It is an interesting little place. It is full of people in synthetic pants and plastic boots. Keep reading. I went because my guidebook said it was scenic, lying beneath the epic Matterhorn, and had many outdoorsy things to do, from hiking to biking, and obviously skiing. It seemed like the perfect place to get away from cities after spending two weeks in Naples, Florence, Rome and Geneva. So from Geneva I hopped on a train that took me to Visp, and in Visp I boarded a train for Zermatt. The train to Zermatt went up. And up. And up. I'd never been on a train that went so far up. I'm pretty sure I've been on steeper inclines in cars, but I can't remember ever feeling an incline while riding a train. But to get to Zermatt, the train goes up.
Getting of the train in Zermatt was weird. For starters, it was much bigger than I expected. I had envisioned some sort of rustic, outdoorsy village with cabins and not much else. The fact that Zermatt made it into my Western Europe guidebook should have clued me into the fact that there would be plenty of civilization. Emerging from the train station there were a ton of people milling about (I got there around 4-ish in the afternoon) on the street in the bright sunlight. They were all wearing synthetic pants. To get to my hostel I had to walk down the main street. There was store after store selling Swiss Army knives and watches and things of that touristy nature. There was the obligatory McDonalds, because as much as the US loves McDonalds, I think Switzerland has at least one McDonalds per each nuclear family unit.
I may as well make another observation about the Swiss here, that is of particular importance to this story. They have no language. Or, the alternative is that they have every language. I spent the whole time having no idea what to say! In Geneva things were clearly French (or some variety of it) for the majority, but everyone also spoke excellent English... and Swahili for all I know. And I mean everyone. Even the people doing the menial tasks at restaurants. I think everyone in Switzerland is capable of carving their own modern day Rosetta stone. It is amazing. Keep this in mind.
As I walked towards my hostel I noted something else. No cars. Only these weird car-cart hybrid things, all of them electric. The only gasoline powered vehicle in the entire town was the ambulance that wandered the streets day after day, presumably bored and with nothing better to do (I literally saw it everywhere). It was something I would have found particularly novel if I had not already read that this would be the case in my guidebook. I think there is something to be said for going somewhere and just being surprised (which, by the way, is what I will be doing in Brighton tomorrow).
I won't give a detailed rundown of the entire 2 1/2 days I spent in Zermatt, because it was mostly spent walking or sitting in the sun and reading. Instead I'm going to hit you with a stream on consciousness of memories.... ready? I ate something called "Paniertes Schweinsschnitzel mit Pommes Frites" which is a really long way to say breaded pork with fries. I saw a ginormous St. Bernard, which made me happy because it fulfilled a stereotype. I discovered there wasn't half the hiking I expected, but I was okay with that. Zermatt is filled with thousands of skiers. Everyone skis, without exception, period. There was probably one person from every country in the world in Zermatt. My hostel had a "take a book, leave a book." I took a book and finished it while I was there. It was really bad, but it was the only one in English, and somehow was mildly addicting. I saw a parachutist/glider guy land. I saw a helicopter take off. I found a sign while hiking pointing the way to "Moos," and I thought of Monty Python. Zermatt may have been bigger than I thought it would be, but I still walked every inch of it. I couldn't find the fire house, sorry Mama and Papa G. But it did have a Remax. Skiers have funny raccoon tans, and they all wear synthetic pants and plastic ski boots.
And finally, the important point I wanted to make about language. Switzerland is inherently confused about what to speak to begin with, so they just speak everything. This is particularly important in Zermatt because in my hostel alone there were people from Spain, the US, China and Italy. Take ten people off the street at random and you will find 9 different languages are spoken. The tenth person doesn't have an official language because they got really dehydrated while skiing one day, and now only speak "dude-speak." So it is helpful to be multilingual. But with all these people from various places in one spot, it is amazing to note that there are two universals tying them all together. Skiing, and synthetic pants for skiing. Seriously, as you walk down the street you are almost driven to madness by the "swish, swish, swish" of people going to and from the ski lifts. So in the end to be honest, even though everyone in Zermatt is from a different part of the world, you really don't need to be multilingual. You only need to know one language in Zermatt, in fact. Because in this part of Switzerland, everyone speaks Swish.
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