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From: minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: net.travel,net.rec.ski
Subject: Club Med in Switzerland
Message-ID: <431@decvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Apr-84 19:34:34 EST
Article-I.D.: decvax.431
Posted: Wed Apr 11 19:34:34 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Apr-84 01:48:33 EST
Organization: DEC UNIX Engineering Group
Lines: 64

Frequent readers of this journal may recall that, last February,
I asked for suggestions for an European skiing vacation.  Got
back last week after a great trip that included a week's skiing
at Club Med in St. Moritz Switzerland.  Here follow a few remarks.

Club Med. has three resorts in St. Moritz, the Victoria, Roi Soliel,
and Pointresina (which isn't advertised in the U.S. and is rumored
to be very small and catering mostly to cross-country skiers).

Victoria, where I went, is a huge old hotel (mentioned in a Baedeker
from 1928) which they have nicely renovated.  It is apparently
the preferred hotel for Americans -- the brochure notes that it
is "totally bilingual" this year.  Roi Soliel, on the other hand
is "French/German" and thus apparently less suited to the monolingual
American.  While I was there, however, somebody noted that Roi Soliel
got more non-French Europeans, which resulted in more English being
spoken.

At Victoria, the mix seemed to be about 75% French, 15% German, and
the rest scattered.  There were about 5 Americans (including one
other on Usenet!).   While all the staff spoke English and there
was one American hostess, almost all of the entertainment was
in French, which could be tough going if your only exposure to
the language was from college text books.

The vacation was all-inclusive (meals, lift tickets, full-day
lessons, etc.).  The price was reasonable for a middle-class
hotel -- you can spend $400.00 per night in St. Moritz (and
didn't seem noticably higher for the Americans than for
people who booked in Europe).  The food was ok -- I've had worse
in much fancier places -- and there was a lot of it at the
breakfast and lunch buffets.  Dinner was sit-down service, but
you could always fill up at the cheese board.

Club Med. gets an upper middle-class, professional bunch.  The
people I hung out with included engineers, product managers,
advertising account executives, surgeons, and corporate
vice-presidents.  Most people came in couples and, while
Club Med. has a reputation for a certain shall we say moral
loosness, what messing around that was done seemed to be
very discreet.

Only a few gripes:   The French smoke a lot, and haven't quite
figured out that it bothers others.  I was lucky in that my
roommate was a non-smoker, but others were not.

Lunch and dinner coffee was not included in the all-included
(and was bloddy over-priced to boot).

By American standards, skiing at St. Moritz wasn't very challenging.
Most runs (no matter how they were marked) would be "intermediate"
in the U.S.  The Swiss have lots of T-bars -- some over a mile
long.

With that as the extent of my complaints, you  can well understand
that I enjoyed my stay and can recommend Club Med. to others.
You will have a better time (in St. Moritz) if you understand
colloquial, spoken French, and you will enjoy yourself more if
you don't head for the computers (Atari 800's) after skiing.


Martin Minow
decvax!minow