or housing for cattle tenders. This roof is unusual.
As I said, maybe the people who look after the cattle live up here with them. Looks pleasant enough.
Try to get a clear idea of the very large bell that this cow is stuck with. It must be very heavy, and for sure it is very loud. I could hear the (perhaps-deaf) cows well before I could see which ones had bells.
After our chilly walking around, it was time for lunch. We took the train down to an inn that apparently does a booming business serving local hikers and the occasional group of old people. To be sure that you know it was a cog-wheel train, here’s a sightseer admiring the track:
The MHB Foghorn 