One last thing...

Retreating behind the glass of a shop entrance for cover, the flash bang was still loud enough to invoke a flinch from those of us holding the first floor of the mall. Strangely, the explosion wasn't followed up with a charge up the stairs; we resumed positions and stared down at the enemy forces holding the stairwell. After a tense guessing game we got some lucky shots in and cleared the stairwell. This was all we really had to do. We were guarding the ammunition box at the top of the stairs and as long as we could hold those stairs the box was safe; the back stairwell was firmly within our territory and so if we were attacked from there defence would be rather pointless anyway.

The stairwell was vulnerable to incoming fire from a shop not quite opposite, meaning we could find cover behind the old lift and the banister. Unfortunately the angle meant that to engage the enemy I would have to fire left-handed, and only had time for a few shots before having to duck back under cover as the return fire pinged and zipped its way around the stairwell. It was infuriating. Technically there was no need to kill the people in the shop opposite, but technicalities be damned- I wanted their heads. My brother had just had an idea, so we both dropped down into the space between the stairwell and the back of the lift. We would have a perfect shot through the doors of the shop, and even better, they wouldn't have been able to see us move to our new position and so would not be expecting us.  Ben popped his head out, only to pull it back in with a quick curse. He holstered his rifle, drawing a pistol instead.

"There's one right there- against that corner" he snarled, popping out again to take a few pot-shots with the pistol.

He was right; just as those in the shop hadn't seen us, we in turn hadn't seen this guy creeping up the pillar diagonally opposite our position on the stairwell, shielded by the same lift that had given us cover. I drew my own pistol, the metal cold and unforgiving in my hands.

"You go high, I'll go low," I told him. To be frank, I had no idea if that was a desirable tactic, but someone had done the same earlier and we were both still there to tell the tale. He nodded, and counted us in. We both poked our heads out, waiting for our enemy to make his move.

A glimpse of his head; we both fired. A roar from Ben's handgun as he fired. A click from mine froze me up. Our foe had his gun up before I had the presence of mind to duck back into cover. Why was my pistol misfiring? I looked it over, and then cursed myself for being so stupid. There was no clip in the pistol. Short of throwing the thing at him, it was useless. Holstering it, I picked up my rifle once more, and leaned out, much more exposed. This time I felt the air parted as enemy fire whistled past me. Back into cover. And then the tannoy system bleated out. "Three, two one... game over!"

Of course it wasn't real. In real life I would never run as fast as I did when I went to an airsoft game. But it was something to do; something to keep me busy. There were also the Boxing Day Games, a curious tradition which dictates that on Boxing Day the village of Cookham Dean must hold such memorable events as a Space-Hopper race, the Dizzy Pole game (a relay race where you run up to a pole in the ground, put your hand on the pole your head on your hand, spin round it ten times and then run back) and the blindfolded obstacle course, where one of your team guides two other teammate who are blindfolded and in the waltzing position though an obstacle course made of hay bales. It's strange to think that this year, instead of politely saying hello to everyone and then disappearing back up to Leeds again in January, I will actually be around for 'the foreseeable future'. 'The foreseeable future' is a mysterious and ominous phrase that I have taken to using when describing how long I will be at home for, for no other reason than that it sounds cool; I am actually rather happy in my tiny room (though it does need a thorough clean as the cat seems to have left hairs everywhere, if my allergic reaction is anything to go by). 

Strange as it is to think that I will now be applying for jobs, and walking the dog, and playing on the PlayStation regularly, it is even stranger to remember that just over a week ago I was in the Swiss Alps. I was in another world, it seems at times, a place where I was Scouting all day and all night, where the dishwasher was made of sheet metal and the snow was measured at all, rather than simply hoped for. I thought it even stranger, at first, at how little I was missing the place. The people, of course, are irreplaceable, but I haven't found myself sighing and longing for a Thought For The Day to get me up in the morning. And then I realised that I've not been missing it because, in a very real sense, I haven't left it behind. KISC is with me in any number of little ways. I don't mind the cold any more in Britain; I think nothing of loading the dishwasher just once after dinner or lunch. I hope that I've taken some of KISC with me in my personality and the way I behave towards other people, and I know that I've remembered that a Scout doesn't have to live in a World Centre in order to be a Scout all day long; the spirit of 'why wait for someone else to do the right thing?' has stayed with me, even if it is in something as small as tidying up, turning off a light bulb or taking out a bin when it's full (which is actually something that we all used to struggle with in my house in Leeds!) And for all those wondering how wanting to shoot high-velocity plastic pellets at my fellow man fits into that world view, then remember that it's just a game, and there's nothing that scouts love more than a good game!

I'm staring at the hat I got from KISC, which says on it 'live the dream'. When I first got to KISC I thought that it was the place itself that was the dream; the building, the activities, the people, the mountains. I thought that I would have to wake up from the dream when I came back home (I know, it's a terrible metaphor we're in here, but be brave) but instead, as I wrestle mightily to bring this blog to a close, I realised that KISC, and its dream, is a state of mind. When they tell you to live the dream, they don't mean have a great time and then spend your time afterwards reminiscing and sighing that it's over. What they really mean is to take what you found at KISC, whatever it may be, and fit it in to your life at home. So whenever I wear that hat, or put my highly fashionable pink jumper on, or look up from my desk at my KISC neckerchief, I remember that I had three glorious months to help run a chalet, and learn all that I could take from that chalet to live in my own life. Not a bad thing, that.

Now, I have a cup of tea to attend to, so go make yourself one and thanks very much for reading this blog. I wish you a happy 2012, and if you find yourself at a loose end at all during it then why not see if I've written another blog- it might pass five minutes or so...

Preparing to leave

Note: I would have posted this before I left, but I was busy packing and such. Look out for one more post as well in about half a week!


Finding myself with a bag half-packed, and some angry mediocre metal playing, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the end of my time here at KISC is coming to an end. Since the last few days have been rather nice, I thought I might take the time to relate them to you.


Firstly, Jon Mozley came out to visit me for the past three days. And secondly, just as he arrived, it started snowing in a big way. The snow has been touch-and-go for a while (I even blogged about it in the Think Pink Blog, which I have been regularly posting in- give it a read!) but on the day Jon arrived we had a good 10cm. The day after we had a föhn wind, which is a warm wind that turns your wonderful snow into rain. However even that wasn't so bad, since we headed over to Adelboden to see how Kat is settling into Our Chalet. She's doing fine, and even has her own blog where you can read all about what she's up to over there. We were at the Chalet for their annual 'invite the neighbours round for a sing-song' evening, which was very fun, partially because people thought that Jon and myself were part of the staff team and so kept shaking our hands on the way in and out! The day after that, I was working, but managed to get enough time in lunchbreak to go sledding with Jon and Kat and Anna, a girl from Our Chalet who had come over with Kat to see KISC.


Unfortunately, my camera doesn't work well in the snow; touchscreens are confused by water, it would seem. It was a shame too, since it was one of the most beautiful afternoons I have spent here. Snow covering everything in sight, transforming the landscape that I was used to into a smooth and undulating paradise of powdery dust. Just the four of us, sledding and throwing snowballs, the sound of our laughter and screams muted by the still-falling snow, drifting down to try and cover the tracks we had made. I always  think of Winter as the end of the year (as I suppose most of the Northern Hemisphere does) and so the idea of sledding through the snow at the end of my KISC experience has a certain poetic feeling to it. It was almost like the final shot of a film, panning out to lose the four small shapes in the white of the snow, the soft light of the sunshine diffracting through the snowclouds and blurring the sky and the ground together into a seamless continuum of grey-white. I had never felt sadder to be leaving, and the day between then and now has been tinged with an aura of melancholy. However, it feels far from a cliché. I have had a life-changing experience here, and made friends who I will do my best to keep from slipping away from as the years and the distances grow between us.


Of course, it's not all that bad. I am looking forward to being at home again, not least because we have a bath at home that I can relax in, and a dog who I hope will recognise me! I also, interestingly enough, have a job interview on the 21st for the role of part-time segway driver! As exciting as that is, I am also going to start looking for a 'real' job (meaning that it has a salary instead of an hourly rate; that's as much as I can work out regarding the difference between a real job and a pretend one) I have also just found a link to a job as a receptionist, and an Editorial Coordinator. So I have ten minutes to negotiate the confusing application process, and then it is back to catering for my last day of work with good cheer and Christmas songs playing!

A week of changes

It feels as if it has been forever since I last posted on here, though in reality it's barely been over a week! With that in mind I am not starting this post with an apology for it's lateness as was previously planned, though it was such a good apology that I might delay the next post so that I can get it in.


Anyway, as the title suggests, it's been a bit of a week of upheaval. Kat came out to visit, which was cracking, and then we had Staff Day Out, organised in secret for all the staff of the Autumn season. We went to see some Roman Ruins, which were pretty inspiring, then we went to do Go-Karting, which I have decided is officially one of my favourite things to do ever! We then rounded off with a trip to the Swiss version of Cadbury World, which even managed to have a weird bit about Aztecs in it just like Cadbury World; the only difference was that the voice-over man was a HUGE fan of chocolate, so much so that it was a little worrying! Then, after that, we had a half day of work and then an afternoon of deep-cleaning the staff-room in preparation for the new Winter season Shorties, which was exhausting and not helped by the hangover I was working through from the Staff Day Out Party the day before!


That was yesterday. Today, I am writing this from one of the bunks in the Africa Room on the first floor of the Old Chalet. Three of the Autumn Shorties have left this morning: Johan, who you will all of course recall is from Sweden, Laura from Australia and Rikke from Denmark. Of the five remaining, one of us is moving tonight into her flat as a Long Term Staff Member (Caoimhe, from Ireland) and the remaining four of us are in the Africa Room as Helpers. We get to wear the exclusive colour of Green (in a work place where everyone is in pink, it's quite special, trust me!) and basically cook and clean while the Long Term Staff get all the new shorties through training. Speaking of them, one has already arrived and the others are all due in before 5 tomorrow, when training begins.


These changes, while not exactly upsetting, have just left me feeling a bit unsettled, like a pile of leaves kicked up by the wind that hasn't had time to drift back down to earth yet. I'm lying in my bunk, my stuff half-packed underneath me, wishing that I was either at home or back in the Staff Room dreading having to get up early for catering tomorrow. This room feels like a waiting room, a limbo between being staff and being a civilian again. The bunk bed feels cramped, and there aren't enough places to put my things. I can't pack because it's still another ten days before I leave, but I can't get everything out otherwise everyone will have to walk over my socks to get to bed. Meanwhile, Kat is over at Our Chalet, making snowflakes and having much more snow that we have at KISC and generally having a grand time, which has the unintentional side-effect of making my bunk bed all the more cramped and lonely.


There's nothing to be done about it; I'll get used to things when training gets under way tomorrow, and my scheme of pretending to have a Welsh accent around the new Shorties will hopefully work and confuse them all mightily! But right now I am in a bit of a slump. Only Men Aloud, the welsh male choir who won a telly show a while ago, is drifting over the speakers, and I have a stash of chocolate at the foot of the bed, so to top it all I also feel like I'm about to hit the menopause or something. I guess it's always tough waking up after the dream ends!

Where did all the time go?

I am starting to lose track of which day it is, which is disappointing; part of the problem is that I've stopped writing what I'm doing each day in my diary,  which means that I can't think to myself "I'm in House today, so it must be Wednesday". Instead, all I know is that I am definitely in House, and the question of what day it is has to be discarded in favour of easier questions, such as "how much GH31 detergent do I put in with a wash that is roughly 5/8 full, and therefore right in the middle of a half load and a 3/4 load?" (the answer, by the way, depends on what you are washing. Kitchen articles, for example, take more than Pinks!) And to make matters even worse, I am going to have to start paying attention to what day it is quite soon!


For example, Kat is coming on Friday this week, and staying until Tuesday- or Wednesday, I can't remember. This means that I need to know when Friday is, and when Tuesday or Wednesday are, and not get them in the wrong order and drop Kat off at the station before I've picked her up (or not picked her up, if I get Friday wrong too). Still with me? Good, because the Wednesday before Kat is here we have a General Staff Meeting, which means I not only have to know which day that Wednesday is, but also not confuse it with the next Wednesday and leave Kat on her own while I go to a meeting that happened the week before (assuming that she is even here on that Wednesday and that it wasn't the Tuesday which she was supposed to go). Also, on the Sunday that she is here, we have Staff Evaluations so I need to remember which day Sunday is. So, that's (maybe) two Wednesdays, a Tuesday (maybe), a Friday and a Sunday. Oh and then the Thursday after Kat's gone it's Staff Day Out... or was the Wednesday? No it might be Wednesday, in which case Kat definitely goes on Tuesday... or if she is really going on Wednesday then I've made a right hash of organising things! Then on the Friday after Kat leaves we are deep cleaning the staffroom, so I need to get Friday right or Miguel will get very upset when I try and vacuum his bed when he's still in it. Thankfully I can distinguish between morning and afternoon still, so it's actually unlikely that I'll vacuum Miguel's bed while he's still in it; more likely I'll have stolen all his bedlinen before he goes to bed on the wrong day.


Anyway, sorry for that long and confusing paragraph. I am quite tired from my journey to Our Chalet today. For the uninitiated among you, Our Chalet is an international centre for the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (or WAGGGS, rather amusingly). It's essentially the same as KISC, I hear, but a bit smaller and rather prettier on the inside. I had a day off and an invitation from the maintenance guy over there, so I hiked over Bunderspitz and down to Adelboden, and amongst the plethora of chalets dotted around I finally found the one with a giant trefoil on it. Walking up, I was greeted by a rather friendly looking ginger cat, and I suppose it was my fault for picking it up but it still bit me, which I thought was unwelcoming to say the least. Setting aside whatever doubts I had germinating in the soil of my soul, however, I pressed on up to the chalet proper. A car was just pulling out as I got there, but there was still a car and a van left so I reasoned that there would be at least one person around. It is the quiet season after all, and the website said that they were renovating, but I figured that there must be someone around to feed the cat (or maybe not, which would explain the little horror from down the drive)
However, there was nobody there. The place seemed deserted. I knocked on a few doors, and peered in through a few windows, but nothing. It was like they'd seen a smelly boy coming up the drive, set the cat on me and all gone and hidden in the basement. I even rang the phone, to see if that could galvanise someone out of a cupboard of wherever they were hiding, but instead I just stared at the phone in the reception, three feet away from me, which stared back at me as it rung, and smugly remained unanswered. I sat down on a bench, hoping that the person who had driven off had just gone to the shops for a newspaper or something, and as I sat there two things happened: firstly, I remembered that Kristoff, who had invited me over in the first place, was on holiday and so not in. Secondly, another cat came and sat next to me. And then promptly started clawing at the bench. Understandably, I was a tad nervous. However, I didn't seem to be in immediate danger so I continued to sit there, refusing to be cowed by the threat of being shredded like a chicken. Understanding this, and obviously wishing to push the envelope a little further, the cat took an interest in my sandwich. It almost climbed into my lap to get to the sandwich, and when I gave it a corner of said sandwich it immediately ate the ham and cheese, and then left the bread! Speaking of sandwiches, have they always been spelt without the 'h' after the 'w'? Really? When did I start making that spelling mistake?!


Giving up on Our chalet as a bad job, I had to get the bus back home. At this stage I realised that I had no cash. This meant that I had to go all the way over to Adelboden to find a cash machine. Interestingly, it turns out that when they say that Our Chalet is in Adelboden, what they mean is that it's on the other side of a little valley and the village itself is set all the way up the hill, and the genius who designed the place thought that the best place for the cash machine was right at the top. So I missed my bus, and to be fair it could have been worse, but remember that I was still bearing a nasty cat bite and the disappointment of no girl guides to show me round their stupid centre, so it was a crushing end to the day! The hike itself was lovely, though; perfect weather, and no blisters which is always a bonus!


Anyway, I need to do some captions on the Facebook photos from my time here, so I guess that's all for now! And who knows, by the next blog post I might be a Pinkie no longer...

The Two-thirds-of-the-way-mark

The lights in the staffroom are terrible. The energy saving light bulbs seem to be saving energy by no actually illuminating anything, and the only saving grace is the lamp that stands near the window, which manages to single-handedly illuminate the entire room. It's the one thing that I would change about KISC if I had the opportunity; I love the work, the food is good, and the people are all wonderful, but my God the staffroom is dingy in the evenings!


The evenings are getting colder now; down to -6 on some nights. I only know this because Mum and Dad have just visited and I saw the temperature in the rental car they had for the trip. It was lovely to see them, and it also meant that I finally made it out of the valleys and into a real city- Bern. It's a beautiful city, though I wasn't entirely sure what to make of the architecture; some bits were very German, but there were some bits that you could convince yourself were Italian if it hadn't been for the freezing cold. I also managed to purchase (finally) a soft-shell jacket, at a very reasonable price, so the whole trip was really rather nice! However, they have now gone home again, leaving at 5am this morning to get the plane (and in typical Dad style, Dad took the room key with him!) They've taken some of my clothes home with them, so hopefully my bag should actually fit all my stuff in it properly for the return journey instead of bulging out at every angle, threatening to burst like an overstuffed pillow if I so much as look at it wrong. And also, them going home marks the two-thirds point of my stay here at KISC.


I am due home on the 20th December, staying for an additional 10 days as a helper while the new Shorties are trained up and some of the long-term staff are also trained up (apparently they need training too, and are not just born with the skills they need as it sometimes seems!). It's a strange period of time, because I'm unsure of whether to start reminiscing about the good times had in preparation for the journey home, or whether I should still be thinking that I have ages until I'm leaving this fantastic place. There is just over a month left of my time here; in some ways that is a long time (or will be if I start preparing to leave) and in other ways it's still quite a long time to go. In the meantime I'll just settle for cracking on with work. Two days in a row of catering this week, and despite my earlier grumbles in past posts about catering it has been a lot of fun. Wednesday morning saw me completely on my own, pottering around the kitchen washing up the three spoons that got used at breakfast and making what was (apparently) a very successful orange sponge cake for Pol's birthday. Today it's been me and Rikke, and after a devastatingly uneventful morning, in which the Spanish Omelet still managed to be about 10 minutes late due to the egg refusing to cook, we are looking at whipping up some soup and sweet and sour pork for dinner. Then hopefully this evening we shall be watching the Lord of the Rings (because any spare three hours in your life can hardly be filled with anything more suitable) and then, this weekend, I have a very exciting job. In the village this weekend there is some sort of fair going on, and KISC is having a large black German tent with a fire and some games. And I get to help run it! How cool is that?! I can't decide whether I am more excited about the tent or the fire or what, but I am very much looking forward to it, before getting back to work at the centre next week.


That's about all for now, I think I'll just read a bit more of my book before I get back in the kitchen...

Musings upon Britishness, the state of homeliness and the nature of time

The last two days in a row have seen some of us watching Monty Python films- The Meaning of Life, and And Now For Something Completely Different- and the welcome blast of Englishness has prepared me for my parents visiting tomorrow. It's strange how much I miss British speech; although hardly common, the odd "by Jove" and "I say" really make me feel at home! But thinking of being at home, it really is remarkable how quickly KISC came to feel like home. The familiarity of the centre has already reached the stage where moving something around- such as cooking in the guest kitchens while we deep-clean the normal kitchen- just doesn't feel right, and the return to the normal kitchen today actually caused a palpable wave of relief to flow through me. It's a shame, then, that I am already in my last four weeks as a shortie here at KISC!


Somehow, somewhere, the time has gone. It's not that I've not done anything while I've been here; last week Johan and I went up the Niesenbahn (the steepest funicular railway I've ever been on, and certainly the longest!) and saw some of the best views I've yet seen of the Kander valley. I've also done lots of work, including splitting tree trunks as big as tractor tyres and building a floor. It really is like they told us when we started; the time just disappears! Which, it must be said, is better than it crawling by. Which, paradoxically, it is doing now. I am on duty, which means that I can't go to bed until at least 10:30 in case one of the four guests we have in the chalet right now needs something. At 10:30 I have to go on a walk round the centre, making sure that all the right doors are locked, lights are off, and that anybody who hasn't yet arrived knows where they have to go. It's ironic that I was thinking only a few days ago that it had been weeks since I was on duty, and that I actually missed being the one who gives their thought for the day in the morning, and now here I am wishing the time would go faster so I can go to bed! Incidentally, my thought this morning can be viewed here and is well worth a watch if you've not already seen it! And if you have, then why not watch it again?


I've just noticed the loose, disconnected prose that this blog is becoming. Usually I write something down in my journal before posting it here, so it has time to be thought out a bit more and maybe edited slightly before making it out where literally tens of people will read it. Right now, however, I am pretty much free writing. Just fingers to keyboard, and if the brain gets in the way first with a thought then so much the better. I apologise, therefore, if this post is a little sloppier than some of my other ones. I will do a proper blog post soon, promise! Maybe after Mum and Dad have gone on Thursday...

Climbing and Schwingen from the rafters!

I did my first real rock climb on Tuesday- very rewarding! Jon Morgan and I did 6 pitches (apparently that means a rope length, about 50m) to the top of this rock and then 3 abseils down. It was quite tough, but it was fantastic to get to the top and look down at what we had come up! I'm not sure whether I prefer it to hiking, but I definitely hope to go again! Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much longer we will get to do exciting activities like that; the weather is due to close in any day now. Yesterday we had a fern, which is a strong and sometimes warm wind which howls down the valley (and makes all the flags wrap around the flagpoles in strange and incomprehensible ways, which is a real pain when you're in House, as I am today!) and after the fern we usually get either rain or snow. It's been cloudy ever since the fern, and apparently at the weekend it's due to get worse, so hiking may be off but who knows- skiing and sledging may well be on!

Work-wise it's been quite a good week; yesterday I was in grounds, splitting tree-trunks with Johan and Sam, and refilling the sauna's woodstore. In the wake of the tree-trunk splitting a man-points chart has been put up in the staff-room, to document all the manly (or unmanly) activities that go on amongst the staff. So far Pol has lost points for bullying a girl, and Kyle has gained points for a fart. It's a promising start, to  be sure. Today is House, which is quite fun despite the flags of doom- quite a few check-ins to do, and I managed to have a great session cleaning bathrooms listening to Pete Tong on the essential mix from 2002 (look it up, it's a fantastic track!) Alas, on the PR front progress on the blog remains slow. However, now that Pol is back off holiday I can hopefully learn to use the Mac's editing software (unfortunately Windows Movie Maker just doesn't cut the mustard for what I want to do!). It is a shame, since I have always tried to avoid Mac on the grounds that I don't like them, but then sometimes we just have to man up and get on with life!

On Tuesday, in addition to climbing, the whole staff team went out to learn how to do Schwingen, which is a Swiss wrestling style invented by farmers. The rules  of this sport which is woefully underplayed in the UK are fairly simple; you play in a ring with sawdust on the floor, and each combatant wears special shorts with a leather belt. Each opponent has one hand on their opponents belt at the back of the shorts, and another on their leg, and the idea is to get your opponent onto their back. We had a blast, and some of us weren't even that bad at it! I came away with a bruised toe, crushed finger, and aches which are only now showing on Friday (though some of that might be from the manly log-splittng which we were doing).

I don't know what I'm doing after lunch, but I'm going to leave now so that I can relax a bit before getting back to work!

I've just got back from hiking up to First and then Stand, a total ascent of about 1300m as the cablecar has stopped running to Allmenalp for Autumn. It feels like I haven't written anything for ages, which is odd because I haven't really been doing that much lately. I've been in a bit of slump where I would rather sit in and read books on the Kindle than go to the Crystal (not Dessies, which has been closed for about three weeks now but is due to reopen tomorrow, to the great excitement of the Pinkies and the trepidation of their bank managers) or head down to socialise with the Dutch Work Party, who arrived just after the Spanish Work Party left. Sadly, the staff team just don't seem to be gelling in the same way with the Dutch as we did with the Spanish. They work just as hard, but there was something more open and friendly about the Spanish as they raked leaves or dug out tree roots in the campsite. And speaking of all things outdoorsy, I have been officially signed off to drive Chloe (tractor) and Leena (transporter), which is very exciting! It meant that I got to spend all of Monday morning driving between the Wood Compound in the campsite and the wood store in the Chalet, filling it up for the winter to come, and then in the afternoon I was transporting loads of leaves to the dumping ground we have set aside in the campsite for such things- that was a lot of fun as I had to climb into the back of Leena when it was raised up in order to help the leaves out- for a bunch of dead things they were bloody hard to move! But other than that, I haven't done much. I think it's because I've had quite a few weeks with a lot of catering, or so it seems.

At KISC, we are all supposed to have roughly the same amount of time in the various areas of the centre- house, catering, grounds, and maintenance. Some are limited, namely maintenance and grounds, because of the weather and other factors. Also, if you prove yourself chronically unable to work in the kitchen without setting yourself and other people on fire then they will probably put you down with the washing machines more often. However at the moment it seems that some of us have more catering than others (namely me) and others have more house (the girls). Of course I may just be imagining it all, but I had catering four times last week and while I don't dislike any of the jobs we have to do here at the centre, four twelve-hour days a week is quite tiring and it's hard to motivate yourself when you're exhausted! Thankfully this week I only have two days of catering all told, so it's nice to have a bit of a break and to work a usual day. Tomorrow I am in Maintenance, which will be fun as it's only the second time I've been in and hopefully by now all the insulation is finished (the insulation seems to sit in the wall and people's hair with equal ease, ifthe other people who have done it are anything to go by)

Also this week we have the Ruechestei 2011. This is an incident hike taking place at night, and KISC have entered a team to compete against the Rover Scouts of the Bernese Kanton. It should be fun; the story for the event is that a fictional town has been hit by an earthquake and each team is a family who is being evacuated. Unfortuately, as the shortie who seems to have the most German (I should never have been so loquacious at the dinner we had with all the centre's suppliers a few weeks back) I have been given the role of father of this family. I and my family (so far I have a cousin, a great-granddaughter and possibly a brother) have to make a list of things that we want the crisis team to get from our house and take to the evacuation place, and we have to choose three important items that we are going to take with us on the hike (the list is fictional). To this end I have been practicing my German, mainly on a hairdresser who cut my hair (for a massive thirty francs, which I then discovered had been wasted as Jenneke could have done the same job at the centre for free. Bum.) and it was very satisfying, as I managed to understand her and she managed to understand me!

That's all for now, so next time hopefully you will hear how we did at Ruechestei, and whether or not I have gone mad with too much time in the kitchen, and whether or not I've crashed Chloe or Leena yet... watch this space!

Murder, friends and sunburn

Hello again,

Two things of varying degrees of inevitability have happened since the last blog: I have joined the PR and Marketing team, and I have been voted the Smile of the Week today. The former was always going to happen, given my love of talking and a platform upon which to do it. The sceond was not strictly inevitable, but bearing in mind that there are only 20 of us here at KISC this Autumn and about 16 weeks of the Autumn Season, there was a fair chance that I would get voted in at some point. Sarcasm aside, however, it is an honour to have my arrangement of face so highly acclaimed, and I have been also allowed to write an entry in the Think Pink! blog which is on the KISC Website here. In addition to that blog, one of the points that came out of the first PR and Marketing team meeting (which sadly was only myself and Pol, the PR and Marketing Assistant here) was that maybe a second blog was required on the website, which would require regular updating to supplement the Smile of the Week blog. So watch this space, my portfolio of written work may well be about to expand...


Other than that, it has been another fun week here in the middle of the Alps. Life is mostly back to normal in the wake of the floods, and we have just about got used to the new tree sat across the island in the river outside the chalet. The Dutch Work Party have arrived, and the Spanish have gone home. Their fiesta fiesta which I mentioned last time was a fantastic event, which had most of us wandering around the centre the next morning looking like moles who have had their warren subject to a round of shelling, jumping at loud noises and complaining at the brightness of the lights. The Dutch were not expected to throw any parties of such magnitude; if anything, I got the impression that we were going to be aided for two weeks by a bunch of geriatrics. However, they seem quite young, and capable of throwing a party so we will have to wait and see. I won't be seeing very much of them this week, however, because Kat is coming over to visit for three days, so hopefully I shall have the opportunity to get up some more mountains and maybe head over to Spiz (pronounced "Shpeatz", lest it's confused with the German word for "horny") to see the second hand outdoors shop. Sadly, in preparation for her visit, my face has gone into full teenager mode, throwing grease out like some sort of spinning deep-fat fryer, though on the plus side this gives me an opportunity to use the facewash I found in the laundry without worrying that it will dry my face out too much (the cold here is destroying my skin! Ahem.)

Another interesting thing that has happened is that I managed kill Miguel. Not literally, of course, but the staff are playing what we un the UK would call redrum, a game where you are given a target, a location and an object, and you have to bring all three components together in order to "kill" the target. If you are killed you have to give your target to your killer, and so they progress until eventually they kill the person who has to kill them, and they have won. I managed to get Miguel in the International Friendship Room with the Salad Bar (which usually lives in the dining room, at the opposite end of the chalet) and even when I asked him to touch the salad bar he didn't quiet understand what was going on. Unfortunately for me, my next target, Jenneke, saw this and as she already knew exactly where and what Miguel had to kill her with, she is now going to be very hard to get. I have considered many plans, some of which involve the Swiss Army, but in the end I will probably have to get someone to help me tie her up and carry her into the Whiskey Bar (a half-finished building in the basement, just off 'the Laundry Cave'). I will keep you posted on how I am doing with the murder game, but for the record this was in fact my second murder: Before Miguel I enlisted the aid of one of the the Spanish Work Party to get Myriam (General director and general boss of KISC) into the Australia room where I hit her with a condom. I had debated long and hard about whether or not to open said condom first, but I thought that touching my boss with an open condom was just a bridge too far. Thankfully she was not fussy about the particulars of the murder.

Anyway, again I have looked at the time and seen that I have a scant thirty minutes before I have to dash and cook dinner for everyone. Vanya is probably not coming back in after this morning as she was looking rather peaky, and for some reason people get very unreasonable when they see the cook sneezing into the soup. So I shall sign off here and go see what everyone else is up to; my two compadres who are due in the kitchen went for a bike ride so I'm hoping that they make it back in time to actually cook some dinner with me!

Rain, Spain, and the first Snow of Autumn

Unfortunately, the flood which hit the Kander region on Monday knocked out our Internet connection, with the result that I could only get back on today, though that is better than the Friday they had estimated for us. Heavy rain and a fall of snow in the last few days made it swell to the point of making the bridge that is the main access point to KISC impassable for fears of huge logs taking you with them, and in Gasterntal (the beautiful valley just up the river from us) fully one third of their infrastructure was reportedly washed away.  The Swiss Army, some of whom were fortunately staying at the Tower for training (the Tower is a building on the campsite), went into the village to help pump out cellars, as did some of the Pinkies yesterday, and things have largely returned to normal by now- the sun is back out, there aren't many clouds in the sky, and Olave the centre cat still likes to hide under the Coke Machine.

The Spanish Work Party arrived the day before the flood- good thing too, as they probably wouldn't have made it here if they had been travelling after the flood! They seem a barrel of laughs, even though for the most part I can't understand what they're saying unless they are talking to me in English. I've been asking Miguel to teach me phrases in Spanish, but by the time the work party arrived my attempt at fluency had been limited to saying hello, asking for drinks, and the word for "sheep" and "river", which aren't much use unless I'm talking to a farmer. However we were chatting amicably to them one evening when they produced a laminated sheet of A4 with more phrases for us to learn! "Bienvenudo de la tren de l'amor" was one such phrase... you can look it up in your own time but needless to say that I'm still not fluent in Spanish.
For those of you who are wondering what on earth a work party actually is, they are simply groups who turn up and stay for free in exchange for doing work on the campsite. So far they have mainly been raking leaves and, on the day when they couldn't get over to the campsite because the bridge was a log-filled death-hole, deep cleaning rooms in the Old Chalet. They are also quite good at football, and KISC plays them every time they visit. As far as I know we haven't won yet (or ever), but we came mightily close last night, and managed to get a smile from the one Spanish staff member who can actually play football while the rest of us stumble about the pitch like asthmatic penguins. Tonight we have been invited to the Spanish Work Party Party, which is supposed to be an event of some magnificence and which I am rather looking forward to! Poor Johan was tricked by Jenneke, the House Manager, into swapping duties so that he is on duty today, and he is not happy about that one bit. To make matters worse, Jenneke hasn't been in today- she went home yesterday with a bad cold and hasn't been seen since- so she might not end up going in any event!

I did mention earlier that we had some snow, and since most people reading this are British (in fact I think they all might be!) that is obviously a subject worth returning to. Down at Chalet level we only had 5 or 6 inches (now that I like in the Alps I can officially start throwing around phrases like 'only 5 or 6 inches') but on Saturday afternoon some of us took the cable car up to Sunnbuel and found as much as 40cm of snow just lying around, asking to be thrown and sledded on. Our sledding attempts were frankly pathetic, since the snow was too wet and soft to do anything other than give way, so our sleds just sank, but the snowball throwing went pretty well and when we got back to the cable car station we found a live radio show from the restaurant of traditional German music, which Kyle and I managed to enjoy for a whole hour on our half day off while the others headed down to start catering at 4. We even manged to have a nice snowball fight on the front lawn of KISC the next day- in the same spot that 24 hours later was covered in muddy water being washed down at a frightening speed form the mountains. The weather here is definitely strange!

Since my last blog we have also used the sauna for the first time this season. The sauna is a genuine Finnish build which was donated to the Netherlands Jamboree either in 1937 or 1995 (those are the two date for the jamborees in the Netherlands, and I don't know which it is!). After the jamboree the decision was made to take it apart and send it to KISC, presumably because with several thousand Scouts attending it was quite hard to decide who should take it home. It is wood-fuelled, which means that someone has to sit with it and tend the fire until it's ready, the honour of which fell to me. It was dark, and I was on my own, in a log cabin on the campsite which looks rather like a creepy wood at first glance. I was also terrified that one of my fellow pinkies was going to walk up and make me jump by staring in at the window like a serial killer of a zombie would do. Thankfully nobody did, and we had a lovely sauna with beer, manly chat, and a surprising amount of nudity for a group of people who have only known each other a month. Instead of a lake or some snow we had buckets of water to cool off with, which was great fun to listen to when someone else did it, and I can't wait for the next Sauna! We were due to have one on Monday, but the flood sort of got in the way of that.

Anyway, I have just realised that I have spent my whole lunch sat behind this laptop, and so I now have to go to catering to cook dinner for over 70 people. Must just keep thinking of the party afterwards! I also have a new KISC neckerchief to cheer me up if things get too grim, so off I go!

Sunshine, Mountains and a two whole weeks of real work!

I've just now, for the first time, put up the small table that is in the room Miguel and I share, so now I can type at a reasonable angle with the added bonus of being able to hear the sounds of sheep bells, cow bells, and birds (who oddly enough have not been outfitted with bells, although I suspect it's just a matter of time) drifting in through my window. Thirty minutes left of my lunchbreak, but when the afternoon's activity is strolling around the campsite with a lawnmower in the glorious sunshine, it's a bit hard to tell where break ends and work begins.

We are now two weeks into our time at KISC, and already it's getting hard to remember how long I've been here- I keep having a suspicious feeling that I've been here forever, but have somehow been missed off the staff boards from previous years. Speaking of staff boards, we did manage to get ours finished finally, and only a week late. It's in the style of a Pacman board, with the senior members of staff as Pacmen while the rest of us are either ghosts or fruit. Not a bad effort, and considering that by the end of it we really didn't care any more it could have gone a whole lot worse. And of course, finishing the staff board means that we now have access to the staff bikes! This has of course increased the range which we can rove about dramatically, although I managed to surpass myself by knackering my wrist before we had even been given the staff bikes to use! The fault mainly lies with Swiss bike manufacturers, who have unhelpfully put the brakes round the opposite way to English bikes, which means that when I get out of the pub and want to borrow a bike off a long term staff member to do an awesome skid, instead I end up doing front flips which result in a bandaged wrist and an X-ray (an X-ray which is now proudly taped to the window so people can see my healthy unbroken wrist, and is soon to be joined by Rikke's X-ray of her foot, which she hurt at football training last night). But my wrist didn't stop me from doing things like cleaning out a walk-in fridge, cleaning (and naming) trollies in the kitchen, mopping, or laying a floor in the Irish room, which is being renovated this Autumn.

Work here begins each day at 8am, with Thought for the Day. This is usually some sort of game, or little thing to get everyone awake for the day ahead, and also a good time for any notices about anything that needs mentioning. The exception to this is if you are working in catering, when you have to be in work at 7am to get breakfast ready for 7:30! Alternatively, if you are Kyle, then you sleep through until 7:56 and get woken up by your roommate with just enough time to get to Thought for the Day. Then we work through in whatever department we are in for the day until 10, when we have our first coffee break. Sometime between 10:15 and 10:30 we pick ourselves up again and carry on working until 12, when blessed lunch is served! If you aren't in catering you then get a lovely break until 2, when work begins again; catering have to clean up after lunch which is a bit sad, but they do then get a massive break (usually starting between 1 and 1:30) until 4:30, when they start getting dinner ready for 6. The rest of us get another coffee break at 4, and then work is officially over after dinner- time to kick back! Unless, that is, you are on duty. If you are on duty, then you have to man the phones during lunch and between the time dinner starts and 10:30pm. You also have to come up with a thought for the day, and help the kitchen with the cleaning up after lunch and dinner.  A bit of a pain, but someone has to do it!

We are lucky in the Autumn season in that we get to work in all the areas of the centre's life: catering, house (laundry and cleaning), maintenance, grounds and on Sundays one of us gets to spend time in the admin office doing paper shuffling. And even that is quite fun, as for the minute it consists of scanning in the centre's collection of photographs, which is essentially an excuse to spend your day looking at various pictures of the chalet, learning about its history and suchlike. We've also nearly all had a go at being on duty on our own (our first duty was done with a long term staff member who could catch us before we did anything stupid like take a booking for four thousand lemmings staying in the sauna room, or something like that), which also means we've all missed something fun going on in the evening- on duty you are not allowed to drink or leave the chalet, so it's usually on the day you have duty that all the most exciting things happen. On my duty day, there was a flat warming party for one of the long term staff, but instead I had to stay in and check in French and German people, and take calls from the rest of the Short Term staff who got lost on the way to the flat warming party.

That said, it's not all work here. So far on my days off I have been up to Bunderspitz, and I have practically been up to the Jegertosse, which is an Alpine meadow, as well. I say practically because while we made it up to the alpine meadow that is the Jegertosse, the path we were following actually terminates at a wooden cross, a fact we only discovered upon getting back to KISC, when I asked Alexandros where the path went after Jegertosse. Turns out that we were only about 200m from the end of the path anyway, which is annoying but means that we could probably fudge it if anyone asks us whether we made it up there. Bunderspitz was much more exciting in some ways, as we were 400m higher than Jegertosse (2546m above sea level) and it was an actual top, which is more satisfying to stand on than a meadow (though the view while having lunch in a field with clouds below us was rather special, I must admit) This week coming I am planning to take a half day and climb the Via Ferata (essentially a permanent climbing route up a waterfall) and a full day to do the three valleys hike with some of the long term staff. Should be great fun!

Arrival and Training

The tunnel was ten minutes long, just darkness and the strange feeling you get in your ears when you go through a train tunnel, but when we burst back into the sunshine the view was incredible. Sadly, I missed my first view of KISC because I was looking out of the wrong side of the train, but it was probably just as well- the view was so picturesque that if everything had gone right with it, my head might just have exploded with the beauty of life in that single moment. I got off the train at Kandersteg station, decidedly too hot in my trousers and hiking boots, and since I was an hour early I decided to wander into the village and see what was there.

Kandersteg village is a small alpine village, which I am sure is not really any different from hundreds of other villages in the region. However, when you are used to the flat grassy fields of England, it is easy to convince yourself that you have landed in a little slice of heaven. Chalets really are the main style of house here, all of them wooden (though newer ones are concreted on the ground floor) and they all have large woodpiles hinting at an idyllic, eco-friendly existence. The village is small, but not poorly equipped- I passed a post office, supermarket and several outdoor shops on my way to a seat outside the tourist information centre. And sure enough, dotted around the village, one can find scouts. Within ten minutes of arrival I had received an offer to trade neckerchiefs, which I decided to turn down since I had only been wearing my UK neckerchief for a total of half an hour ever. After an hour of wandering round the village, probably gawping like an idiot, Rikka arrived from KISC to pick me up, and we drove the ten minutes back to the centre.

KISC was founded in 1923 by Walter Von Bonstetten and Robert Baden-Powell. Bon Stetten was the chief scout of Switzerland at the time, and as most people know Baden-Powell started the whole scouting movement. Since it's inception, the centre has expanded in many ways, but as I dumped my bag in the Swiss room of the Old Chalet (they got a new one built next to it in 2005 so they had more room for the staff to live in) and took off my boots, I was struck by how much history still lives on in the place. The bunk-beds in the rooms are still done in the traditional style, and most of the interior is wooden. There are plenty of reminders about previous events and visitors to KISC all around the building (they only have about 1/3 of their donated neckerchiefs pinned up around the top of the communal rooms, and we are trying to fit more up!) but the place isn't stuffy in the way a stately home or a castle can be; it definitely makes room for the present among the past.

The first few days were a bit strange, as I was pretty much left to my own devices in the middle of an outdoors centre that I didn't know my way around or anything about. I was three days early for the start of the Autumn season, and the first of the "shortys", as we are known, to arrive. I had a walk into Kandersteg village, down the rive, and drank in the views of the mountains and the river itself, grey with glacial melt and fast0flowing. Three days later, we had all arrived: Su from South Korea, Laura from Australia, Miguel from Mexico, Rikke from Denmark, Caihome (pronounced 'Keeva') from Ireland, Kyle from the US, and Johan from Sweden, along with myself. We were welcomed into the staff team, and on Monday our training began.

Most of the training days were fairly placid, only disrupted by the occasional fire drill (including the one where we missed five of the staff who were hiding in places like the shower, waiting for us to come and evacuate them) and the many coffee breaks that seem to happen every five minutes sometimes. Tuesday was the one exception to this. 6:15am, and the long term staff burst into the staff living area (they live in their own chalets), bashing pan lids together and making loud noises until we had all got up. A short walk to get fancy dress items followed, during which I picked up a white fur jacket, a pink skirt, an alien mask and a  yellow German military helmet, and a wooden gun, making me look rather like a militant, extra-terrestrial pimp. After that we headed to the Tower, where we were given breakfast and our mission: in two teams, we were to make our way into the village on a photo scavenger hunt! This was very exciting, and on the way into the village we learnt the location of all the long term staff chalets.
However, at a car park just outside Kandersteg, we ran into Vahne, from Bulgaria (catering assistant) who explained to us that we now had to make our way round the various businesses and places in Kandersteg
However, our train eventually managed to find its way to the tourist information and, after a quick look round the village museum (which had a whole room dedicated to KISC) we went up the Oescninensee gondola, had a go on the toboggan run, and then walked down to the glacial lake for lunch. After lunch there was a rowing session on the lake, which turned into a swimming session since the weather was nice. Despite not having my swimming gear with me, I was OK because at the tourist information I had opted to get rid of the trousers (the sun had come up by then and was rather warm) and so just had the skirt on- a good solution for most of the day, except during the rodelbahn (toboggan run) when it became a rather embarrassing air brake, especially when a lady appeared halfway down the run adjusting her shoes. Thankfully she didn't look up.
In any case, after swimming we made it down the mountain on foot, and then were given a new challenge: we had to buy, then cook, dinner for all the staff at the chalet! It didn't go too wrong; the others were very nice about the food, even though it was half an hour late, and by the end of it I had a large headache from dehydration and so was unable to go the pub.

In any case, Saturday finally rolled around and we, the Autumn staff team, graduated as Pinkies! We're not allowed to say what happened at the ceremony (which doesn't help my attempts to convince people that Scouting isn't a cult) but it was a very moving experience. We were now ready to start work... except for the issue of the staff board. We have to make the staff board before we are allowed access to the staff bikes, and we also have to make it by the end of our first week. So far we are still arguing about the design of the board ( I am writing this right now instead of participating in said discussion), so the question of whether or not we will finish it in time, and therefore get access to staff bikes, will have to wait until next time...

The Journey

"So what do you think of Geneva?" one of my Roommates asked me as I struggled to fit my bright orange duvet into the considerably less interesting cover.
"It's dark," I replied. And, my natural wit notwithstanding, I was right. I had arrived into Geneva, Switzerland, about 45 minutes earlier from London Luton, and the time was about 9:45pm. Taking the train from the airport, then a tram two stops, back two streets, left and then on the left at the end of the road had all been accomplished with only minimal checking of direction, which had given me maximum time to try not to look terrified of anyone who came within five metres of me, as travellers on their own are wont to do. I had made it to the city hostel, where I was staying overnight before getting a train to Kandersteg in the morning.

The journey had, I reflected, been revealing in showing how I travel. Usually a continental adventure, of which I have done a fair few, would have been undertaken with friends from the University Scout and Guide Society, or my girlfriend. However, this trip was solo. I was journeying to the International Scout Centre in Kandersteg (KISC for short) to help run the centre for three months- my longest stay outside the UK ever. Whereas normally on a trip the details of flights, accommodation, transport and so on would be diligently written down, I was not sure what my hostel was even called, and had only brought one piece of paper with instructions with me instead of the usual three. It made me question what exactly it was that we had been writing down and referring to on previous trips. No panic had beset me at the lack of paperwork though; a fatalistic sense of calm had invaded my being, a faith that someone, somewhere, would tell me what I had to do. Either that or I hadn't slept well enough the night before to have the energy to worry about things like where I was going, or sleeping for the next night.

Anyway, my blinding attempt at humour was followed by an amicable chatting session during which we all discussed the usual things one discusses in hostels: the weather, where everyone else is from, what prompted them to travel to wherever you are, and so on. There was a travelling Australian, a Liechtensteiner student attending a conference, and a guy also attending the conference of an undisclosed nationality. We discussed how expensive everything is, which gave me a sinking feeling in my heart and a deflating feeling in my wallet. Then, just to spice things up, we all picked up our various books and engaged in that time-honoured tradition of ignoring everyone else around you and reading. Soon after that, things got even more exciting. Two more guys came into the room. We were literally speechless with surprise- we said not a word to them. And then, when the tension in the room was at fever pitch, the grand finale happened- we all went to sleep. It was at that point that the evening took a turn for the stranger, as the noise of the city gently lulled us off to sleep...

I awoke a few hours later, unable to breathe. This was not quite as dramatic as it sounds, as I suffer from a common disease called "OH GOD WHY CAN I NOT BREATHE THROUGH ONE OF MY GOD-DAMNED NOSTRILS?!" Some people call it hay fever, but most of those who suffer from it use the first name. Often they call it the "OH GOD WHY IS MY NOSE FILLED WITH CEMENT?!" disease, because not everyone always has the luxury of breathing through one of their nostrils. Those who do have obviously made some sort of agreement between their brain and the pollen, which states that only one nostril will be blocked in exchange for the brain refusing to use any antihistamines which you put into your system. However, that doesn't stop us, like ancient man desperately sacrificing goats to appease the uncaring gods and lift the drought which is slowly killing their village, from stuffing pills, sprays and olbas oil into our bodies like we are corpses being stuffed with pot-pourri.

In any event, I got up to go outside to the locker where my things were kept safe. The locker was opened by a keycard that works wirelessly, but alas lived outside the room, so in getting up, going outside, rooting around in my bag for the pills, and closing the locker again (my two bags didn't quite fit properly so closing the door was a bit of a mission) I managed to come fully awake. And, as I lay down again, I noticed a low rumbling that was getting slowly louder, like a storm approaching. It took me a while to work out what it was.

Snoring.

HGOOOOAAAARRRR" rising above the radiators and the aeroplanes overhead, leaving you with the kind of helpless fury that one only usually experiences when watching 'The Glee Project'. So this was the state I found myself in. Unable to breathe. And then, from out in the hallway, came another noise- one that chilled me to the bone.

There were two lifts in the hostel, down to the reception, and each one made a noise when it opened: "bing, bong!" That's fine. However, each lift had a slightly different tone to the other, and because neither of them arrived at the same time, what you ended up with was a tune. But this was not a happy tune. No, it was the kind of tune that gives small children nightmares. The kind of tune that makes people wet themselves in fear because they think creepy little girls are going to set them on fire. And you could only hear the noise when everything else was quiet; say, for example, like when the snoring beast of Geneva was on a break.
This was the position I found myself in; for half an hour it was horror music, followed by "HGOOOOAAAARRRR", followed by creepy lift music, followed by "HGOOOOAAAARRRR", with some more lift music to follow. And then, I realised that I had lost my keycard. Probably shut it in the locker, but equally likely that a robber was now stealing all twelve pairs of my underpants. Obviously I needed to go and get another keycard from reception, and now- before the robber made it away with my underwear. But I was on the top floor, which would mean that I would have to go down three flights of girls wanting to set me on fire. How I managed to find the courage is still beyond me, as is how I managed to get myself to sleep once I made it back to my bed. I suspect I hit myself with a brick, or something.

The morning arrived, sunny and with the promise of being warm. Leaving behind me the ordeals of the previous night, I clambered back onto the tram and then onto the train to Kandersteg. That was a week ago nearly now. In my next blog I will cover what happened when I arrived, and more about the centre, and training.