Sylvester in Saas Fee

New Year's in the street!


One of my favorite things about Saas Fee...all the kids get pulled around on sledges.

It was a miracle our bags were at Malpensa when we arrived there early New Year's Eve morning! From the airport, we headed up to the Swiss Alps, our first stop was Saas Fee, which is one of four villages in the Saas Valley. Saas Balen, Saas Grund, and Saas Amagell are the other three villages. Since Saas Fee is car free, when you arrive you park in a structure and then call your hotel to come pick you up in their electric little bus. After a few days, you get used to seeing them, but at first the sight is pretty comical. We checked into the Hotel Berghof, which was about a 5 minute walk to the mountain and set out to look for a New Year's destination. As we were walking around we noticed that every restaurant had a Sylvester menu. After asking around we learned that Sylvester is of course the New Year's holiday. Supposedly, in Europe, the New Year was often a time of superstition and "telling the future". In some parts of Switzerland (obviously Saas Fee), people celebrate 'Saint Sylvester's Eve' because there was a pope with the name of Saint Sylvester. I guess in many parts of Switzerland people dress in costumes and call themselves 'Sylvesterklauses.' Unfortunately, we didn't see much of this part of the tradition. However, we did have a really nice 5 course dinner at a restaurant in the Hotel Dom, that included onion soup, fois gras, sorbet, steak with rosti croquettes and tiramisu. At the beginning of dinner, most of us were hitting a wall and not thinking that a late night out was in the cards, but after a good bottle of wine our spirits and energy level changed and we bought tickets to a Sylvester party in the two bars attached. It was a great choice and provided us with the option of the Living Room bar or Popcorn (which is a bar, a ski/snowboard shop and a rental place) beneath it. One of the best parts of the evening was when Deanna was trying to bargain with the waitress for the entry fee. She didn't quite understand that A. Swiss don't really bargain and B. Swiss don't understand her sarcasm. She learned quickly! It was a great night and we made friends quickly with some guys visiting Saas from Zurich. One of them even lived in Mammoth for awhile. It was a good thing we had new friends because at quarter to 12 they said let's go outside to celebrate. If it hadn't been for them, we may have missed the massive celebration that was going on on the snowy streets of Saas Fee. We walked out of the bar into a packed street full of people opening bottles of champagne, watching snow fall while fireworks were launched in every direction. Luckily, our friends had a very large bottle of champagne, they were more than willing to share! The festivities kept going, but we headed back inside to warm up and enjoy the rest of the night. The bar was packed and everywhere you turned you heard someone speaking a different language. By the time we left, we had tons of new friends volunteering to be our guide skiing the next day. It was definitely an unforgettable experience! The perfect way to welcome in 2009!