Taki on the fabric of Gstaad

Here's the big one,  the 64 dollar question, as they used to say in the good old days before inflation: Is Gstaad going to follow Courchevel, St Moritz, Chamonix, Verbier and countless other winter resorts in becoming  yet another playground for Russian oligarchs, their fur-clad girlfriends, their bodyguards, their hookers and their drugs? The oligarchs already have their English football clubs, their superyachts and their multi-million pound country mansions, so will multi-million franc Simmentaler-style chalets be next? Let's start with the bad news because there is no good news - at least as far as I'm concerned. Prices at the above mentioned ski resorts have been driven up to the extent that some local people are thinking of packing up and moving. Small local stores  such as bakeries, vegetable markets and butcher shops are being replaced by luxury boutiques offering Prada and Gucci, not to mention glitzy jewellery ateliers and even expensive department stores. Worse is the reputation of certain oligarchs and their inevitable entourages. They are rude, crude, vulgar and known to act at times like proverbial bulls in a china shop. But let's stick to Gstaad...

I've been coming here for fifty years, when it was a sleepy, friendly place where everyone knew everyone else, and the tourists  respected the customs of the locals and at times aped their ways. Here's the great Ruskin writing about the Alps back in 1850, when he first saw evidence of how nature was being degraded: “Mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery. The real beauty of the Alps is to be seen, and seen only, where all may see it, the child, the cripple, the poor man and the man of grey hairs…”. What he really meant was the Alps were not only for the rich. The spiritual element of the Alps, Ruskin feared, was no longer to be found in more accessible areas, and he implored people to make the most of what they had while it was still there.

This is how I feel about Gstaad, a place in which one can do one's best work because of its surroundings of maximum beauty. This is why so many musicians, artists and writers first came here, alas, no longer. Here's DH Lawrence having a Hemingway moment while crossing the Bernese Oberland: “I went to bed in the silent, wooden house. I had a small bedroom, clean and wooden and very cold. Outside the stream was rushing, like the sound of Time itself.” This was in 1926. We have not improved since then, although we are far more comfortable, to say the least.

A local friend who was born and has spent his whole life here encouraged me to write this. He was upset at the closing of the two butcher shops - one in Gstaad, the other in Saanen - to the extent that he had a foreign friend (me) walk into the new Gstaad boutique and ask for some ham and bacon. He also laments how few children registered this year in the local school because their parents had moved to nearby, cheaper areas.

Of course we cannot stop progress, and a Luddite I am not. But the reason Gstaad and its environs are so special and dear to those of us who have chosen to build and live here is, in a way, Luddite. There are no high risers, no cement blocks, no Las Vegas-like hotels. We love the spirit of the Saanen valley, its respect for tradition, its aristocratic contempt for cheap commerce and  for those who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. The soul of Gstaad is its architecture and lack of glitz. And its people. We wish to keep it simple, friendly and beautiful. We are an island surrounded by vulgarity and expensive trash. The   powers that be should think long and hard about “progress.” If they don't, their  children and grandchildren will one day curse them.  Monte Carlo became Las Vegas-on-the-Med; the last thing we need is a Monte Carlo in Saanenland.

Taki Theodoracopulos, better known as Taki, is a journalist and writer, living in Gstaad, London, and New York. His column ‘High Life’ has appeared in The Spectator for the past 25 years, and he has also written for National Review, the London Sunday Times, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the New York Press, and Quest Magazine, among others. In 2002 Taki founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell. He is also publisher of the British magazine Right Now! and has been writing for GstaadLife since its first season in 2003/4. More of his musings can be found here and on his website at www.takimag.com.

Comments

[Lisette Prince]

Taki is so right! I hope his excellent op/ed also appears in the German Anzeiger.

[Niki Rommel, Gstaad]

Bravo! It isn't the first time you righfully stigmatize the Russian oligarchs, most of whom know more about stealing their country blind than how to hold a fork. A belated happy New Year, old friend.

[rhodesia rules]

taki,
give yourself a battlefield commendation!
too right!
yours reverently,
green leader

[Cat Jagger Pollon]

I've been going to Gstaad since 1973; not every single winter but most. It seems to
me that the 90's saw more Russians and there seems to be less now....except for
the Russian Christmas/New Year, of course.

Taki's remarks about the Russians couldn't
have come at a better time...for me; as I
had my first run in with one of these
creatures in the computer room of the Palace, just last week. I won't go into
the whole story but suffice it to say
that this obvious graduate of the Leonid
Brezhnev School of Charm, got a major
tongue lashing from me and I remain
convinced that rude behavior must be
acted upon immediately. We just can't
complain to our friends about it.

I also agree with Taki about Rosey. The
quality of people there has taken a nose
dive and the news that the school may
relocate away from Gstaad is good, indeed.

[Anja Tanner]

Thank you Taki!!!! It relieves me that also people from the "Oberbort" sense this...

I am a local, I've grown up in Schönried, but am no longer living up there.
Whenever I come up to visit my parents though it breaks my heart to see how the place is evolving into a worrying direction. The villages are deserted in "in-between-season", normal workers no longer find affordable places to rent, and the visitors behave as though they owned the valley.

How can someone praise the nature and fresh air, and then cause huge traffic jams with even huger SUV's? I don't get it.

And I thoroughly agree that our authorities should change for a long-term sustainable policy, instead of selling out all real estate and investing in hundreds of snowguns.

Season's greetings to all of you!

[Swiss]

Be it the writer of this article or the people that have commented on it so far there is really only one thing to say. How far from reality can you possibly be and how conservative can you think? How do you all think Gstaad has prospered within the last 50 years?
As for Rosey, if it weren't for that school most Hotels in the region could close and lock up their doors in the long run (Not to half of the shops at the Promenade).
And no, this Article and for that matter no article of Taki should be posted in german. The reaction that would follow suite would be laughter, since 90% of the people who live actually make their living of the people investing their money in Chalets and businesses in and around Gstaad. Were we to go back to what Taki and my fellow commentators would consider an ideal Gstaad, there would not be much left of what makes Gstaad the extraordinary place it is.
Taki do me a favour, quit your racist remarks and your ill place comments about other cultures. You yourself are nothing more and nothing less than a tourist here.