I know, this is unseasonal but it’s so hot, don’t you all want to see some snow? I know I’d kill to be rolling around in it right now. This is a story from my Year Abroad and we’re specifically going back to January 2006 when my triplets and I went to the International Balloon Festival in Château-d’Œx. It’s also vaguely relevant right now because this afternoon I’ve been in touch with Norðurflug who do helicopter tours in Iceland to see if they can take me to see the eruption – wait and see whether that happens or not.
Château-d’Œx is a small town in canton Vaud. D’Œx is, very roughly, pronounced “day” by the way – try to say it as if you’ve lost interest in the word halfway through and it’s close enough to the French. The three of us – me and my “triplets”, the other two English-speakers at our French language school, Angela and Jemma – got up much earlier than we were accustomed to and got the 7.34 train from Neuchâtel to Lausanne, changed trains to Montreux and then changed for the Zweisimmen-bound train and jumped off at Château-d’Œx. The SBB website is desperate for me to take this journey via Bern rather than via Lausanne but it’s actually half an hour faster via Lausanne and 75% of the price, so I see now why we did it this way.
It was a gorgeous snowy day, exactly what you’d expect a winter day in Switzerland to look like. Neuchâtel, where we lived, is a relatively tropical bit of Switzerland where snow tended to just swirl and be wet and miserable but a little further south, it was good snow. We arrived at Château-d’Œx just before ten and paid the princely sum of 8CHF (£6.80/€8.20/£8.35 in today’s money) for entrance to the festival for the day. These days it’s 15CHF for day entry at the weekend. We were given a yellow tag and expected to wear it. I attached mine to the buttonhole of my nice serious grey wool coat (I was trying to emulate Chiana from Farscape’s travelling gown and the effect was more 40s schoolgirl) which won me accusations of looking like an evacuee.
It was early enough in the day that only a handful of the balloons were up, which gave us plenty of time to watch the others go. I had no idea how many shapes, sizes and colours hot air balloons could come in! Among others, we spied a cathedral, a Scottish piper, a clown, an orange with a slice taken off one side and a mobile phone, alongside the more conventional shape. I also had no idea how much faff went into inflating one of these. It took half a dozen people to lay the balloon out and then they fill it with a big fan, which takes about ten minutes and just puts cold air in. Then, when it’s more or less the right shape, they get out the propane burners and fire hot air into it and gradually it starts to lift. There are two flames, the big pretty yellow ones and the serious blue ones which are the ones they use when they want to get it hot quickly. The yellow is partly for show and partly just to keep it on the boil and stop the balloon collapsing again, without wanting to heat it enough that it takes off. The basket starts out lying on its side and as the balloon goes up, you need those half a dozen people to shove it from both sides to get it upright. And all this basically on top of each other in a snowy square in a small town!
When most of them were up, they untied and off they went, not quite en-masse but close enough. The rainbow colours of balloons look amazing against blue sky and snow-white scenery, by the way.
It had all gone a bit quiet now so we went into the big barn/food court for some lunch. My triplets got a plastic cup each of vin chaud and we made sandwiches with the various things we’d brought with us. It’s been a long time; I don’t know why we went into the barn. Maybe to see if they had anything better than us. Maybe just to see what was happening in there.
After lunch, it got exciting. We planned to do one of the free balloon flights. My diary says “but there were no balloons” but I swear I remember us actively deciding to do the helicopter trip instead, rather than picking it because that’s what was still on offer. I’m glad they were free because my diary says the helicopter trip is the same price in 2023 that it was in 2006 and if that’s true, then likely the balloon trips would be the same price and those are currently – wait for it – 390CHF! The helicopter was then and is now 60CHF, which isn’t a bad price. I’ve been looking at a helicopter trip over the eruption and that’s around £300 – expensive but it’s a one-off but also in reality, it’s going to be sold out already and even if I’m willing to part with that much money for an amazing one-off experience, I’m not going to get the chance to do it anyway. But yes, this trip was 60CHF. Evidently we hadn’t come with the expectation of needing 60CHF in cash each – I remember some difficulty in scraping it together and my diary says “between us, we managed to make enough money”. Did we maybe have to go back to the station to the ATM? Did some of us lend or borrow?
Anyway, Angela was adamant that she must have a picture of me standing in the snow “with the ticket in my hand!”. To this day, I don’t know why this photo was so in demand. Then we squeezed in and were still figuring out the seatbelts when the thing took off.
I wish I remembered anything about my only ever helicopter flight. My diary just says
It was amazing, flying over the mountains, seeing a frozen reservoir, going over into the next valley, trying to work out where I was from up high. Was I above Chateau D’Oex or was I somewhere completely different? The pilot was a master. All too soon we were landing, coming in far too fast, then going around in a circle before hovering slowly downwards into a perfect landing. It was noisy, but not deafening like I’d expected.
I didn’t take any photos but Angela did and I remember the photos. I can feel myself in the helicopter when I look at them, seeing the landscape tilted at angles you don’t normally see but I don’t really remember being there. I suppose therefore if I say that it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done, my inability to remember it does take the edge off that a bit. But it was amazing.
That was about it for the day. We caught some paragliders zooming around but all the balloons had launched and floated away by then. Everything in the village seemed to be closed as well so after a look at the view over the snowy meadows from the church, we drifted back to the station. We paused in Montreux for a hot chocolate but it was too cold to even glance at the town. Interestingly, we had a conversation with an American tourist who asked if there was somewhere nearby to ski, as he’d spotted a lot of people with skis and snowboards. Yes, sir, this is Switzerland, a major centre of snowsports. We were also asked how to get to “Egg” which we eventually translated as Aigle and it seems that train was going from a different platform – that was from a very posh English girl who exclaimed “Oh, how awful!” in what I described at the time as “a very Eton-esque accent”.
We’d had plans for more food at some point but all my diary mentions is a takeaway cup of herbal tea on the train to Lausanne and then back to Neuchâtel by 7.30pm. We usually stopped in Lausanne to play arcade games but evidently not today. I remember this as being such a beautiful day but when I look more closely, it seems we didn’t actually do much. Watched the balloons take off, had some wine, went in a helicopter, went home. Well, anyway, it was one of the most beautiful days of my year abroad and I’m very glad Angela found it – I assume she did. She and I were the ones with guidebooks and I didn’t know anything about it. 10/10, highly recommended, would do it again if I found myself living in Switzerland again – or indeed if I happened to be on holiday there while it was on.