Gstaad
The pastoral heaven of this place can get very dull during the summer months. Green hillsides, neat farmsteads, pleasing breezes, meadows bright with wild flowers amid white-capped mountain peaks; these are no substitute for pretty women or intellectual company. That is the bad news. The good news is that the nouveaux riches and terribly vulgar do not appear during the summer. They’re too busy sweating it out in the south of France or in Marbella. They do show up during the winter months, alas, but the low temperatures keep them covered in chinchillas. To see them in bathing costumes would be too much, even for someone like me who has witnessed some pretty gruesome sights in his lifetime. It is now 60 long years that I’ve been coming to Gstaad, and the place sure has changed. For the better as far as the locals are concerned; for the catastrophically worse from the point of view of yours truly.
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