Not Just a Nametag

The view from the sun-baked patio of the wonderful Hotel Eiger in Mürren, Switzerland

Imagine this: You’re sitting in the dining room of a lovely little hotel in a famously picturesque mountain village in the Swiss Alps. Outside it is pouring rain so the large brightly colored awning covering the entrance and the umbrellas that ordinarily protect patrons from the sunshine are all put away. Most of the diners in the lively room with stunning views through the panorama windows are on a half-board, pre-fixe meal plan, as am I. It includes several choices of delicious main courses that follow a range of exceptional soups, a fish course or salad, and fresh bread. The wine is plentiful, the atmosphere convivial, and the staff are friendly, efficient, and engaging in numerous languages.

After a long, vigorous day of hiking I am ready for the wonderful plate of beef stroganoff when it arrives, piping hot from the kitchen and made with care. And then it happens. It really did; and I wish it hadn’t.

From somewhere behind me, I hear the uniquely loud and nasally voice of an American. She says to the dining room manager (the always hilarious and quite amazing Carla), in specific reference to the meal just placed in front of me, “The smell of burning flesh is disgusting to me. We’d like to sit outside”. I did not turn around. I did hear Carla ask gently whether they realized that we were in the middle of an enormous and quite terrible rain storm, only to be dressed-down by the nose-talker about how it can’t possibly be hard to pull out the awning, dry off the table and chairs, and turn on the heaters. The American and her companion promptly walked out and waited in the hotel lobby, toe tapping, while the staff scurried to make them happy (or at least less miserable). I went ahead and dove face first into my stroganoff with vigor and more than a tiny bit of amazement. The staff bit their tongues.

I wish this had been an isolated incident. On that trip, I had several other encounters just like it.

After the few worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I tip-toed back into travel and eventually swan-dove in with vigor. In each of the last three years, I’ve sought out and found some exceptional experiences hiking in mountains far from home and getting to know some wonderful people. In my recent travels, I have always been made to feel welcome without exception or qualification and I have never felt as though I was being served by the people who staffed the hotels where I stayed, the cafes and remote mountain huts I visited, or the shops in which I poked around. Wherever I have traveled, the local people have been universally hospitable in the best sense of the word.

This year, in advance of my trip to the Bernese Oberlandt in Switzerland, I’d had in mind an article about the distinction between service and hospitality. It was a perspective that I kept in mind as I roamed around the car-free streets of Mürren and the surrounding villages perched on the cliffs above the Lauterbrunen Rift. It’s as beautiful a place as you can imagine, and yet it was the welcome of the people I found throughout the area that elevated it into the realm of the “I wonder if I could stay here for a long while” places. What stopped me from writing my article, what surprised me the most, was the realization that many, dare I say most, of the Americans in the bustling little village quite obviously did not share my view of how to experience the place and the hospitality of its people.

Among my compatriots, there was a clear expectation of being in receipt of service in Mürren, of being served, of experiencing the place just enough to be able to say that they’d been there and to show off their photos. There’s no other way to say it: the other Americans were noticeably and loudly disinterested in the people of the area, in their language and their culture. Their needy and entitled voices frequently interrupted my quiet reverie. I’ve been telling the uncomfortably numerous stories of my run-ins with cartoonish Americans to my friends here at home, selectively of course, and we all understand that underneath the entertaining tales about ugly Americans is a dark reality and a valuable signpost for the rest of us.

To be clear, I have zero issues with people preferring to modify their experiences for personal preferences, comfort, health or welfare. I do have an issue, a quite significant one, with people who treat the staff of exceptionally welcoming places like servants. It makes my skin crawl, especially when that staff is so committed to making all who come to their corner of the world feel at home in their home. Ours was among the first nations to cast aside social class as an essential component of how society is ordered and I would hope that egalitarianism is a part of our DNA whether we are at home or abroad, so this behavior really is challenging to my beliefs about who we are as a people. Thankfully, when I gently confronted Swiss villagers about whether this was a new phenomenon, their warmth with me remained unabated and they often shared their frustrations in a way that was always kind and made clear that they understood my own angst – their optimism about Americans remained unqualified even when tinted by polite consternation. Having the trust and confidence of the people there and being made to feel like one of their own was exemplified by the resident dog of a mountain hut invariably laying on my feet while having these conversations in French or my terrible German, and it did make me feel good about the world and my own place in it.

In Aspen Snowmass and in mountain resorts throughout North America, the common practice of staff wearing name tags that have their hometown on them is a subtle but effective way of humanizing each of us. The staff that work hard to keep the place clean and shovel the sidewalks, the wait staff in restaurants and everyone else are named and identified as people, not anonymously hiding like a nameless and faceless palace staff around the confines of a formal dining room, invisibly and silently serving their masters. The hometown on nametags indicates that we’ve each arrived here for a reason that often is similar to that of our visitors, and that our geographic diversity invites mutually respectful conversation and enriches our guests’ experience. I do hope that it keeps all of us, guests and staff alike, feeling and being squarely on the hospitality rather than the service side of the equation.

So, to my newfound friends in Mürren, danke schoen. Gracie mille. Merci beaucoup. Thank you for having made me feel welcome and for reminding me that true hospitality is neither transactional nor can it be rehearsed, and that its effect on the people being made welcome is far-reaching and quite wonderful.

I’m already looking forward to my next overseas adventure. For now, I may just have to treat myself to another slice of apfelstrudel at Bonnies on Aspen Mountain – it may make me feel soft around the waist but it does always make me feel good about the world.