{"id":1743,"date":"2018-07-19T14:10:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T18:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/?p=1743"},"modified":"2018-07-20T14:20:48","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T18:20:48","slug":"where-is-everybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/19\/where-is-everybody\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Is Everybody"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another Twilight Zone episode<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I left Zurmatt this morning, heading for parts unknown.\u00a0 \u00a0I was hoping to go through the St. Moritz area, and find a place to stay farther on, but I got distracted taking roads to nowhere, and ended up in the St. Moritz area right about the time I like to stop.\u00a0 \u00a0St. Moritz is a little more expensive than some areas.\u00a0 \u00a0I don’t look for much in a place, but when I am travelling more leisurely like I am, I like a hotel that is near food and beer, has a good place to hang out and putz on the computer, while drinking said beer.\u00a0 \u00a0But I don’t like to spend more than $100\/night.<\/p>\n

I pulled over to check Bookings.com and a few other apps.\u00a0 \u00a0I don’t always use these to book, but it can sometimes give a good idea of general pricing and availability.\u00a0 \u00a0There was not a lot of cheap hotels near where I was, the cheaper ones that looked OK were in the $150 range, which is a bit much.\u00a0 \u00a0But I noticed a bunch of hotels within a half mile of where I was pulled over.\u00a0 \u00a0Not cheap, but not extravagant either.\u00a0 \u00a0Then I saw 3 horse drawn carriages drive by.\u00a0 \u00a0OK, might as well check it out.<\/p>\n

It was a very small tourist town with a ton of hotels.\u00a0 \u00a0There were outdoor cafes and restaurants.\u00a0 \u00a0Lots of tourists, but mostly the kind that like to go for hikes, not pedicures.\u00a0 \u00a0The town was Sils in Engadin or something like that.\u00a0 \u00a0Big castle like hotel on the hill.\u00a0 \u00a0I did not see anything that quite fit the bill and was heading out of town when I saw two bikes parked next to a hotel well off the main drag.\u00a0 \u00a0What the hell.\u00a0 \u00a0I stopped in.\u00a0 \u00a0$110 with breakfast.\u00a0 \u00a0Good for the area, expensive for my usual.\u00a0 \u00a0Saw the room, modern but still no door on the shower (I will get to that some other post).\u00a0 \u00a0OK, what the hell.\u00a0 \u00a0This was 5:30<\/p>\n

Went in, showered, and went out to find a place where I could eat outside.\u00a0 \u00a0It was now 6:00.\u00a0 No one.\u00a0 I mean, I walked from my hotel at one end of town, to the other end of town, and there was no one.\u00a0 Every outdoor cafe was closed, umbrellas up, shut down.\u00a0 \u00a0WTF ???? Then at the last place in town, I see an old woman outside eating soup.\u00a0 \u00a0By old I mean, she looked to easily be 100 years old.\u00a0 \u00a0Skinny as a rail, skin all marked, wrinkly and paper thin.\u00a0 \u00a0Shaky.\u00a0 \u00a0I mean OLD.<\/p>\n

This would be the point that Rod Serling came out and did a monologue.<\/p>\n

But, like any sap in any twilight zone, with deaf ears to the audience yelling DON’T GO IN THERE, I went in there.<\/p>\n

A waitress came out.\u00a0 \u00a0You know those St. Pauli girl posters?\u00a0 \u00a0Well she was wearing a conservative version on that outfit.\u00a0 \u00a0Similar but longer skirt, more like a dress.\u00a0 And her hair was not blond.\u00a0 \u00a0Well, it probably once was, but…..\u00a0 \u00a0And the top was not quite filled as well as the posters.<\/p>\n

Anyway, she said they close at 7:00 so come on in, plenty of time.\u00a0 \u00a0 I expected to start seeing other patrons at other tables, but they would all turn out to be mannequins.<\/p>\n

It turns out that most of the people that come here come for the hiking and at the end of the day (5:30) have a beer and either head to their hotel to clean up for dinner, or get back on the bus or train and get out of Dodge.\u00a0 \u00a0The St. Pauli woman was very nice and suggested a local dish that was good.<\/p>\n

And then they started arriving.\u00a0 \u00a0All locals.\u00a0 \u00a0It seems like everyone that lived in town either walked by to say hello or stopped in for a coffee or beer before the 7:00 closing.\u00a0 \u00a0Many were old, and greeted the 100 year old with almost a reverent tone.\u00a0 \u00a0Many were young and did the same.\u00a0 \u00a0St. Pauli woman knew everyone.\u00a0 \u00a0It was an extremely pleasant time, and the nice waitress, formerly known as the St Pauli woman, answered all my questions as if we were old friends.<\/p>\n

I asked about the dialect.\u00a0 \u00a0This part of the world has many borders.\u00a0 \u00a0Not far from France, Italy, Austria, Germany.\u00a0 This is Switzerland, but the sound of the conversations were different.\u00a0 \u00a0Sounded German\/Swiss but with some Italian and French sounds.\u00a0 \u00a0The only way I can describe it is that it sounded friendly.\u00a0 \u00a0Really, it was a nice sounding language.\u00a0 \u00a0Not something you really expect from a Germanic language.\u00a0 \u00a0The waitress said that it is a unique dialect called\u00a0 Romansh, unique to the immediate area and many people who are not from the area have trouble understanding it.\u00a0 \u00a0I don’t know why, I didn’t understand any of the words but still often understood what they were saying, or at least imagined I did.\u00a0 \u00a0 Maybe Rod put a Babble Fish in my ear when I wasn’t looking.<\/p>\n

I looked up, and it is a Romance Language:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Romansh_language\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0No wonder it did not sound very Germanic.<\/p>\n

Oh, and 100 year old lady?\u00a0 \u00a0She got up, grabbed her walker with wheels and walked away so fast I am not sure I could have kept up with her.\u00a0 \u00a0They grow them tough in these here mountains.\u00a0 \u00a0And the town livened up some, it’s just that everyone was now inside eating dinner, as most of the restaurants don’t open for dinner until at least 6 and don’t keep their outside tables open.\u00a0 \u00a0Sorry Rod, no weird stories here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Twilight Zone episode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1743"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1765,"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions\/1765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whereisbobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}