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Metro
02-08-2025
- Metro
Never mind the Med — I stumbled on real summer magic in the Alps
The Bernese Oberland may be a haven for skiers come winter, but at this time of year, the soundtrack is altogether different. The swoosh of the slopes is replaced by the clanging of cowbells and the sound of the Alphorn echoing through the valleys. I'm here for a celebration of the region's most elite residents. Not the A-list glitterati that descend on Gstaad with the first snowfall, but its 11,000-strong population of Simmental cattle. At the dawn of springtime, these beautiful beasts are led to Alpine pastures for their annual summer sojourn, where lush grass and wildflowers make for the sweetest milk. It's a land of postcard views (if you haven't seen the Swiss Alps in summer, imagine if Disney made mountain vistas), of cooling lakes for post-hike dips and of Alpkäse, the showstopper cheese of the region that can only be made from the milk of cows who have spend their 90 day summer vacation grazing at high altitude. Fuel your wanderlust with our curated newsletter of travel deals, guides and inspiration. Sign up here. My adventure begins in Adelboden, a Heidi-like village nestled between the mountains at 1,350m. I check into The Cambrian, a boutique hotel owned by two Welshmen who fell in love with the region as youngsters and brought a dose of the Welsh valleys to the Swiss ones when they bought the property in 2009. (B&B from around £215 per night.) Bedecked with nods to home, such as wool blankets and intricate woodwork, it boasts spectacular views across green mountainside, the ever-present soundtrack of tinkling cow bells permeating from afar. Thanks to the impeccable Swiss transport system, journeying to the heart of the Oberland couldn't be simpler. Fly to Zurich, take a train via Bern to Frütigen, and then it's 30 minutes by bus (all of which are on time to the second …), which trundles into the village station directly opposite the hotel. Car-free travel couldn't be easier when the excellent Swiss Travel Pass (from £229 for a three-day ticket) covers everything. Adelboden in the summer is a haven of pavement cafes and children playing in the square. A walking tour of the village takes in the 15th-century church before we head for the hills, the most challenging part made infinitely easier thanks to a glorious system of gondolas taking the hard work out of the hike. The Adelboden-Lenk-Kandersteg region is a haven for hikers of all fitness levels, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a route that doesn't take your breath away. High up on the Alpine pastures, we finally get a taste of the famous Alpkäse, thanks to cheesemaker Peter Germann. Spending summers in his mountain hut, he lovingly makes each wheel by hand as his father Adolf did before him, and his father before him. Passing walkers can pick up a hunk to accompany their mountainside lunch. We were welcomed with open arms, plied with plates of sweet nutty cheese, fresh bread and butter and coffee, and invited to have a go at the cheesemaking process: carefully heating the milk, scooping out the curds, straining the whey and shaping it into a press where it's weighted for 24 hours before being salt brined for half a day, then put away on a shelf to age for at least 12 months. It's certainly a labour of love given the yield, and since Alpkäse is a protected name – and a rarity compared to most Swiss cheeses – it makes it even more delicious. Drunk on cheese in the summer sun, a refreshing dip in the reservoir is much appreciated before heading back down the mountain and indulging in The Cambrian's open-air spa, watching the sun set and the stars emerge twinkling over the mountaintops. With views like this, it's easy to see why the owners chose to settle. From Adelboden we embark on a scenic journey to Gstaad, the setting for the week's most glorious of summer celebrations. The Züglete is celebrated but once a year (the next is on September 6) with the day marking the end of summer grazing as the cows are led, resplendent in floral crowns, in pomp and ceremony from their mountainside dining, down through the town. It's a remarkable occasion, a day of festivity that begins with a procession of giant cowbells ringing in their VIP guests along the promenade and the sound of the Alphorn reverberating through the streets. Each local farming family, some of three generations, takes turns in bringing their herd through the cheering crowds of locals, tourists, and choirs, with keen ears straining to hear the distant ringing that indicates the next troupe is en route. It's a truly heartwarming experience, not to mention a far cry from the typical picture of Gstaad with its designer boutiques and personalised number plates. This is the true heart of the Alps and the kind of cultural experience that ignites the love of travel. More Trending Just days after we left, the town experienced the first snowfall of the season; it seems those farmers were in the know after all. With the ever-growing trend of coolcations and a yearning to avoid the overcrowded beaches of the Mediterranean, the summertime pull of the mountains becomes more appealing every year. And with Switzerland's finest cheese and a parade of flower-crowned cattle calling, who am I to fight it? Laurel Waldron was a guest of Switzerland Tourism. MORE: Even Italian farmers have stepped in on overtourism with this 'pointless' €5 charge MORE: I stayed in the Airbnb alternative trying to do things differently MORE: Europe's 'Paris of the East' is an underrated gem with £37 flights and 31°C August weather
Boston Globe
12-05-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Margot Friedländer, Holocaust survivor who found her voice, dies at 103
Ms. Friedländer and her husband, Adolf -- known in America as Eddie, for obvious reasons -- arrived in New York in the summer of 1946. They settled into a small apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. He found work as comptroller of the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she became a travel agent. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The couple had married at the camp where they were interned; once in America, they never spoke of their shared experience. Ms. Friedländer was adamant about never returning to the country that had murdered their families. But when he died in 1997, she began to wonder what had been left behind. Advertisement She had found a community at the Y, and, at the urging of Jo Frances Brown, who was then the program director there, she signed up for a memoir-writing class. It was weeks before she participated, however. The other students, all American-born, were writing about their families, their children, their pets. One night, unable to sleep, she began to write, and the first stories she told were her earliest childhood memories. Advertisement The stories became a memoir, ''Try to Make Your Life': A Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin,' written with Malin Schwerdtfeger and published in Germany in 2008. (An English-language edition came out in 2014.) But she had already found her mission. Thomas Halaczinsky, a documentary filmmaker, had heard that Ms. Friedländer was working on a memoir, and in 2003 he persuaded her to return to Berlin and tell her story as she revisited the city where she had grown up. Halaczinsky's film, 'Don't Call It Heimweh' -- the word translates loosely as 'nostalgia' -- came out the next year. The experience of returning to Berlin galvanized her. She felt welcomed by the city that had once shunned her. She began speaking to young people in schools around the country, startled that so many had no understanding of the Holocaust. Ms. Friedländer was 21 when the Gestapo came for her family. She was on her way home from her job on the night shift in an armaments factory, and her younger brother, Ralph, had been alone in their apartment. She arrived to find their front door sealed and guarded. Hiding the yellow star on her coat that proclaimed her identity as a Jew, Ms. Friedländer slipped away to a neighbor's house. There, she learned that her mother had turned herself in to the police so she could be with her 16-year-old son, a shy and bookish child. She had left her daughter her handbag with a talisman, a necklace of amber beads, an address book, and a brief message, delivered by the neighbor: 'Try to make your life.' Advertisement She walked for hours that first night, and in the morning she ducked into a hair salon and had her dark hair dyed Titian red. She spent the next 15 months in hiding, often stopping for just a night or two, relying on scribbled addresses passed from hand to hand, following the Berlin version of the Underground Railroad. There was the rank, filth-encrusted apartment where she stayed inside for months, with a dog for company. The couple that expected sex as rent (Ms. Friedländer declined). The billet infested with bedbugs. The gambling den. The man who gave her a cross to wear and took her to a plastic surgeon who straightened her nose for free, so she could pass as a gentile and venture out in public. The kindly couple with a thriving black-market business in food. None of her hosts were Jewish. But it was Jews who turned her in: two men who were so-called Jewish catchers, working for the Gestapo to save themselves from deportation. After her capture, Ms. Friedländer was sent to Theresienstadt, a town in Bohemia that the Germans had converted to a hybrid ghetto-camp and way station. It was June 1944. Many detainees were shipped away to be exterminated, but some 33,000 people died at Theresienstadt, where disease was rampant and food was scarce. There, she met up with Adolf Friedländer, whom she had known in Berlin at a Jewish cultural center where he was the administrative director and she worked as a seamstress in the costume department. Advertisement She hadn't thought much of him at the time. He was 12 years older, bespectacled and taciturn. She found him arrogant. But at Theresienstadt, they became confidants. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes. It was the waning days of the war, and their guards had begun to flee as the Russian army approached. They were married by a rabbi in June 1945, with a prayer mantle held over their heads as a huppah. They found an old porcelain cup to smash, as tradition required. Ms. Friedländer saved a piece. A year later, they sailed into New York Harbor. When the Statue of Liberty emerged from the fog, Ms. Friedländer was ambivalent. Here was the vaunted symbol of liberty, but, as she wrote in her memoir, America had not welcomed her family when they needed it most. She was stateless, and she would feel that way for the next six decades. Ms. Friedländer was awarded the International Peace of Westphalia special Award in Muenster, Germany, last month. FEDERICO GAMBARINI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Anni Margot Bendheim was born on Nov. 5, 1921, in Berlin. Her mother, Auguste (Gross) Bendheim, came from a prosperous family but was independent-minded and had started her own button-making business that she turned over, reluctantly, to Margot's father, Arthur Bendheim, when they married. The marriage was unhappy, and the couple divorced when Margot was a teenager. After the divorce, Auguste worked desperately to find a way out. Many hoped-for leads evaporated, like the papers promised by a man who took their money and vanished. Margot and Ralph were conscripted to work in a factory that made armaments for the German military. During this period, their father emigrated to Belgium, heedless of the circumstances of his former wife and children. He would later die at Auschwitz. Advertisement It took years for Ms. Friedländer to learn her mother and brother's fate. Their deaths were confirmed in 1959, but it would be another four decades before she learned the details, from the deportation lists at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City, an archive of German Jewish history. They had also been sent to Auschwitz. Her mother had been sent to the gas chamber upon arrival; her brother, a month later. Ms. Friedländer moved back to Berlin in 2010. Since then, she had made it her mission to tell her story. In 2023, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, the German government's highest honor. 'She always said she had four lives,' Halaczinsky, the filmmaker, said in an interview. 'Without the film, I don't know if she would have gone back to Berlin. But she did, and she found a new life. She was a powerful woman; it must have been a tremendous effort.' Last summer, Ms. Friedländer appeared on the cover of German Vogue, beaming in a bright red coat. There was only one cover line: the word 'love' -- the theme of the issue -- rendered in Ms. Friedländer's shaky cursive, with her signature below it. She told the magazine she was 'appalled' at the rise of antisemitism and far-right nationalism. But she cautioned: 'Look not toward what separates us. Look toward what brings us together. Be people. Be sensible.' This article originally appeared in
