Winter vacation like a century ago: the Belle-Epoque in Kandersteg

By Daniela David Dec 20, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Kandersteg, Switzerland - When the old locomotive pulls into the Kandersteg rail station, the steam fills the cold winter air.

From the wood-panelled rail cars, men with bowler hats, frock coats and walking canes and women dressed in full-length gowns, capes and feathered hats are disembarking. And many of the people awaiting them at the train station are also wearing clothes dating back a full century.

Welcome to the Belle Epoque Week in Kandersteg, a Swiss alpine town of 1,200.

The time travel going back to a glamorous past era is made possible by what's on store in the lower level of the village church: a collection of historical clothing. The guest arrives in modern-day clothing and leaves in the garb of the past.

Now decked out in a style going back 100 years, the visitors greet each other on the street, smiling and nodding and in the men's case, tipping their hats.

'The atmosphere is particularly good during the Belle Epoque Week. People are more open and relaxed,' says Paul Breitschmid of the week's organising committee. 'They suddenly seem to have all the time in the world.'

In a setting with the towering Bluemlisalphorn peak in the background, the guests and locals, many wearing historical costumes, make their ice-skating rounds on a natural-ice rink. Many of the women of Kandersteg have spent months sewing their own garments. 'We specially ordered an old English pattern,' says seamstress Gabi Rieder, showing off her floor-length costume.

The idea of the Belle Epoque Week came to Kandersteg tourism director Jerun Vils after hearing, once too often, yet another 'back in the good old days' remark. 'So, okay, then let's do things like back then,' said Vils, decked out with a frock coat and top hat.

'Since then the people of Kandersteg have been enthusiastic about it. And as if we had struck a nerve, the number of visitors is also rising,' said Vils.

The term 'Belle Epoque' covers the period of the late-19th century up until the outbreak, in 1914, of World War One, when European power and culture were at a zenith. Above all, it was the British back then who travelled to Switzerland to spend weeks in the Alps.

Now, time is pressing. The nostalgic bobsled race is about to start. Since around 1900 Kandersteg has had a natural-ice bobsled course. Four people are jammed close together on a bob. 'Back then, it was one of the few opportunities that men had to get so innocently close up to a woman they didn't know,' chuckles Marcus Schmid of the nostalgia bobsled club Bivio.

The bobsled pilot now gives the command to start and the bobsled starts gliding down the mountain, through snow-covered forests, faster and faster, to the cheers and applause of onlookers.

Back then, the nobility and the wealthy guests enjoyed being able to divest themselves of their societal roles during a holiday. Sometimes, the nobles would arrive incognito. And Switzerland seemed to be the ideal place for this, since it had no nobility of its own to try to enforce narrow rules of etiquette.

Today's guests follow the same daily schedule as back then. Among others, this includes a game of curling under the open skies, using the original authentic stones of the old days, made of Scottish blue granite and weighing almost 20 kilograms.

The sporting pleasure with the longest-lasting impact which the British brought to Kandersteg was, certainly, skiing.'It started when an Englishman gave his mountain guide a pair of skis,' Vrenia Agostini, who leads tours of the town.

During the nostalgia week - the next one takes place January 22-29, 2012 - the visitors also try their luck strapping the old wooden skis to their shoes. Most of the skis were found in dusty old attics or in museums. It takes a real commitment to nostalgia to try skiing on the slopes near Oeschinen Lake with the old equipment.

'It's hard to brake without the usual steel edges,' says one visitor, Adrian von Kaenel, who is trying out his luck on the old skis for the first time. 'Emergency stops usually take place on one's bottom,' he observes.

The highlight of the week is the grand Belle-Epoque Ball in the Victoria Ritter Hotel. The air is bristling with excited anticipation. Elegant and plush ballroom gowns are rustling and there is the clinking of champagne glasses in the hotel's historical Art Deco ballroom. The illusion works.