OUR CHALET
OUR CHALET is the forerunner of all the World Centres. Built high up in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, it has given sixty years of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts the chance to strengthen bonds of international friendship in a beautiful, mountainous region of the world.
The rest of the world may tend to have a simplified image of Switzerland, picturing it as a land of cuckoo clocks, chocolate, cheese and Heidi. In reality Switzerland has far more to offer. It is a varied country of three distinct cultural influences - German, French and Italian - and four national languages, including Romansch. It also has a proud, though fairly recent tradition of peace. Switzerland has had neutral status since 1815, but prior to that it was known for its fierce mercenaries who were hired to fight in other nation's wars. Now it is home to numerous international pacifist organizations such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, on call around the world whenever natural or man-made disasters occur. All this, yet Switzerland is only a fifth the size of the United Kingdom.
Mark Twain, author of Huckelburry Finn, dismissed Switzerland as "a large, humpy solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it." These humpy rocks, or mountains, are the Alps for which Switzerland is most famous. The flood of admiring tourists began as a trickle in the nineteenth century when the British began coming to the country to gaze in wonder at the landscape. Winter sports only became popular at the turn of the century, and grew in the interwar period (when OUR CHALET was built) as more and more people visited the country to ski. Now skiing and hiking are the main attractions for the many visitors who travel to Switzerland each year.
Girl Guides and Girl Scouts are drawn to OUR CHALET for similar reasons and the Centre's programmes are based around outdoor activities, in particular skiing and walking. But Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, unlike other visitors, are also well placed to use their stay in this peaceful country to make new friends and to gain understanding of other people's land and culture in a country where neutrality and living at peace with its neighbours are so important.
OUR CHALET is fortunate to have had its formation and early history recorded in 1952 by the Centre's first Guider-in-Charge, Fraulein Ida Von Herrenschwand, known to everyone as Falk. Any telling of the Chalet tale would be incomplete without her words, which follow.
