Midnight train to Switzerland

To this day, the sensation is very easy to recall: the rocking motion of a steadily fast moving train. When I was still in Middle School, a trip to Maloya, Switzerland was made available at very little cost to teenagers from families where there were four or more children. In a Catholic country like Belgium, at a Catholic girl school, that was a done deal. Three or four kids was very common for a family. There were lots of girls in my class where there were six, seven, nine, eleven kids. The kids that only counted two siblings in their family were looked down on somewhat, and you really had to feel sorry for the kids who were only children. They were treated as outcasts with heathen parents. Sex was for procreation, not for fun. The nuns wanted to make sure we carried that happy thought  to our future marriages. Anyway, I was excited, we qualified, and I got to go to Switzerland for ten days, by train, together with all the other girls from morally responsible families, when it came to procreation, and some chaperons. It was so exciting, it was to be a trip to learn the basics of skiing, something it would turn out, I was not to be very adept at. But it did not matter, the ski label was just a formula, and I had a wonderful time, as the ski instructors were extremely kind and patient. I have a cousin near the town of Maloya, which is not very far from the famed St. Moritz ski resort. "The Shah of Iran takes his family skiing in St. Moritz", my mother proudly pointed out. We were moving up in the world!. Of course, we were not anywhere near where the elite of the world at the time, it was 1971, went skiing, but still, it all sounded impressive. We stayed at a large old hotel, that was past its glory days, and that now rented out entire wings of the place at very discounted prices to people like girls from schools who had won a basically free trip. The place was very large, and had very modest accommodations, but the large old fashioned cafeteria served decent enough food, and plenty of it. The carpeting had been removed, so the noise at lunch and dinner time, at the long tables was deafening between the clatter of plates and silverware on tables stripped of tablecloths, and the high pitched voices of about 200 middle school girls. The first day was the loudest to me, because I still felt the motion in my body of the all night train ride, and the impact of the lack of sleep, as everyone was way too excited to sleep. It was wintertime of course, and we had left a dreary Belgian winter sky to arrive at a blindingly bright blue sky in Switzerland the next morning. It was gorgeous, all this blindingly bright white snow amidst this equally blindingly blue sky, with a sparkling sun to add to the whole welcoming effect.We slept in big, tall ceiling rooms, eight girls to a room, in bunk beds. It took the hall monitors at least an hour each night to convince us to settle down and go to sleep. I was used to my own room at home, and sharing a room was both a bit unnerving and exciting. Everyone got along really well in our room. The fresh mountain air made me sleep better than I could ever recall, plus the daily exercise of trying, at least to get the hang of skiing. We also ended up with a tan, which threw me for a loop. It was winter,and the only other tan I had ever had was from being in the sun at the pool, or the ocean. I found out as soon as we got back from Switzerland that the tan was considered a status symbol. You were obviously a member of the elite, if in a grey winter country like Belgium, you were sporting a mountain tan you had acquired during your winter holidays in Switzerland. It was one of the first deeply felt experiences of the nonsense of social snobbery and one that to this day makes me chuckle. My school was already known for its social elitism, that was one added  attitude it did not need help reinforcing. But what I carried away from the trip was the memory of the beauty of the mountains, the incredibly fresh, cool air, the sun, and the camaraderie of a bunch of girls making new friends, having a great time, in the middle of a gloomy winter that we had been fortunate enough to get away from for ten glorious days.