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It’s another disappointing day weather-wise, with wind and rain. Festive message on the train this afternoon.

Bands of fog drift up and down the valley. It’s bright one moment and dark the next.

Bar picnic in Rocks later.

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Bevez and Ibe gave us a good show at the Sunstar last night, it turned into a proper party.

Outside it was snowing heavily.

The snow continued through the night and we were faced with a dismal day of weather today with high winds too.

The poor weather has to end soon. Meanwhile we’ll be back to the Sunstar later for Duo Centrale.

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The cinema opened last night. We saw ‘Last Christmas’.

Wasn’t really expecting to like it, but it turned out to be very entertaining.

The weather has been awful all day, with rain, snow and high winds. The forecast for tomorrow is worse still. This evening the village band gave their Christmas concert.

I’ve never seen the church so full. We also had a guest cellist.

Uptown Lights at the Sunstar later.

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Lovely dinner at the Caprice last night. René the pizza chef is very inventive; this one had potatoes on it.

New wall art arrived this morning.

The village is now fully open, and each year on the Saturday before Christmas we have a party in the street. Lots of food, drinks and music.

Cinema tonight.

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We haven’t seen Jana and Andy yet this season; Andy has been busy with his new job as manager of the Hotel Alpenruhe. We had a walk up to take a look.

The Alpenruhe is the highest hotel in Wengen. Andy gave us a tour. Here’s the view from the highest room.

Jana is at home with Oskar. It’s Oskar’s birthday on Sunday so we popped round with his present.

The Caprice is opening today, so we’ll go for pizza tonight.

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We have lots of fun curling, and we even take part in the village tournaments. Our problem is that we’ve never been taught how to gracefully slide along the ice and release the stone in one, fluid motion. We want to learn how to do this, so 5 of us have engaged Giger, who is the village curling guru. Here’s what we aspire to:

To begin with we use 2 stones for stability. Under Paul’s left shoe is a very slippery pad to help him slide when he pushes off with his right foot.

We have a few goes at this and we get used to the sliding sensation. We then replace the extra stone with a broom. This makes things even more wobbly.

The idea is to push off, holding onto the stone whilst using the broom for support. The stone is released when its speed is thought appropriate for it to reach the ‘house’ at the other end of the rink. The longer you hang on to the stone, the shorter the distance that it will travel. Here goes.

As with so many things, it’s a lot more difficult than it looks.

This morning the storm has returned, so we head down to the valley for a walk. New snack van at the Schilthornbahn selling veggie snacks and noodle soup. The cable car up to the Schilthorn is closed today, so the van is doing a roaring trade.

The farm cat spots us from across the meadow and comes bounding over to join us on our walk.

Ski lift at the campsite. Snow required.

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The weather’s ok and Ali has a day off. Up we go. Our luxurious gondola.

Coffee at the Berghaus.

There are very few people around, and the snow is ok despite all the wind we’ve had recently. Well worth going up.