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It was now 7pm. I was exhausted following the ten-hour hitch and getting a bit desperate as car after car passed me, despite the placard I held which read 'FRANCE: £10?' Just as the streetlights began to buzz a van screeched to a halt a couple of hundred metres down the road, I grabbed my impossibly heavy rucksack and lurched after them. "Ten Quid?" he asked, before opening the door of their small van. I was to share the back with several crates of beer that they'd just bought in the duty free...

European Tales: Switzerland 1996, a lengthy tale

Joseph Tame
2006-06-30 17:53:26

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and schooled in America, he wasn't as blinkered as the other members of management and was always willing to have a laugh. Generally he was cool, and at times a few of us would have left if it weren't for him.

In November the first snows fell. Alex, Sito (or 'Alfy' as we called him) and myself got on fairly well, keeping together as a group. Alfy was a kind-hearted Spaniard. Ten months younger than myself, he was always generous and after a little (or a lot) of persuasion, he would nearly always agree to accompany me in some activity or other, like go and have a hot chocolate in the Bahnhof Buffet. However, if he had some shirts to wash or iron then there was no way I could tear him away. Communication was not a problem as the majority of my colleagues spoke English or German - I could always use one or the other. There was an exception to this rule: DiDi. DiDi was a political refugee from Algeria. He was a great character, so laid back one couldn't help but feel relaxed in his company. He got by by using a language unique to him, which everyone seemed to understand. It was based on French and English, but had bits of German and Italian thrown in, not to mention words that he created as he went along. He developed catch phrases that we all found hilarious, and they rapidly spread around the hotel until they were in general usage. In all, there were about forty of us at the Scheidegg. The majority of these were Portuguese, but there were also Germans, Italians, Alf the Spaniard, Didi the Algerian, Austrians and Swiss, and of course, myself.

It was a strange place of extremes. Nothing would happen for weeks, and then we'd find ourselves in the national press. This happened a few times during my stay, the most memorable being in early November. The weather was atrocious, with winds of over two hundred km/h battering Kleine Scheidegg. For some bizarre reason the Railway Company chose to run a train down to Grindelwald, ...