Tuesday 19 February 2013

Dashing through the snow...

This weekend we decided to take advantage of the good weather to take Lydia tobogganing at Aminona, near Crans-Montana in Valais. Having barely seen the sun in the last couple of weeks, it was a good opportunity to get some fresh air and do something fun.

The timing of our trip was perfect weather-wise with glorious sunshine and clear blue skies, but unfortunately it was also a Sunday during half-term break, which meant a lot of other parents had the same idea as us. Parking near the tele-cabin wasn't too bad, as a free multi-storey car park is very nearby. Sadly, getting a ticket was much harder.

There was a large queue lined up en masse in front of the ticket office, with only two guichets open to serve the waiting throng of people, and doing so at an incredibly slow pace. I'm not sure if it was due to language barriers - I heard all sorts of different languages in the mass of people around us - but it often took up to ten minutes for some people to buy their tickets, in what is normally a pretty simple process.

This meant that we waited for about an hour to finally buy our tickets for the tele-cabin and sledge rental, which meant we had to keep Lydia busy the whole time. You can't realistically expect a nearly-two year old child to wait patiently for this length of time, although she did well to last about twenty minutes before getting a bit grumpy.

I managed to keep her occupied for most of the hour, before the eventual bout of tears (possibly tears of boredom) just before we got to the front of the queue and bought our tickets. For information, our total time in the queue was sixty minutes, and only two minutes at the desk to actually buy the damn things.

We quickly grabbed two sledges and jumped in the tele-cabin to get up to the top of the mountain. We only purchased one trip in the tele-cabin, reasoning that we didn't fancy doing the queue again.

Lydia enjoyed riding in the tele-cabin, looking at the view and pointing at various items of interest such as trees and people skiing down the mountain.

Picnic lunch at the top
When we arrived at the top we made our way out to the piste, and sat down out of the way of the skiers and tobogganers for a picnic lunch. Eating our fill of bread, ham, cheese and crisps - washed down with a chilled beer - we lapped up the sun's warming rays in preparation for the ride down.

It took us a couple of minutes to work out exactly where the sledge run starts, as the beginning of the trail is for both skis and sledges, and we certainly didn't want to get stuck going down the wrong one. Having found the right path to follow, we negotiated some particularly steep descents on our sledges, Lydia sitting with me while Chris (very slowly) followed behind.

Although Lydia enjoyed the speed and the sensation of going fast downhill, she was definitely not a fan of having snow sprayed in her face. Some of the trail was very steep indeed, and I had to really dig my heels into the snow to try and stop us going too fast, fearing slightly for Lydia's safety. This lead to snow being flung up in front of the sledge, most of which went straight onto Lydia.

Despite being well protected in her ski combination, hat, scarf, gloves and sunglasses, the snow managed to get on every available patch of bare skin on Lydia's face. After one decidedly scary downhill slide, I stopped and looked at Lydia - her entire face was covered in bits of snow, she looked almost like a tiny snowman! Naturally, she did not appreciate this, and she cried for most of the time wanting to stop the downhill snow showers.

Unfortunately, you can't really stop halfway down a mountain, so we had to keep going. I would stop every couple of minutes to try to calm Lydia's tears, but she really didn't enjoy it very much.

Pit stop with a view!
We came across a little kiosk/café after about 2km of the track, and stopped for a rest and a glass of mulled wine. The friendly barman told us that we still had around 4km to go before we reached the bottom, but that we had already gone past the worst of the descents. This cheered us up, and a little bit of chocolate eventually made Lydia cheer up as well.

When we restarted the course, Lydia's tears restarted as well. She really didn't enjoy the sledging, and on several occasions she tried to stand up and turn around, leading me to have to restrain her while I stopped the sledge to be able to comfort her. For the final 3km of the course I managed to avoid spraying any snow on her at all, but this didn't stop the crying.

We finally reached the bottom, with me carrying Lydia in my arms for the last few hundred metres just to stop her near-hysterical screaming. I instantly stood up and carried Lydia back to the car, feeling her calming down with each step. By the time I got to the car, she felt completely relaxed in my arms, and I'm pretty sure another five minutes like that and she would have fallen asleep (I should point out here that it is incredibly rare for Lydia to sleep anywhere other than her bed or occasionally her car seat)!

I eased her into the car, covered her up with a blanket and then drove off. After only two minutes in the car, Lydia was asleep. She slept the whole way back to Bussigny, and promptly woke up just as we arrived at home. Think the little munchkin tired herself out with all the crying!

Thinking back to the sledging itself, I quite enjoyed it (if you remove the screaming child aspect). The trail has some very steep parts and some sharp turns, but we managed to negotiate the entire course without falling off the sledge.

The views from the top are stunning, and on a sunny day such as this one the trip to the bottom is very nice indeed.

The downside for us is that the next day it was clear that Lydia has picked up a cold, most likely from getting snow in her face so often. It seems that every time we go tobogganing with her she ends up with the sniffles.

I think this is the last time we will go tobogganing this winter. We'll see how we get on next year - hopefully Lydia will like it more than she did this time.

I would definitely go back to Aminona as the course was fun, but try to avoid going during school holidays.

Thursday 14 February 2013

For anyone with Swisscom TV

We have Swisscom TV at home, giving us a larger choice of channels to watch that a typical cable connection (although the vast majority of those channels are in German).

The main reason why I wanted to have this was because it comes with a selection of English-speaking channels, including BBC, ITV and Channel 4 from England, and I thought being able to watch shows from my homeland would help me keep my sanity after making the move to Switzerland.

In fairness, my wife and I generally end up watching the same shows, so having a larger choice of channels doesn't really make much difference, except for the fact that I can watch English shows.


Swisscom TV's iPhone application
One excellent feature of Swisscom TV is the digital recorder box - much like Sky Digital that I had in England. It allows you to record your favourite programs onto a hard drive to watch later. This has been particularly useful to record episodes of T'Choupi, a cartoon that Lydia demands to watch while she has her morning and evening bottles. We don't generally have the TV on when Lydia is around, but she refuses to drink her bottle without T'Choupi... Think our Swisscom TV box now has every single episode of T'Choupi ever made saved on the hard drive!

I recently stumbled across an iPhone application for Swisscom TV that I think is really worth getting - it's completely free, and allows you to browse the channel listings for every channel that you receive.

But that's not the best part - you can use the application to tell your box to record programmes, meaning you needn't be worried about forgetting to set the box to record a programme as you can do it on the go!

And, as an added bonus, you can watch many of the shows through your phone, so you don't even need to be watching your TV at home!

I have made fair use of this feature recently to watch football matches - we only have 1 TV at home and my wife is not a footie fan, so Swisscom TV app spared us an argument or two.

As it's free and has lots of handy features, I recommend this to anyone who has a Swisscom TV subscription and wants to make sure they don't miss their favourite shows!

I should point out that I am not affiliated in any way with Swisscom, nor am I benefitting at all from advertising their products on this blog. I am simply happy with their offerings and want to spread the good word! :)

Monday 4 February 2013

Balloons

This weekend we decided to head over to the annual Festival International de Ballons, held in Château-d'Oex. The "ballons" in question are of the large, hot-air variety, so you can expect the sky to be filled with colourful balloons of various interesting shapes.

We made the 1 hour trip from Lausanne to Château-d'Oex for the same reason last January, but unfortunately the bad weather meant that the balloons could not take off. On that occasion we had to make do with looking at balloons being inflated on the ground for a short while, and then deflated so that the next balloon could be blown up.

Luckily this year the weather was much kinder to us, and the festival was able to go ahead as planned.

Balloons fill the sky over Château-d'Oex
As we approached the town of Château-d'Oex, we could already see many balloons in the sky, and Lydia excitedly shouted "Ballon! Ballon!" repeatedly as we arrived in the town. Having parked the car in the town itself (the festival car park was not open at this point as they wanted people to fill up the Coop car park first), we walked towards the grounds.

A short distance from the entrance we were stopped by some of the festival workers, who informed us that we had to purchase tickets for 10.- CHF just to get in. I was surprised at this, as I didn't remember paying for entry when we went last year. Perhaps they waived the entry fee last year as the weather was so bad and no flights were expected? In any case, we paid the man (fortunately Lydia got in for free) and entered the festival grounds.

Inside there was a band playing Güggenmusik, a type of music with loud drums and brass instruments, typically associated with the carnaval season in Switzerland (see "Carnaval"). Lydia loves music in general and although she seemed a bit scared of the loud Güggenmusik, as she pressed her head against my arm, every time they finished a song she repeatedly shouted "Encore!".

Aside from the band, a large number of people were gathered along the gates lining the field where the balloons are inflated, while an announcer described certain balloons over the PA system. At one point a partially inflated balloon laid itself down over half the watching crowd before lifting back into the air, much to the amusement of those momentarily covered by the colourful material.

Also in this area was a booth where you can pay for balloon flights. Out of curiosity, Christelle checked how much a trip would cost, and the answer was 250.- CHF per person. That meant it was a bit out of our price range, and in any case they said the day's passenger list was basically full. Maybe next year.

Near the inflating field were some assorted stalls selling such goodies as hats and scarves, as well as others peddling pizzas, churros and various other typical festival delicacies. Chris and I decided to have a glass of mulled wine to help warm our chilled cockles, and stumped up 5.- CHF per glass for the honour. To be fair, they were large cups (possibly 300ml) and the mulled wine was delicious, so we certainly got our money's worth there.

Afterwards we headed over to a hill on one side of the grounds, partly because of Lydia's insistence to follow the band who had disappeared in that direction. We made our way up the slope and picked out a good spot to see the balloons being blown up. At the top of the hill were some more food stalls, so I bought a bowl of macaroni du chalet for Lydia (macaroni with ham, cheese and cream). It was 10.- CHF for the bowl which I thought was a bit on the steep side, but I put this down to everything being more expensive at festivals.

Lydia really liked her lunch, as she managed to eat probably two-thirds of the bowl (which is a lot for her, as she isn't a big eater). The other third was happily finished off by yours truly. Yum yum. At this point Chris' friend Sandrine had showed up with her son Matys (see "Ah, Young Love..."), so they joined us on the snowy hill to watch the balloons.

I guess Lydia had absorbed some energy from her pasta lunch as she jumped out of her pushchair and started walking around in the snow. After a few steps she laid down on her back in the snow, so we rolled her over to her sheer delight. She giggled as she rolled around in the snow, occasionally standing up and trudging around before dropping down and laughing as she began to roll again.

This was actually brilliant to see as Lydia had never really seemed that comfortable with snow, not wanting to touch it or play with it and barely tolerating walking in it. So to see her enjoying herself in the snow was a wonderful moment for us. Her happy relationship with the snow lasted for until she tried to run and tripped, landing on her knees with her glove-less hands in the snow (it's impossible to make her keep her gloves on), at which point she whinged and didn't want anything more to do with the white stuff.

That, along with the fact that it was round about the time that Lydia would normally have her nap, signalled the time for us to leave, so we made our way back home. That afternoon Lydia slept for two and a half hours, so it looks like the combination of fresh air and playing in the snow tired her out - might have to remember that!

All in all, the Festival International de Ballons at Château-d'Oex is good to see, and at night (weather permitting) they have a "Night Glow" with illuminated balloons, which is probably something spectacular to witness. The main downside for me was the fact that we had to pay to get in, even though all that entitled you to was to stand a bit closer to the balloons while they were grounded (as everything else involved additional charges, such as drinks, food, rides, etc.).

We might go back next year, and hopefully we will get to see the Night Glow next time, although it might be more economical to watch the balloons from the town itself instead of paying to get a bit closer.

Tip: if you fancy going to the festival you should make sure to check their website the morning of the day you plan to go, as they post information about what to expect that day. This will tell you if the weather is too bad for flights, or if the Night Glow is cancelled.