Gstaad
When Gerald Murphy and Cole Porter discovered the French Riviera as a summer resort during the early 1920s, the swells and avant-gardes still spent the warm months in cool places like Deauville and Baden-Baden. I think of the deserted summer Riviera and how marvellous the place must have been when people like Picasso and Hemingway joined forces with Cole and Gerald and launched the resort to end all resorts. No longer. The place is now an overcrowded hellhole, expensive, dirty and dangerous, but not to worry. If the recent heatwaves continue and the temperatures keep climbing, soon we’ll be right back where we started, except this time it will be the German island of Sylt in the North Sea for the have-a-lot elites and the boiling Riviera, southern Italy and Spain for the have-a lot-less peons.
This has to be good news for my Swiss friends here in Gstaad, who always worry about the lack of snow and lack of height of their winter wonderland, at only 3,300ft.
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