Waiting for the train at Zurich Airport station

I am currently in Saas-Fee, The Pearl of the Swiss Alps. It's in Valais, only reachable by car or bus. And it is a car-less town! There are electric mobiles running in the city but all cars that do not run on electricity must be parked outside the city. Interesting, isn't it? There are actually quite a few car-free towns in Switzerland.

Basically, we have to walk around the town. It's about 15 minutes from one end to another. The electricity mobile is quite expensive. And if you convert it to Malaysian Ringgit, it's about RM100 for about 3 minutes. There is a free ski-bus available but it's always full! Everyone here skis! They start skiing at about the age of 4. Which is why they are so good at it.

Actually, we wanted to go to Murren (another car-free city on the alps) but it was fully booked! Everywhere was fully booked for the week because it's their winter sports holidays and it's Chinese New Year. It's the holiday for the world, eh? Anyway, for some reason, I just stumbled upon Saas-Fee and I thought, let's go there! And so here we are. It's like fate. It's warmer here, anyway, about -3 to -14. So it's bearable.

I'm here with my family (excluding my youngest brother). My eldest brother has never been to Switzerland as his holidays were different than ours back when he was in university and we were in high school. Now that he's working, finally, he can join us!

After a hectic week filled with hospital trips, futsal practice and classes, we jet off from KLIA via Air France Friday night itself. I would advice everyone to take out your sweater before the plane jets off because it's freezing up there. I didn't. I had two blankets. Hehe.


We arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport and had about an hour and a half to sprint to our next flight. We landed in Zurich at 9AM Swiss time and headed for the train which was just opposite the road. Luckily, we had already booked out Swiss Transfer Ticket and saved us a few hundred. The ticket can only be purchased from outside of Switzerland. It certainly pays to read about the place before heading there.

We waited for almost an hour for our train which was at 10.30AM. So we got ourselves some pretzels mit butter. Those were delicious.


After 2 hours in the train, we had to take the bus up to Saas-Fee, which was the final destination of both the bus and my family. We checked into our chalet and almost straight away, headed to the ski schools. There are three ski schools here, the usual red coloured Swiss Ski Schule, the blue Eskimos and the green Optimum. I had already pre-booked group lessons for the Husband and my brother through email with the Swiss Ski Schule for 18 hours (3 hours a day). My sister and I opted for five days only with a private instructor from Optimum, the British ski school. We headed to rent our skis straight away too.

We found out that the town was really small and easy to go around by foot. We headed to Coop, the go to supermarket for us in every town, bought some groceries and headed back to the chalet where my mother was cooking dinner.

My brother and I trying to read the map

Trying on ski boots

And that's how we spent Valentine's Day this year. So romantic right? Well, the view is truly breathtaking. Can't wait to tell you all about skiing. For now, here's the view from our balcony: