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It's been eleven years since I last set eyes on Leysin. Much too long. Leysin is an alpine village in Switzerland facing south over the Rhone River Valley, in the Canton de Vaud. Just below is Aigle set at the opposite end of Lake Geneva from Geneva. Across the Rhone River valley is the beautiful Dents de Midi which sit in France.Above the town are two peaks ... Tour d'Ai and Tour de Mayen ... about which my fellow students and I spent the winter skiing. Since the town sits on a South facing slope it was home for many tuberculosis sanatorium in the early 1900s. Many of which were later turned into hotels, and one in particular which eventually became a school.
It is truly a magical place. I cannot write words to describe it best so I will leave it to A.E. Ellis in his book "The Rack". Here Paul and his love Michele (both tuberculum patients) discuss how coming to this remote Swiss town has affected their lives ...
"You'll see," said Paul. He got up from the boulder on which he had been sitting and went to the edge of the ridge. "There is something strange about this place" he said, looking up the valley in the direction of Brisset [Leysin]. "We all adapt ourselves to it far too easily.""What do you mean?"
"I mean that it ought to be the most terrible upheaval to come and live in the mountains, to leave everyone and everything one knows and loves, but instead one accepts it, one forgets that one ever lived in any other way and finally one doesn't even seriously think in terms of leaving -- it's as though one's past life were something one had once read about in a half-forgotten novel."
He paused, but, as she interposed no comment, he resumed: "The fact is, of course, that it's all part of some compensatory mechanism. The day comes when one is better and suddenly, in a flash, one realises that it isn't the past which is unreal but the present." He turned about and faced her. "You'll see the truth of what I say when you get back to your own people. Brisset (Leysin) and all that has happened will seem like an episode from a queer, receding dream."
Ever been to Leysin? Check out the Leysin American School homepage and the Unofficial LAS Alumni page.
