proposal, part eins

My apologies for being so out of touch these past few days.  I know, I know - if I were you, I’d be upset too, but I hope you’ll forgive me when you hear the news I’ve been holding onto and savoring all to myself (and my closest friends and family) while away:

Stefan proposed!

And I – OF COURSE – said YES!

How did it all happen, you ask?
Well, it’s so incredible that you’ll have to read it in TWO parts. 
My insanely romantic and just-a-tad crazy fiancée (I cannot believe I just typed that word) planned a day for the ages.  Good luck future proposal planners – you’ve got your work cut out for you.

The magic really started the second I landed in Switzerland last Tuesday morning when he greeted me with my favorite morning treat – a Starbucks sugar-free vanilla Americano.  Despite its 7 CHF price tag (that’s ~$8+) in his country of birth, he indulged me and I loved it.  After my 8am arrival and morning coffee, we spent the day taking in the Christmas decorations in the local village, visiting his sister’s picture-perfect farm, and enjoying a delicious dinner of Swiss delicacies with his mom.  That night, he told me we should probably get to bed early – he knew I was tired, he wasn’t feeling that well, and he thought I needed a full nights’ sleep to get over the jet-lag hump.  I didn’t think much of it even though most nights at his mom’s are spent drinking wine and playing Swiss cards games until the wee hours of the morning.  I fell asleep by his side happy as could be.

But at around 3:45am someone’s alarm went off.  I immediately began apologizing: “Oh shoot! I must have forgotten to turn mine off.  Let me get that…” but as the words flew from my mouth, I realized it was 9:45pm where I had just come from – this couldn’t be mine. 

He popped out of bed and chimed: “We’re leaving in 40 minutes!  Put on your snow clothes and get ready to go!”  Knowing my sleep-loving Stefan despises waking at the crack of dawn, I knew whatever he was dragging me out of bed for at this hour had GOT to be good.  I hopped out from under the covers before he could say another word. 

I snapped a shot of the fresh bread I watched bake as he finished packing up a back-pack of contents he refused to reveal and then we were on our way.

Note the time on the oven clock.

Around 6am, we made a pit-stop for breakfast at an autobahn rest stop – even after visiting Switzerland 8+ times in the past year and a half, I still can’t get over how nice EVERYTHING is there.  Seriously – fresh produce and homemade croissants at a truck stop?   Ridiculous.

 

Around 7am, we took another break to snap some photos of the sun rising behind Julierpass.  He refused to tell me where we were headed or what we were doing but the ride and the views were already beyond gorgeous enough for the early morning to be worth it.

Around 8am, we pulled into a parking lot in Pontresina – the tiny town neighboring St. Moritz.  Stefan hopped out of the car and began talking Swiss German (which I cannot understand) to some strange man standing a few cars away.  He motioned for me to follow as the three of us headed into a ski shop to get fitted for some boots.  After the footwear was selected, I was guided down the street into another shop for some funny-looking skis. 

And that’s when I saw it – the bag stuffed with shovels, GPS trackers, avalanche measuring tools, three sacks of strange, sticky-looking, fur-like things, and a heavy-duty, first-aid kit.

What the hell were we doing?

We hopped into the car with Marcus (the man we had followed) driving through St. Moritz and beyond finally parking at the bottom of a very, VERY steep mountain.  As we got out, Marcus began equipping me with the GPS tracker – wrapping it around my torso and testing it with the one he kept on him.  “This will help me find you if you get buried under 15 meters of snow,” he told me.  Comforting, I thought.  He then began affixing the fur-like things to the bottom of our skis. 

“You ready?” Stefan chimed grinning from ear to ear.

“Ready for what?” I asked terrified by what I was about to endure.
“To ski UP this mountain.”
I gulped down my terror as I nodded yes.

The skins – as they’re called – were actually pretty cool.  With them attached, our skis could easily slide up the steep grade of the slope, but then stick – not sliding back down – allowing up to “climb” the mountain with our skis as our guide.  It has hard, but refreshing, invigorating, and enjoyable.  We had the whole hill to ourselves – not another human in sight.  After I’d had my fill of the fun, we glided into a quiet, mountain village – apparently the exact village where Heidi,  one of my favorite childhood films – had been shot.  The wood and stone huts were idyllic and I was exhausted, so we stopped to snap some shots of our accomplishment.

“So how much longer do we go up?” I asked. “Another half hour or so?”

Stefan and Marcus looked at me in partial disbelief.  Marcus pointed at a small peak that seemed to be miles away.  “We’re headed there – maybe 3, 4 hours more.”

I muscled up the strength to hide my shock as I clipped back into my skis.  “Well we better get going!” 

And go we did as we climbed higher and higher, steeper and steeper, becoming more and more exhausted with every step.  I knew Marcus wasn’t kidding when he told us the sport had the highest degree of calorie-burning per minute of any worldwide.  We stopped for breaks here and there – snapping more pictures of the incredible day, chomping on bananas and Swiss apfel bars, sipping some water and a Coke Zero that Stefan had graciously packed for me in his mystery bag.  We could not have gotten luckier with the weather – despite fog, snow, and rain the previous week, the 28^th was crystal clear with the bluest of skies.

See that lake way, way down there?

That's where we started.

All was going well, and I had suffered not too much embarrassment, up until 2pm – that’s when my skins decided to stop working on one of the steepest slopes thus far.  I’d slide my ski upwards, shift my weight to my uphill leg, and then step, but – unlike before when my ski would be glued to the slope – I instead slid backwards losing two steps for every one attempt.  Apparently, my fur-like devices had frozen over at the edges making their magical properties disappear in the Artic-like Alps.  Marcus came to the rescue trading his skins for mine so I could ski up a final few meters to meet Stefan on a beautiful peak that he had picked out for us to have a snack.  I was beyond spent, my legs jello-like and will-less, but I pulled together the strength to climb up to him.

While I had been completely and utterly exhausted by the journey without carrying a thing, Stefan had done it complaint-free with a 25-pound bag on his back.  As I reached him, he unzipped his pack to reveal a full cheese platter (as noted previously, cheese is something we’ve shared and cherished together often) complete with my favorite Nussli Kase, his favorite Appenzeller Extra, a creamy French variety, a local Swiss mountain cheese, fresh prosciutto, and the bread we had baked that very morning.  He THEN pulled out a bottle of champagne setting into its mountain-made holder in the snow.  I could not have been more excited to dig in.

“Stand up on that rock – I want to get your picture with the mountains in the background,” he told me as he reached back into the bag for something I couldn’t quite make out. 

Then it hit me: I knew what was about to happen.  The early-morning wake-up call, the oh-so-KK-and-Stefan-crazy-and-a-bit-insane adventure, the mountain, the cheese, the champagne, the little box he was holding in his hand.

He took a step forward as he tried to get onto one knee but with the depth of the snow, he sunk in up to his waist leaving him looking up at me at my perch on the rock.  I giggled giddy with anticipation.

“Will you be my co-pilot forever?” he asked as he opened the box to reveal the absolutely most perfect ring I had ever seen.

“Yes, yes, yes!!”

More on this day to come.

xoxo

KK