Thresholds
London.
Fast. Dense. Underground. Noise. Crowds.
The train.
Wide windows stretched almost from seat to ceiling, as though the journey expected you to look out rather than down. Red trains slipped between rock and pine. We moved between tunnels and sunlight. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Every few minutes, the mountains disappeared, only to return even larger on the other side. Somewhere between Zürich and Arosa, I stopped checking the time. I started looking out of the window instead.
The train stopped at a station that felt impossibly small. Beyond it, a lake. Beyond that, mountains that looked unreal. I grinned like a child, my first-ever glimpse of mountains. They looked so fresh I wanted to bottle them or pour them into a glass and drink them.
Outside, summer was all brilliance; blue sky, green slopes, light thrown from every surface, the mountains almost too sharp to look at, before the doors closed behind me and the hotel gathered it all into amber light, tobacco leather, quiet voices and a warmth that seemed to slow everything down. Twin desks leaning gently towards the lobby, tuned to welcome. Greetings meeting in the middle.
My feet followed the guide. My eyes followed the room. Oxblood velvet. Burnished brass. Stripes. Embroidery. Swirls. Symmetry anchoring the theatre. The room kept pouring itself into view faster than I could take it in.
An automatic door slid open.
Bright light.
The amber glow gave way to clean white squares overhead. Long corridors. Open office doors. Purpose over presentation. People moved quickly here. Passing. Calling greetings over shoulders. Doors opening and closing. Laughter travelling further than it had in the lobby. The lobby invited you to linger. Back here, everything kept moving.
By the time evening settled over Arosa, I'd checked into the Tschuggen, unpacked just enough to feel temporary, and found myself back at the entrance.
I turned right out of the Tschuggen and walked downhill, cowbells carrying from somewhere above me, pine in the warm evening air, sunlight catching timber balconies and a couple of restaurants quietly preparing for dinner service. There wasn't much happening. There didn't need to be. Then, almost out of nowhere, the thought arrived: What on earth am I doing here?
The summer season passed, and when I returned, the mountains I had first seen rising green were waiting for me again, this time in white. That first summer, they had made me grin like a child. For a few rare seconds, my mind had gone quiet. Over the days that followed, they seemed to draw the tension of London out of me, little by little.
My door was almost always open. Directly opposite the lift and along the corridor from the staff changing room, the flower room caught people's attention at the edges of their shifts. Arriving, leaving, fastening jackets, loosening ties. At first, our exchanges were brief. A greeting. A glance at what I was making. A question asked from the doorway. Over time, some of them stayed longer.
Over the months that followed, colleagues became friends, and the welcome I'd first experienced as a guest became something I was lucky enough to be part of.