The Swiss village comes alive each January with dapper gents in frock coats on antique skis at its annual Belle Epoque week
"And for you, Herr Mellor, we have ?" Volunteer wardrobe mistress Nicole scans the rather paltry selection of Edwardian-ish garments on a clothes rail. My small British crew and I have arrived in the little Bernese Oberland village of Kandersteg half a day into this year's Belle Epoque week celebrations, and are paying the price for our tardiness ? come our turn at the tourist office's dressing-up box, only drag dregs remain.
As we emerge on to snow-choked streets backdropped by steep, forested mountainsides and towering cliffs striped with frozen waterfalls, Ben is Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Adrian has come over all late-Victorian funeral director while Simon appears to be channelling Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant. I am in a black frock coat, party-shop plastic bowler and improvised, pearl tie-pinned cravat. When I put on my comically inappropriate wraparound ski shades against the late-afternoon sunlight, I look like an Orthodox Jewish hitman from an as-yet-unmade Tarantino movie. And as the prematurely aged, time-travelling boy band we resemble sidles into the afternoon's tea dance at the Victoria Ritter hotel, we only suffer more by comparison. Elegant ladies in silk gowns, satin gloves and feathered proto-fascinators float around the ballroom on the arms of dapper gents in tailcoats and patterned waistcoats.
"Last year no one knew what to expect," says Rudi Schorer, Kandersteg's stationmaster, over champagne at the bar ? bubbly was perfected during the belle �poque, he tells me. "So people dressed in clothes belonging to their grandparents. But this year, the locals have really made efforts. Some have had outfits specially made. Some have hired costumes from other towns. And what is interesting also is that they turn society upside down. Workers dress as rich people, very nice and fancy, while professionals ? lawyers, bankers ? like to look like the farmers and labourers of the time."
Kanderstegers can't be faulted on their commitment. Horse-drawn carriages cruise the narrow streets, captained by pipe-puffing old boys in caped greatcoats.
That period of peace, optimistic social and technological progress, rude cultural health, and the (comparative) democratisation of international travel was a golden era for this tiny town. Thomas Cook brought his first British package holidaymakers here in 1864.
"The idea of Belle Epoque week," says tourism director Jerun Vils of the packed schedule of sporting, cultural and social events, "was to let people replay what a holiday would have been like at that time."
Action-packed, it would seem. The next morning, my snowboard and I ride the gondola up to Kandersteg's titchy ski area. The 21km of runs are short and gentle, but they sit close to some heart-stopping, Unesco world heritage-approved scenery, including Oeschinen lake, whose thick ice today affords some hikers on snowshoes a bottom-to-top, nose-to-rock look at the sheer faces of the 3,663m Bl�emlisalp, which plunges vertically into its spring-fed depths. Although Kandersteg is nowadays primarily a summer destination, frozen water chutes make it a world-class ice-climbing spot.
One schnapps-fuelled curling match later, I'm putting on skis for the first time in my life to try out another of Kandersteg's specialities. With 76km of prepared trails, the town's generous valley floor makes it Switzerland's number three resort for cross-country skiing. I skid across snow fields and nip into the perfect silence of thick stands of pines, before it's time to watch an olde-worlde bobsleigh race back in town. The local carpenter and blacksmith have built several sleds to authentic 1910 designs for the occasion, and the track is lined with spectators. Races done, there's barely time for a shower before my frock coat and I are due at the Waldhotel Doldenhorn for a musical dinner, with salon songs provided by a soprano and a pianist spirited in from Zurich.
Even on my way to the station at the end of my trip, I'm still discovering just how much the local people have got behind this unique idea. In the window of the town's supermarket, transformed by some ye-olde window-dressing into a faux-early 20th century grocer's shopfront, a chalkboard announces a thrilling new advance in toilet paper technology. This tissue, it boasts, comes on a "roll".
? Kandersteg's Belle Epoque week runs from 22-29 January 2012 (+41 33 675 8080, kandersteg.ch/en/belle_epoque). Swiss (swiss.com) flies Heathrow-Zurich from �115 return. Full board trips to Kandersteg, including flights, with Swiss Travel Service (0844 879 8002, swisstravelski.co.uk) cost from �535pp for a week, and �359pp for three days
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/oct/21/kandersteg-switzerland-winter-sports-ski
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