GstaadLife

Last Saturday July 24 2010 the Allianz Suisse Open Gstaad got underway. Local interest is high with Swiss Alexander Sadecky (above) joining fellow countryman Michael Lammer in the last sixteen after qualifying as wildcards. 

It’s not been a good year or so for Chalberhöni: back in Christmas 2008 there was the total destruction of a chalet due to fire, and now the flash floods of July 10 have left the village completely cut off from the rest of Saanenland (see pictures below and for more click here). For the Restaurant Waldmatte in Chalberhöni the suffering is only just beginning, though. No damage was caused due to the flooding but now that the road up to Chalberhöni is completely impassable there is only a footpath to bring customers... and those are, well, scarce. So make the effort and take the Rübeldorf-Belmunt trail up from Saanen or come down from the Eggli and pay them a visit.

 

 

 

Just a few weeks ago the national team of the Ivory Coast trained for the FIFA 2010 World Cup on this field. At the beginning of July it was a pre-season warm-up game between FC Zurich and FC Basel. Now, as yet another end-result of the devastating flooding in Saanen, the field is completely destroyed and the FC Sarina is looking at damage of around SFr 0.5 million.

Top, the male winners of the 11th Swatch FIVB World Tour 1to1 energy Grand Slam in Gstaad; winners Tod Rogers and Phil Dalhausser from the US (center in blue) won in the final against Germans Eric Klemperer and David Koreng (left in yellow). In the women's final Brazilians Larissa and Juliana, perrenial Gstaad favorites, triumphed. Here are some more snapshots from the tournament which is set to continue until at least 2012. And click below for a video interview (in German) with tournament director Ruedi Kunz, as well as scenes from the tournament.

 
Interview with Joanna and Peter Burri by Tess Larosse

From GstaadLife print edition July 16 2010

After landing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital, I took a short hop on a little plane over to Arusha where I found myself jumping straight into a totally unplanned safari by gatecrashing a charming chap from Latvia’s Jeep. Luckily he was very pleasant, willing to share, and only slightly bewildered by the intrusion. Nine dusty days later I flew from the mainland and on to the neighbouring island of Zanzibar, where I caught up, quite unexpectedly, with Gstaad boy Peter Burri and his wife Joanna, who now live on the NE coast of the island in Matemwe, a magical place steeped in history and teeming with local culture. You may remember that Gstaad-born-and-bred Peter ran the Rialto restaurant for several years prior to moving to the Seychelles, and then last year relocated to the mysterious, exotic island famed for its white sandy beaches, wonderful spice gardens, pristine waters and its capital, Stonetown’s, notorious involvement in the slave trade. So what on earth are they doing here? 

TL - Peter, what brought you to this part of the world?

What a storm! Saturday afternoon July 11 around 16h a huge storm of seemingly apocalyptic proportions struck Saanenland causing serious flooding and damage throughout the region. By far the worst hit was Rüblidorf just above Saanen, where the Chalberhönibach (the normally small river coming down from Chalberhöni) unleashed a wave of destruction, bringing down from the high alps trees, containers, and even a car or two as it paid a visit to many of the homes around the school in Saanen. Anything with a cellar was left awash in a foot of mud, the road to Chalberhöni was washed away in some sections, and the recently completed football field in Saanen was very badly damaged. Thankfully nobody was injured but see the destruction for yourself by clicking here. 

Yes, it's hotel ranking time of year, and this year the Bilanz annual hotel review has voted the Gstaad Palace as its number one holiday hotel in the country. Yes we all knew it was the best already, but our old favorite did beat out some venerable competition, including the Castello del Sole in second, Riffelalp in third, and Eden Roc in fourth (top 50 here). Regular readers of GstaadLife.com will know we're not huge fans of these rankings, but it seems we're not the only ones: German speakers will enjoy this rant from Thomas Frei, director of the Bernerhof, as he railed against the lack of objectivity of a similar hotel survey in the Sonntagszeitung. We hope you speak some German because perhaps even more interesting than the original post are the puerile comments it got from Karl Wild, the journalist responsible for the survey: check it all out here...quite amusing.

The Menuhin Festival Gstaad kicks off next weekend July 16 2010, and the festival's PR machine is in top gear. The Telegraph of London is the latest to sing the accolades of our mountain musicfest with an article by Michael White ranking it among the the top 10 classical music events of Europe. So do not miss it - here is this year's program.

Last years world tour champions, Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann, have had to cancel their participation in Gstaad because of injury. But the Swatch FIVB World Tour – 1to1 energy Grand Slam Gstaad has been running supremely, the weather is great right now and the atmosphere is fantastic building up to this weekend's climax. Hope you are here to enjoy it with us.