The flavour of the Alps
The Alps. Majestic mountains, great peaks, climbing history, great views, blah blah blah. What if someone is blind? I mean, really not able to see. A place should give emotions even with eyes wide shut. Views disappear in the fog of time. Emotions fight longer. Odours, flavours, smells, skin reactions, sounds, whispers. They worm their way deeper, hide in hidden corners, as if frozen in the dry mountain air, the home of spirits.
Many roads pass across the Alps. Some struggle their way winding up barren Tibetan valleys. Others simply cut their way with a freeway, jumping with unrespectful bridges over green fields where white and black patchy cows graze. Driving on all of them, the lucky driver will find many places to stop, rest, eat, sleep. Some are famous. Convents, hermitages, army retirement mansions, luxury hotels built in the “humid lungs” era of Mann’s memory. The buildings are really impressive. Unlike american copies, they belong to the environment. Massive vertical walls filled with small windows rise until they find those steep dark roofs. They are severe, silent, immortals. At night, driving in the snow, tiny white lines pulling the car from the headlights, only the yellowish curtained windows appear in the black void. Great places to cancel time. One cannot really understand “The Magic mountain” without seeing one of them. I could be trapped in forever, doped into a spiritual life I wish I could stand. I hope I have given the idea, because this is not what these lines are about.
If you go to Europe, dear reader, and you are planning to cross from the boring madness of order named Switzerland and the criminal madness of disorder called Italy, choose the Simplon Pass. It is not the most beautiful. Actually, it is rather boring. But I need you to go to a place for me and tell me if the flavour of the alps is still alive.
It is a small, white, oldish, always empty hotel. Hotel Post. Going north it’s on the way down, on the right, under a green wall of tall pine trees, in the village of Rosswald. Their card show the place with beautiful cars with white tire bands. Fifties. Colours still bright.
My first time there was more that ten years ago. I do not know why I entered. It is not the nicest place around, and looks forgotten; actually, it looks closed. I did that road hundreds of times and barely noticed it. But it hides the flavour of the alps.
Enter, take notice of the classic white and red chequered curtains and tablecloths, the empty wooden benches, the old bar, the faded advertisements of drinks, choose a table by the window, close to the heater. The place is cold. No one goes there. Sit down. Someone will come.
That first night I felt kind of embarrassed. I did not sit down. After a while she comes in. Slowly, cautiously, seriously, germanically. A bordeaux sweater over a brown skirt. Her french was worse than mine. I ask politely if the restaurant is open. It is, her voice sure, not shy at all though slightly trembling, but most of the things on the menu are not available.
Il n’ya a pas beaucoup M’sieu. We get out. Ready to leave forever, without discovering the secret of the Alps. Then I remember Heidy, her Grandad, their melted cheese diet between white daisies and fat cows, big logs burning in the fireplace. I turn back.
Do not you even have cheese fondue?
Her eyes shine bright. I finally notice them. They can barely see. A thick mist covers an incredible pair of blue eyes. Spirited eyes. Frozen. True mountain air liquified. Of course Sir, we do serve cheese fondue. Gawd, what a stupid question I asked. And she dissappears, step after step, slowly and trembling but with decision, in the unknown recesses of the hotel. She does not tell us where to sit, nor if we want a drink. She just vapourizes away.
We sit down. Still slightly dazzled. We look around, out of the window, watching the night coming in, winning over the valleys and the faraway snowy peaks, silencing colours and forms. Some soft noises come out of the kitchen, somewhere behind the door. It is cheese being grated. In a decade of precooked stuff. So unusual.
After a quarter of an hour the door opens. She comes out. Holding a heavy complex of burner, holders, pot, fire, tray. I feel a strong impulse to jump and get the bunch, steaming in her eyes. Looks like everything is going to fall any moment. The soft cloud is precisely deposited between my eyes and my wife’s. Then she softly steps back, gets a couple of paper cloths, two dishes, two forks. A basket full of bread in cubes materializes. Long wrinkly fingers delicately set the few items on the table. We are silent, we do not make a move. “What do you wish to drink, M’sieur”. I am damn thirsty, dry mountain air. A beer and a coke for my wife, maybe?
The no is categoric. Avec Fondue, ou fendant, ou thé. I feel a perfect idiot. Beer with cheese, I knew it. What a lack of style. She does not even wait for an answer. Turns back, softly transfers herself to the bar, her head moving sideways in sudden movements at every step, her feet into warm alpine home slippers of an age that deserve respect, her hair faded into my memory. Every time I looked at her, my look was always trapped by the eyes, their misty blue, that lens of age veiling the mountains outside.
Well, the dinner was in front of us. Six o’ clock. Never get there much later.
Suddenly we realized that we could eat, even if blamed and definitely in need of another lesson before exams. So we concentrate on the food. The cheese. My lord, that is not the same fondue we’ve had before! Used to creamy fluids of yellow advertisement colour, we were stunned by the aspect of the steaming substance in front of us. A soft foam of unusual consistence is gently bubbling in the pot, self inflating like a soufflé, defying the law of gravity in its lightness. The colour is of a humble yellowish white, white wine and cheese. What you would expect in a world without artificial colours. Real science fiction. We look around. Our old lady has dissappeared. Two long forks capture a small cube of bread and dive into the foam, unmolested by the violence, happy to conquer new territories with its softness.
Now, dear reader, close your eyes. And beg a sweet feminine voice you love to read you the following lines. We will enter the world of sensations.
The empty room emits no noise. The only sound the shy bubbling liquid and the silent whisper of the burner. And the tiny bubbles so timidly crackling in the foam. The nose is shocked. The unusual armony of the ingredients mix so perfectly that a new flavour is created. We know that also McDonalds achieved a flavour which has nothing to do with the sum of the ingredients. But they needed a battery of scientists, marketing analysts, chemists, engineers. A lake of dollars. The flavour of another continent.
We know it’s just garlic, fendant white wine, kirsch cherry liquor, cheese and pepper. But I’ll be damned if I can separate the different elements. It’s perfect harmony. The foam passes between the lips. The liquory strength permeates every tasting cell of tongue and throat, mixes with the ethereal smell steaming down the nose and moves automatically where it has to go. So good. Do not need my eyes any more. I see green fields gently descending from thick forests, grazing cows with a daisy in the munching mouth, pine trees with Christmas decorations, soft snow falling in the sun, stunning crystal peaks in the blue sky, shrieking blue ice rumbling from glaciers, dancing creeks in green lively dance, valleys running towards the horizon, sun setting between rocky pyramids. And small chalets with red flowers on the terrace and red and white chequered curtains in the wooden windows.
The feast goes on, cube after cube. The foam slowly gives way to a dense cream. The alchool of wine and kirsch evaporates. The taste changes every minute. Every piece is different, a new emotion. The harmony of flavour remains and the taste explores a three dimensional space of cheesy hyperworld. Again silent paths in the woods, emerald lakes and rumbling waterfalls, old shepherds with long beards, jumping goats and again fat cows full of milk.
The revolving cube touches the bottom of the pot. With perfect timing soft steps approach and the old master gets a knife to scrape the burned cheese from the walls of the pot, introducing these poor amateurs to the delicacy of gratinée cheese. Fat cows once again, with two new adepts at their feet, goddesses adored.
The cheese is over but the true flavour of the alps has just begun its way into our hearts. The white fendant, slightly liquorish, washes the fat of the foam and enters the nose with dry decision. Glasses are polished off. Time stops flowing. The room and the restaurant dissappear with few polite words and we are th the cold mountain air. It mixes with the flavour storm of our senses and keeps evolving. The pine resin with the garlic, the air with the wine. The cheese marries the freshly grazed fields while the kirsch mixes all together.
A light wind plays a quiet symphony with the trees, a severe giant walking towards the bed. Faraway creeks bubble in their way down the range. Our feet cracking in the snow frozen by the cold night.
I miss that place. I am afraid to go back, afraid to discover that the flavour of the Alps is not alive any more. Afraid to face the fact that time flows for everyone. Afraid to realize once and for all that nature and her flavours are losing. Unwilling to accept reality, preferring a world of childish illusion.
My old lady is immortal, and her secrets will never die.