It was snowing when we woke up, and it continued all day. I had cleaning to do, and Val gave me a haircut. I spent most of the afternoon making a huge winter stew with potatoes, carrots and a load of hirsch (deer) that was half.price at the Co-op. The council eventually arrived and dug our path out.
So now all we have to do is wait for the others and we can tuck into dinner.
The snow finally came to an end yesterday evening, and today we had some sunshine, which was nice. The kids ski lift in the snow garden is almost buried.
This afternoon I popped down to Interlaken while Val did her German homework. It was already clouding over when I got back, and apparently the snow will return by tomorrow morning .
We had a lovely lasagna at Ali’s last night, and while we were eating the snow continued to fall. It was still snowing when we awoke this morning, so I set to work clearing our terrace.
The pile of snow below Colin’s balcony is a couple of metres high now. Meanwhile, Larina is enjoying herself.
The snowploughs have been out since early this morning, but getting rid of the snow is time consuming, so huge piles remain.
It started snowing not long after we had our tests yesterday afternoon, and it hasn’t stopped since. I popped up to the village while Val did her German class.
The kids’ ski lift is buried.
Streets have been ploughed, but there’s still a lot of snow around.
Ali is cooking tonight.
As the races have been cancelled, the army personnel who look after the race course were sent back to barracks yesterday. This left 500 packed lunches which they would have eaten today going spare. They were therefore distributed amongst us, so we got a free lunch today.
Yesterday’s lurid newspaper headlines mean that the whole village needs to be tested for the virus. We all went after lunch. It was a pretty slick process.
After testing we waited outside for our results.
We were all negative. In fact the doctor in charge told us there hadn’t been a single positive test all day. Later, the civil defence people all turned up for their tests – they get tested every day.
Just look at that perfect social distancing.
The World Cup races that were due to take place next weekend have been cancelled. The official reason is a high number of positive tests at our new test centre in the village, which is ok – there have been a lot of infections. Needless to say the press have had a field day with the story.
Sensational headlines appear on almost every newspaper – ‘Wengen is in lockdown’ (it isn’t, we can go skiing, go shopping, go to the hairdresser etc). The bit about a British tourist being the source of the outbreak may well be true however – we’re pretty sure we know who it is.
It’s a shame. The last thing we need at the moment is a big scare story like this, as it will certainly deter the ever-cautious Swiss from coming here – there are plenty of other places they can ski after all. Hopefully the story will die away over the next few days.
Regular contributor Maggie comments:
The British Tourist was not Roger Scoones, the English Chaplain. He has been in the village since the 8th of December and was not ‘the tourist from Great Britain staying in a single hotel between December 27 and January 10’ to quote the council article. He has been living in the flat provided for the English chaplain as said since the 8th of December.
It’s mighty cold again, but the sun is out so we popped up to Männlichen for a ski. Beautiful views to the west.
And very few people about.
Cruising down to Holenstein.
Absolutely no lift queues today.
The skiing was pretty good considering it hasn’t snowed for a couple of weeks. More would be nice of course.
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