BEACH VOLLEYBALL IN THE SWISS ALPS - GSTAAD
Another trip… another crazy adventure. It’s about 11am on Saturday, July 2, 1 hour before we are supposed to leave for the airport, and Taryn is in the shower, and I am running through my last-minute checklists. Chargers – yes, sunglasses – yes, playing tops & bottoms, yes, and so on and so on. I hear the bathroom door abruptly open followed by Taryn saying, “our flight is cancelled.” Haha funny joke Taryn, cut it out. Unfortunately, she was not joking. We frantically grab our computers and start looking for other options. Luckily, Taryn is a gold status member on American Airlines, so her calls get answered first. After about 15 minutes she gets a call back and we go through the lovely process of picking different flights. We were originally scheduled to fly out at 1:48pm to Philadelphia and then from there to Zurich for a total travel time of 12hrs, our shortest international trip by far. Note to self: never get too excited about short flights especially lately, there are always delays, cancelations, or some obstacle that arises. Additionally, we were slated to be in main cabin where there was 6 more inches of leg room instead of the typical basic economy. Our new flight plan had us flying out of MSY at 9:35pm to London and then London to Geneva, Switzerland for a total travel time of about 19 hours. And there is no main cabin, so we were stuck in basic economy. Of course, we ran into some delays, so our total travel time ended up being a little under 24 hours… go figure.
Our new flight plan had us booked on British Airways which Taryn and I have never flown. It was a direct flight from MSY to London-Heathrow - 7 hours and 50 minutes. A light in all of this – we were both pleasantly surprised with British Airways. Even though we were in economy, the seats were pretty comfy, and they reclined very far. The flight attendants were also delightful, and the food was some of our favorite thus far. If you have been reading the blogs, you know that we have not been able to sleep much on any of our flights but that all changed on this one. It was by no means the best sleep ever but hey, we actually got some zzz’s so chalk one up in the win column for us. We had a 7-hour layover in London and we had initially thought we would take that time to do some exploring, but after talking with one of Taryn’s friends living in London, we decided it was best to just stay at the airport due to the airport traffic. So, what did we do for 7 hours? Got Starbucks, played cards, and got some breakfast/lunch. My card game knowledge stops at Go Fish, Taryn has continuously taught me more and more games for us to play to pass the time. P.S. “American” breakfast is just not the same when you are not in America. By this point, we had about 2 hours left, and the tiredness was starting to hit. We got lucky and found 2 of the coveted lounge chairs vacant and Taryn snatched them up. We laid down in those chairs wishing that is where we would have been for the entire 7 hours. Once our flight received a gate number, we jumped up, picked up some sub-par dinner to go and made our way to the gate. Only a couple more hours between us and some needed sleep in a bed.
We were originally supposed to arrive in Zurich on Sunday, July 3 around 8am, and we had a fun day planned. Exploring the beautiful Lucerne, the place where everyone said we HAD to go, was on the list. Instead, we rolled up in a 3 min, $30 taxi ride to a hotel in Geneva around 12:30am on Monday, July 4. We were scheduled to practice in Gstaad at 2pm the next day so before going to sleep we had to figure out how we were going to get to Gstaad by 2pm. The scary train systems were saying it would take us around 3 hours (we were definitely doing something wrong but that is the info we were getting). All we wanted was sleep and we were not going to get any with that plan so we rescheduled practice and went to sleep around 1:30am praying that the tournament transportation people would come to our help.
I think I could have slept that entire day away. I couldn’t open my eyes when our alarms went off. Later in the day I asked Taryn, “did I look rough or what in the morning?” to which she responded very quickly, “yes, you looked terrible.” Once I was actually able to see, I realized we had received an email back from the transportation people and they were able to pick us up. Thank goodness!! We quickly packed all our stuff up and headed back to the airport where we would find the lovely man who was going to drive us to Gstaad. At this point, we sprinted to find the nearest breakfast food available. We had skipped dinner and breakfast for sleep, and we are both guilty of being hangry people.
It was about a 2-hour drive with Mark, our amazing driver who was originally from Seattle, and two other guys from Poland. After the initial 20 minutes of conversation, the car ride was pretty silent. We all spent the drive looking out the windows at all the mountains and trees and goat statues. We had made it to Gstaad!!
We grabbed some lunch at our hotel (for those keeping track of the butterflies – there was a sticker of an orange butterfly on the window next to our table) and then headed back to the room for a 20 min power nap before practice. The venue is just absolutely insane. When you are standing on the courts you look right or left and see nothing, but beautiful mountains and you hear a lovely river flowing in the distance. I don’t know if pictures can do it justice. We practiced with a Canadian and Argentina team. It’s fun to meet the teams and see what kind of drills they like to do. We ended practice and then walked over to that river/stream that I was talking about. The water is pretty chilly, but it feels nice right after playing. While we were out, we took some time to explore the village. We eyed up potential dinner spots and found some places where we can get keychains (we get keychains everywhere we go). Showering and then dinner was next. We walked back into town and ended up eating at a restaurant inside of another hotel. The waiter was super nice and helped us order things that were unique to Switzerland. As an appetizer we got a salad with warm bacon, hard boiled eggs, and croutons with their special dressing (maybe my new fav salad), and for our entrée we got veal bratwurst with onion gravy and rösti (apparently you have to get veal when you go to Switzerland). As we were getting ready for bed, Taryn made a comment about the Alps to which my naïve self-responded, “wait, we’re really in the alps”? (Guess I should have paid more attention during my sophomore year geography class – sorry, Mrs.Peavy) That night there was a huge storm and the alps sounded like they were crashing down. Day 1 in Gstaad complete!
Which one do you think is the girls bathroom? I picked wrong…
Got to sleep in on Tuesday and boy did I sleep in. I woke up around 9:45 which is wild for me. Taryn on the other hand, woke up at 6 am, was ready, stretched out, reading a book in the living room area jealously waiting for me to awake from my slumber. Breakfast ended at 10:30 so we got dressed and headed down. The day before we compete, we pretty much always take off, so we had the whole day to explore and chill and that we did. Adam, our manager and person who knows all things, shot us a message that he was chilling at a little coffee shop a little way up from us, so we went and met him there. We caught up while also enjoying people watching. Next on the list of things to do was get our credentials, so we made our way down to the player desk by center court. We were a little early, so we walked up the stairs to stadium to check it out. It is a pretty sick set up. It is a rather large stadium that is in the middle of Gstaad, and I know I could not help but visualize us playing in there come Sunday. Credentials were secured so we walked into the grocery store across the street from the court. It had of course hit me that I had to use the restroom and we were about a 15 min walk from our hotel. The search for the restroom was on and I wish I would have taken a picture of this bathroom because I for sure would never have guessed this to be a thing… the bathrooms were behind this type of gate thing and in order to get through you had to insert 1 Swiss franc which I obviously did not have. Needless to say, I returned back to Taryn, who was waiting in line, just cracking up but also trying to tell her to hurry the heck up. We made it back to the room successfully, chilled for a little bit and then went back to center court to take some pics. I am sure most of you know that we do not have a pic for the player’s presentation. We were still pointless during the first tournament of the year at Tclaxcala, MX where they did a full photoshoot with all the teams there. Instead of a photo before our game, you would see “shadow people”, however, we are shadow people no more! We walked around some more before heading back to the room to watch some film, do some reading and then eat dinner. One more sleep before gameday!
First match wasn’t until 2pm so we got to have a pretty relaxed morning. However, we were not getting a ton of sleep because for starters, our hotel had no air conditioning and it would get pretty hot or just not necessarily cold at night. Our room also got pretty bright in the morning so once the sun would come up it would be hard to stay sleeping. We were usually up by about 7/7:30. We headed to down to breakfast for some fuel. For Elite 16 tournaments they provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the players and at this venue the meals were all provided to us at the hotel which is super convenient. We had every meal in a little room in the hotel. You have a time block of when you can go eat each meal and it’s kind of interesting because you are pretty much eating with all the athletes. So, before our first match against Quiggle/Schermerhorn, they were eating breakfast like 4 feet away from us. It’s cool that you can get to know more of the players outside of the court but it’s also like you want to beat them all. Such a weird dynamic.
📸: Conny Kurth & Beach Volleyball World
We ate some lunch and then walked 8 minutes down to the courts. Every time we walked to the courts, we just both looked at each other in amazement of the location we were playing volleyball. Beautiful mountain scenery everywhere you look. Highly recommend coming to this tournament at least once. Pictures do not do it justice. Before our first match we both did not have good feelings about it which we learned from each other after the match. We did not play like ourselves. Gave up too many points and when you did that in elite 16 tournaments you are going to lose and that we did. Extra sting is losing to your own country. We were pissed. Just ask our family members of whom did not hear from us for a couple hours. We needed some time to decompress.
Bounce back day. We woke up in a position that we have come to know very well… win or go home. Losing was not an option. Think the universe also knew it not an option for us because it sent us some good luck… on our way back from our morning walk Taryn got pooped on by a bird… it was only on the back of her sweatshirt, but I laughed a lot and she wasn’t even mad knowing that it was a sign of good luck. We knew going in we needed to get a ninth or better to increase our points. We came out looking a little better for this game and we were able to send the talented team from Mexico home instead of us. After the game we were greeted by one of my best friends, who I have not seen in about 5 months, Megan Davenport and her parents along with her boyfriend, Jill Trahan, and Adam Hensgens. We had such a great support group, and we are very thankful. Who else gets to have a crowd of family and friends in a foreign country? Since we hadn’t seen Megan is ages, we of course had to find time to talk. After we showered, the group decided to take a walk to Coop to get some snacks and then just have a little chill hangout at our hotel. It could not have been more perfect (minus the flies and bees)… meat, cheese, fruit, wine, good company, and lots of laughter.
Post match ice bath
Friday morning, we woke up wanting to play two games. We wanted to be playing in the quarterfinals on Saturday, so we had some work to do. We went down for our now regimented breakfast routine. Walk in, put our waters and phones down at a chair to claim, walk to the egg boiler and place two in, check the time so you know when 9 minute are up, I walk to get a bowl of strawberry yogurt with some granola while Taryn fills a bowl with oatmeal and toppings and get a plate of fruit, eat round 1, grab the now hard boiled eggs, peel them and place on a piece of bread with ham. That was our exact routine for about 6 days straight. The only two things that got old was peeling the eggs (some of them can be very temperamental) and the insane number of flies that would land on or near you every single meal. Think every single athlete at that tournament bonded over the annoyance of the flies. We were scheduled to play at 10am against a familiar opponent. I mentioned how we practiced on Monday, well that Argentina team that we practiced with was our opponent for the round of 24. They do some crafty things but luckily, we were able to come out victorious and next on the list was the #1 hometown hero Swiss team. We knew we were going to be playing that game on center court at prime time and I was pumped. I know it was going to be a very unique experience. On Wednesday morning, Taryn and I went and watched a men’s match - Norway vs Switzerland. It was 10am on a Wednesday morning and the stadium was rocking. I had never seen a stadium that crowded on a Wednesday morning which is how I knew our game on a Thursday evening at 5pm meant chaos.
My expectations were far exceeded. Let’s started with how we got to the court… center court was not in the same place as all the other courts including the warm up courts, so you had to be driven to center court after warm ups. We hopped into a car and were driven to a parking lot under the stadium. We were then escorted through a back door and then brought into the stadium like celebrities. That alone was wild, but then when you walk in and see the completely sold-out stadium you just look around in awe. I had never experienced an atmosphere like that in beach volleyball. Not even the LSU vs UCLA #1 vs #2 packed LSU beach volleyball stadium can compare. Taryn and I could not hear each call middle before they served us. We were literally screaming. I thought I was going to lose my voice. No one in the stands missed a clap or a hand motion. Everyone was in just complete synchronicity. I do have to give a huge thanks to all the Swiss fans. No one was ever mean. So not only were they great fans but they were classy fans. They would applaud good volleyball no matter which team made the play. That is pretty cool. I seriously think everyone needs to come to Gstaad once and experience that because I will forever remember that first one and I am very thankful we got to play the home team. Maybe the fact that we won that game makes it a little better but even if that game would not have gone our way, I would 100% still be talking this highly about it.
Every tournament I feel like we have learned a pretty significant thing about how the tournament is run or what we are supposed to do, and this tournament was no different. We were the first game on center court that day but like I said earlier, center court was all by itself in the middle of the city. The warm up courts were in a different location. We had no idea if we were allowed to warm up on center court or if we would shuttle to the stadium like our previous match. We tried to email the tournament director, but we didn’t get a response and we just had to guess. We chose wrong… we rolled up to the warm up courts and the only people there were picking up the venue. They had to be like these rookies know nothing. We just went about our normal warmup routine. We asked one of the workers about getting a shuttle and thankfully they were able to get us one about 30 minutes before we were scheduled to play. We received a text from the USA provider asking us if we were on our way. Apparently, the refs were wondering where we were. When we arrived 20 minutes before game time the refs just laughed at us. Again, we know their thoughts were “these dumb rookies.” Now we know – lesson learned.
From the restaurant up in the mountains.
Thought the coffee might taste different up in the mountains… it did not… didn’t like it
It was a back-and-forth game, but we just did not execute when the opportunities presented themselves and made too many costly errors. We had to let it go and Switzerland sure helped us do that. Our game was at 9:30am so we had the rest of the day to explore. We quickly showered so we could catch the 11:37am bus to Glacier 3000. At Glacier 3000 you take a gondola up the 10,000 feet mountains. Talk about a view. We ate a delicious lunch at the restaurant that is just casually in the middle of the mountains. Then we of course rode down the alpine coaster followed by a peak-to-peak walk. As you are standing on a bridge in between the two peaks you seriously cannot help but be amazed. My eyes could not comprehend what they were seeing. I think I spent the whole rest of the day in amazement. After walking across the bridge, we took a ski lift (which I have never rode so that was exciting) to a glacier. I am a kid at heart so I had to start a snowball or shall I say a glacier snowball fight. Everyone is a little competitive, so it got pretty intense. We took the gondola back down and ended the day with a lovely meal that included some wine, fondue and chocolate. I am just thankful that we played the early game. That was probably the most mind-blowing day of my life (I still can’t wrap my head around how they built all that stuff up in the mountains and just how beautiful the mountains were). I guess that’s what I get for living below sea level my entire life!
You always want to be playing on Sunday but having to explore Switzerland was not the worst thing in the world. Megan did some research and found the city of Montreux. We took the prettiest train ride and ended up in a city with a beautiful boardwalk along the lake. We of course ate some delicious food and even got some gelato. Also, karma is real because while walking a bird pooped on my hand so now the laughs were on me… Taryn got some revenge. Additionally, while walking we saw some paddle boats and obviously had to do it. When else will you get to paddle boat in Lake Geneva? We also kind of jumped in with our clothes on because again, when are you going to get to swim in Lake Geneve with your friends?
Our flight home was out of Zurich, so Sunday night the tournament provided us a ride to our Holiday Inn Express Hotel by the Zurich Airport (huge shoutout to Kerry Ranson for hooking us up with this hotel – perfect location, great breakfast, and finally some AC). Monday morning came and it was our chance to explore Zurich. This was also the first time we had to figure out and ride the trains by ourselves. After a couple of reassuring texts from Megan, we booked the right tickets, and made our way to the Lindt Museum of Chocolate where we were meeting Megan and Leo. Highly recommend doing the tour!!! We got a pleasant surprise… they let you take a spoon to fountains of white, milk, and dark chocolate. My fav was surprisingly the dark chocolate (big milk chocolate fan) and Taryn’s was the milk chocolate. It’s a chocolate lovers dream, and the dream just kept getting better. As we walked further, they had machines that would shoot out different kinds of chocolate bars and then you got to guess which flavor each one was… we definitely just kept taking handfuls. They were asking for everyone to go home in chocolate comas because the tour ended with you being able to try most of the Lindor chocolate balls… I 100% took all 8 of them in addition to buying a decent amount of chocolate from the store. We walked around carrying a large bag of chocolate for the rest of the day.
After stuffing ourselves with chocolate, we thought the best thing to do was put on our bathing suits and go sit by the lake. It was so peaceful and beautiful. We were able to read some of our books, do some chatting, and then I know it may be a little cliché, but we had to order a pizza and eat while sitting on sarongs soaking in each other’s company and listening to the water crash on the rocks. As the evening came, we took a little stroll along the lake to old town because Taryn and I had a tuk tuk tour around old town setup. A tuk tuk is a glorified golf cart with a fondue pot in the middle and 4 chairs facing each other. We figured it was the easiest way to see and learn about a lot of the city. Our tour guide was great, and we were able to sit back, enjoy some wine and fondue and relax. We ended our last adventure in agreement that Switzerland is the first foreign location that we could both live in, and it has claimed the prize as our favorite destination on our short time on tour. We’re already ready to try and come back and win a cowbell next year… we will win a cowbell.
By: Kristen Nuss
