I am playing the Swiss Open Seniors in Klosters, about two hours by train from Zurich, starting Monday. It takes a while to get here from California…I left at 4:30am and arrived the following day at 3:30 pm. Now 3 1/2 hours of that travel was due to an airline delay (“mechanical” issues at United), but otherwise the trip was uneventful. I had to change trains twice between the Zurich airport and Klosters and did feel foolish at the Zurich main train station when I saw an elevator after I’d lugged my bags up and down a couple of flights of stairs. Cross training…yeah. Let’s go with that. At least I didn’t trip and fall or anything.

The train station at the Zurich airport…well really one level up, was a big mall and had an amazing grocery store. It was possible to take a scanner and scan in all your purchases and then self check out…Swiss efficiency. As you can imagine, the chocolate aisles are impressive in Switzerland and there was also a huge Lindt store there. I had my hands full of luggage or I’d have been in big trouble.

Switzerland is beautiful (and green…well, it does rain a lot, and it’s raining now). The train ride, particularly the last 40 minutes, on the “Glacier Express” from Landquart featured wonderful scenery. In addition to the mountains, there are corn and hay fields, and I saw several Swiss cows and a small deer farm.

I checked into my hotel in Klosters easily, and the hotel was just across the street from the train station so that was easy. Not much has changed in Klosters really in the 20 years I’ve been coming here. The biggest change is to the river which goes past the tennis club. It used to have just dirt sides, now, for flood control, it’s been paved on the sides, but is still quite nice.

After I checked in I walked into the town and thought I might try and find the type of tennis balls used in the tournament (a kind of Prince ball). I did find one store selling US Open hard court balls but the sales clerk told me they were stocked for putting into the dryer with down jackets, not for tennis! (Laundry tip of the day.) But since they were the only evidence of tennis I saw other than a closed shack at the tennis courts, I may go back and get them anyway.

I did go by the tennis courts which were pretty quiet, only a couple of the 7 courts were in use by social players. Last week they were busy because there was a big European junior championship here in the 18 and under division.

I did find out that the World Cup (skiing) will be here in 2017.

The draws aren’t up yet for this event but it looks like there are 7 in the draw so there will be two round robins with the winners facing off in the final.