PONTRESINA, Switzerland—I had not realized how many helpful hands await a man traveling alone with a small child. At JFK Airport an Australian woman and her grown son volunteered to roll my caravan of luggage to the check-in counter, freeing me to push my 21-month-old son, Ryan, in his stroller. My biggest concern was that I not lose Ryan’s security blanket, which he named Meeno, in the measured confusion of boarding an international flight.
The woman at the Swiss International counter efficiently worked through my check-in with toddler, stroller and overstuffed bags; at the gate, another Swiss employee motioned us coach-class boys into the business-class line for immediate boarding, ahead of captains of industry and upgraded poseurs. The cabin crew did what they could to make the flight entertaining for Ryan, from big hellos to a special children’s meal. I’d bought him a seat but he preferred to sit in my lap, holding Meeno. When he fell asleep, I put him into his seat so that I could sleep; when I woke up, somehow, he was back in my lap.
Except for the aftereffects of having been pinned in place by £32 of love for most of eight hours, everything was going well as we entered the metered taxi at Zurich Airport. The driver, apparently frustrated at having been denied a Formula 1 license, gunned down the ramps of the airport, raising a slight groan from Ryan.
Things smoothed out until we were just approaching downtown, when Ryan threw up multiple times on him, on me and on the cab’s booster seat. By the time we reached our hotel, the Widder, I’d changed Ryan into spare clothing but he was not happy. A team of porters moved the bags and the cabby put me on his mobile phone with his boss, who demanded 750 Swiss francs (about $800 at the time) to take the car out of service for the day. I told him I didn’t have that kind of money and gave the phone back to the chauffer.
A nanny arranged in advance by the hotel now appeared and we got to the room—a family-friendly suite, really, with a separate sleeping chamber for up to two children. The reception desk called: “The taxi driver wants to talk to you.” He got on and said his boss would settle for 200 francs. Ryan has barfed in some of the most distinguished cabs in New York without compensation, but OK, I had not warned the driver about Ryan’s automotive history; Swiss taxis are particularly clean, and this one, though undamaged, could use an airing; that booster seat was out of action and perhaps a goner; but most of all, I had to take care of Ryan and get rid of these people. I had one Swiss banknote left—100 francs. “Tell your boss I’ll give him 100—that’s all the Swiss money I have.” I could hear them talking, then the answer: done. I gave the money to one of the porters and so ended the start of our family ski holiday.
The nanny, who was patient and kind, took Ryan and me on a child’s tour of Zurich, stopping in two toy stores, in the children’s department of a large bookstore and at a place offering a healthy takeout lunch, then bringing us to a playground and generally helping Ryan enjoy one of my favorite cities from his own point of view. That night, I ordered from room service and did a lot of laundry in a sink as Ryan slept in his crib with Meeno.
The next day, Mommy arrived and things got back to normal, family-style. By luck, Fasching was in progress. Fasching is the Swiss version of something that, as a proud former New Orleanian, I’m very familiar with: Mardi Gras. We delayed our departure to Pontresina by two hours to see the annual parade. Costumed marching bands strutted down the main street, the Bahnhofstrasse; unlike New Orleans, where alcohol flows like the Mississippi and things can get raunchy, many children marched and many others came with their parents to see the parade.
There are few train rides in the world as beautiful and fun as those taken on the routes served by the Rhaetian Railway, which runs the distinctive red trains that climb into the Swiss Alps. Night fell as we were aboard, and Ryan, who had not experienced trans-Atlantic jetlag before, fell asleep in his stroller. His mother obliged by stretching across two seats and doing the same.
Our destination was the Engadine Valley. Not St. Moritz, the region’s famous resort, where my wife and I had been together twice before, but Pontresina, just four miles east and a stylistic world away. St. Moritz is the first Alpine retreat for the international upper class, a place that, during our last visit, hosted its annual polo matches on the frozen lake. Surrounded there by more fur than at a trappers’ ball, drinking Champagne, we sat in the VIP grandstand and watched as teams named for luxury brands and a private bank charged across the snow-topped lake as private planes made their final approaches overhead. It was all marvelous, and all very St. Moritz, but this time, we were traveling as a family.
Pontresina is just a simple town in a valley that leads to the Bernina Pass. Its one grand hotel, the Kronenhof, underwent a recent and major restoration that introduced a world-class spa. It also happens to be on my wife’s personal and very short list of world’s best hotels. Over coffee one morning, General Manager Heinz Hunkeler said: “We try to present the five-star experience without going the chi-chi way of St. Moritz.” What helped make it happen was a cycle of bad luck turned good: “We were very fortunate in an unusual way: The hotel fell into decline at a time that other grand hotels were tearing out their old furnishings to make themselves ‘modern.’ The Kronenhof couldn’t afford to do that in those days, which is why, in our renaissance, we have great, creaky parquet floors and so many other authentic touches that the other hotels wished they’d kept.”
The Kronenhof has a children’s center, and thanks to babysitting provided by a team of five women from the front desk, working in rotation, Ryan was well cared for. He made a new friend, Anton, age two. The boys took strolls together (that is, they rode while their sitters pushed) and dined together in the children’s dining room. The adults dined each evening in the formal restaurant. It was there that we met a couple from Zurich, Peter and Evelyne. They appeared nightly with their four-month-old, Yves, asleep in his stroller. Each evening would end early (if there was night life in Pontresina, we never bothered to find it), with Ryan falling asleep in his crib to the rhythmic sounds of his sucks on one of the corners of Meeno.
Of course, the good ski days were spent on the slopes. Although it was late in the season, the region is so high up, there was plenty of snow, and with spring only two weeks away, there was good light throughout the day.
The Widder welcomed us back with characteristic graciousness and we freshened up for our final dinner out. As we were about to leave, we decided that, if only to keep things as sedate as possible for our fellow diners, Ryan should bring Meeno. We looked around and a cold sense of horror came upon us at once: Meeno was gone.
I ran down to the desk. The concierge checked: the lost-and-found department at the train station closes at 7:45. It was now 7:20. With a mobile phone in each hand, knowing that I could run faster than a taxi could get me there, I took off. A young woman in a Swiss Rail uniform, seeing my distress, helped direct me to lost-and-found, where a tall man gave me a slip of paper and said that everything goes to a central depot: check this web site and good luck.
I headed back in the direction of the platform where we had arrived and retraced our movements. As I took the final few steps to where we had got the cab to the Widder, there, on a stone ledge, soiled from wet ground but folded as neatly a Swiss picnic blanket, lay Meeno. The desk staff at the hotel smiled as I waved my trophy in triumph on my return. I brought it up to Ryan. “Meeno!” he yelled in delight. We let him have a short moment of quality time with Meeno before gently surrendering the blanket to the front desk. While we took Ryan for a final dinner out, at Contrapunto, an Italian restaurant just off the Paradeplatz, the city’s main square, the Widder opened its laundry and set to work on Ryan’s blanket. When we returned, Meeno was hanging on the coat rack in our room, under a plastic cover, looking better than it had in a long time.
In the taxi to the airport the next morning, holding Meeno, Ryan began making retching sounds. I reached for the plastic bag to catch the inevitable and held it until the little joker gave us a big smile as if to say, “Fooled you!”
Swiss International’s outbound staff helped us keep Ryan entertained. Our first family trip abroad had proved correct all the good advice we had received: If you want it to go well, plan carefully, and choose your destinations and your hotels with care. It was hard to go wrong in Switzerland, the country where almost everything works as intended and where children are cherished.
Our proof was Ryan. As much fun as my wife and I had had, he had only enjoyed himself more.
In Photo: A marching band plays during the annual Fasching parade in Zurich, Switzerland. Fasching is the Swiss version of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. (MCT)
