24 January 2004  
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HIGH LIFE

Looking for snow
Taki
 Gstaad

Snow was Napoleon’s enemy, and it also did Hitler in. It has been the enemy of Gstaad’s jet-set as long as I can remember. My best friend, Yanni Zographos, used to get very depressed the moment he saw snowflakes. It meant he’d have to go to bed early and strap on the skis the next day.



Fortunately, snow has been a rare commodity around these parts in the last few years, allowing the beautiful people to stay up very late using the other kind, the one from Peru. This year has been a disaster. The natural brand has been falling for weeks, getting everyone out on the slopes, depressing the nightclub trade and almost putting the drug-dealers out of business. Mind you, it is never as bad as it looks. Gstaad is still full of people who’d rather snort than ski, and there are also mature types who, although in their nineties, are considered middle-aged in Gstaad and in Palm Beach. The mature types are to be found everywhere except on the mountains, although they do ride up to lunch at the Eagle club.

And speaking of Palm Beach, the current issue of Vanity Fair has a large display of its jaded youth, the pics taken by a buddy of mine, Jonathan Becker. Check it out, as they say. There’s Brooke Astor, age 102 (I kid you not), in a very becoming white tailleur and matching hat; Aimée de Heeren, age unknown, a once-great Brazilian beauty who broke the heart of German field marshal Helmuth von Moltke just before the Franco-Prussian war; and Estée Lauder, the queen of cream, as she’s known, a lady who introduced Thomas Jefferson to her moisturising products after which the great man never looked back. (He was much too busy impregnating female slaves who could not keep their hands off his smooth face.)

Palm Beach may have more mature people than Gstaad, but we’re getting there. The Eagle club’s best skier, Peter Notz, was among the first Swiss to volunteer and fight for the Kaiser back in 1914 (he was invalided out two years later with a terrible case of the clap), something that small-minded French and English Gstaad regulars have never forgotten nor forgiven. This depresses Peter a lot, but he nevertheless keeps winning ski races — the last man to beat Peter in an Eagle club race was Sir Arnold Lunn — and the Kaiser’s uniforms were, after all, superior.

But back to snow. Believe it or not, the best snow I’ve ever skied on was in Zakopane, Poland. I was there with the Greek team in 1962, and it was the first time that we heard criticism of the Soviets in a communist country. In fact, the Poles were openly calling the commies arseholes and criminals. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the Poles are the best, most religious and bravest people on earth. When the Turks were about to overrun Europe in 1683, it was the Polish cavalry led by the great King Jan Sobieski who broke the siege of Vienna, charging the towels and routing them. The Poles had marched to save Vienna whereas the French had cut a deal with the Sultan. If it weren’t for the Poles, we’d all be eating shish kebab and rahat lokum, no ifs or buts about it. While retreating from Russia with Napoleon, not a single Polish standard was lost, even as marshal Prince Poniatowski drowned in the river Elster. (He was gravely wounded but tried to swim across on his horse. Poniatowski was as brave as Ney, and much better looking.)

The Poles saved Western civilisation again, at the closing days of the first world war. The Miracle on the Vistula took place when a patched-up Polish army turned back the Red army heading for Berlin, saving defeated Germany from the fate that awaited Poland. Again and again the rest of the world betrayed the Poles, but they never stopped fighting. Both the Nazis and the commies invaded Poland, the latter slaughtering a whole generation of officers at Katyn. Now the Poles have fallen for American bullshit and have sent 12,000 troops to Eyraq, as the Yanks pronounce it. They will get nothing in return. American greenbacks will go to places like Israel and Turkey, not to mention the armpit of the world, Kosovo, and its drug-dealers. This is what I’m driving at. At 67 I am much too young for Gstaad. The other night they wouldn’t let me in the cinema where an 18 and over film was playing. So I’m thinking of moving to Zakopane. The prices are right and unlike the Swiss the Poles do not charge for the air we breathe. Zakopane here I come.

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