In Thomas Mann’s astonishing novel The Magic Mountain the indolent young Hans Castorp visits his brave, terminally ill soldier cousin at a sanatorium at Davos, high in the Swiss Alps. Intending to stay three weeks, he remains seven years. A dubious diagnosis of light tuberculosis is all the excuse he needs to dismiss ‘the flatlands’ and discover, with increasing wonder, that in the midst of death he is in life.
We could have done with more than one night at Le Grand Hôtel Plombières-les-Bains in Eastern France in order to penetrate the Thermes Napoleon to which it is attached. ‘Accèss strictement réservé aux curistes’ warned a blu-tacked sign on a locked glass door from the lobby, revealing two neatly parked wheelchairs, a neo–classical statue, towels, columns and a blinding enfilade of spotless marble.
Gunning our motorbikes through sun and mist across the Route des Crêtes in the Vosges mountains had taken its toll.
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