On the approach to Arosa in the Graubünden Alps, the road is lined with mountain chapels, their stark spires soaring heavenwards; a portent, perhaps, of the ominous route ahead. The sheer-sided valley is skirted with rugged farmhouses and the road twists, over ravines and round hairpin curves, to a holiday destination that feels like a well-kept secret.
On the village’s frozen lake, young families ice skate, hand in hand. A little farther along, on the snow-covered main street, children sled rapidly downhill, overtaking cars. The resort’s mascots are a happy gang of brown bears. And there are Narnia lamp-posts, which turn the falling snow almost gold every evening. Switzerland is replete with ski towns but none feel quite this innocent and childlike, like stepping into a fairytale.
I am here for a week in an apartment with my wife and two kids, as it’s a place my Swiss partner’s parents and grandparents have been returning to for more than a century. What first drew them here? All say the same thing: Arosa is the Swiss mountain village most Swiss don’t even think to visit; a low-key alternative to the box office of St Moritz, Verbier and Zermatt.
The village sits on a high, terraced plateau one hour south of Chur, Switzerland’s oldest city, and is surrounded by dense fir forests, above which rises an amphitheatre of saw-cut summits. The sense is that the out-of-sight village has been secretly occupied – the pretty-as-pie peaks standing sentry – as if the first farmers here back in the 14th century feared the Habsburgs might return at any moment to take back their territories.
This is also storybook Switzerland to a T. To the north is Heidiland, the farm holiday region where Johanna Spyri set her children’s novels. Also one hour away is Liechtenstein, the pipsqueak principality, which brings to my mind the land of Vulgaria in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Two hours to the north is Zurich where we arrived, before borrowing my in-laws’ car. If you fancy taking the train, there are options to do the trip from the UK to Zurich in as little as seven hours, with a change in Paris. Arosa can then be reached on the memorably scenic Rhaetian Railway, a journey with some of the Alps’ most glorious in-seat entertainment. Outside, all the drama is provided by a script of high-definition gorges and glaciers.
The Arosa Bear Sanctuary, at the middle station of the Weisshorn cable car, is a good place to start exploring. Even during the residents’ winter deep sleep, the 2.8 hectare den offers a walk-through education in animal welfare in an unlikely setting, and its wooden platforms offer memorable views of the snow-fuzzed summits and pistes that lead off in every direction like a spreadeagled skier.
The refuge is run in cooperation with global animal charity Four Paws and it provides four rescued European brown bears a species-appropriate home. Once held in appalling conditions, including a private mini zoo in Albania, the bears’ compound is now a place to readjust, to feel safe again. For the full Yogi and Boo-Boo experience, I’d suggest visiting in summer.
It’s fair to say my six-year-old daughter fizzes with enthusiasm when the bears are mentioned, but also when we snowshoe later that week into pine forest along the resort’s themed Squirrel Trail. The trail is printed with fresh squirrel tracks and we add our own, feather-pressing our boots into the crisp snow. The flakes fall heavily, as if we’re inside an ornamental snow globe. Then, two red squirrels scurry past with dark-furred yet sparkling tails.
Most days we ski until lunch. All children enjoy one free half-day group lesson for each night’s stay in Arosa with ABC Snowsports School or the Swiss Ski and Snowboard School, but we prefer to explore the mountains as a family. Since 2014, the resort has been connected across the gaping Urden valley with the larger town of Lenzerheide, and like other popular Alpine ski areas, the combined piste map is now a profusion of primary colour squiggles.
But there the similarity ends. British accents are absent. The pistes are largely empty. Strict building regulations, upholding traditional timber aesthetics, mean the village is largely the same now as it was when my relatives first visited. It is Switzerland, but from a half-century ago. At the barn-like Tschuggenstübli, once a cheese dairy on the slopes, everyone crams on to tables to order bündnerfleisch (air-dried beef) and käseschnitte, an upgraded welsh rarebit with melted raclette cheese, pickles and onions.
Afterwards, it’s toboggan time. It strikes me there are almost as many traditional wooden sledges for hire in Arosa as there are pairs of skis, and, from the top of the Kulm Gondola, the only way is down. And at speed. My kids are barely ruffled by the tight, bobsleigh chicanes and, one afternoon, we all howl with laughter as my eight-year-old son hurtles off the track into a marshmallowy drift. He pops back up, grinning, but polar bear white. We repeat the sledge run another half-dozen times.
Another reason for visiting this winter is to stay at the Grand Arosa Pop-Up Hotel, a one-year experiment inside a vacant resort hotel which is open to the end of this season – the concept will continue next year, though details are yet to be confirmed (they also operate another pop-up hotel in Fribourg and a pop-up hostel in Zurich). Clues as to its aesthetic are in the name – this is not a ski hotel in the traditional sense, and certainly not a vintage chalet brimming with geranium window boxes and mounted antlers. More than that, it is probably the Alps’ largest ever pop-up hotel and its interiors are bathed in pastel pink. If you can find me cooler ski accommodation this year, I’m happy to wait.
With a tech-first approach, there is no reception, but self-check in instructions imposed on a poster of a purple bellboy. What might have once been a telephone operator’s room is reimagined as a walk-in guest book, its fan-print wallpaper covered with whimsical, hand-written comments. Velvet curtains drape two symmetrical elevators, then a cloaked red corridor suggests you are somehow walking backstage at a theatre, before revealing a piano observatory and a vintage design cinema. A Wes Anderson film set has been conjured before you. We only drop in for coffee, but I wish we’d stayed.
At the end of our week, my wife mentions to me how sad she is to be leaving. The kids aren’t too happy about it either. Neither am I. It crosses my mind that Arosa, with its sleepy bears, squirrels and surreal pop-up hotel, isn’t what most people come to Switzerland for. Rather, it’s what we’ve been looking for all along.
The trip was supported by Arosa-Lenzerheide. Singles/doubles at the Grand Arosa Pop-Up Hotel, from €117 room-only. For more information, visit myswitzerland.com
