In Switzerland, there was a range in the kitchen that never went out, but poor Gaudenz had to get up at silly o'clock to light the boiler for everywhere else, and yet supposedly insisted that he didn't like the thought of getting gas central heating.

:D I'm just imagining a group of CS girls diving into a hut and going "Oh good! Not only has this herdsman left the door unlocked and a load of food and utensils lying about, but he hasn't password-protected his wi-fi either!"

*Sigh* - how does anyone write adventure stories these days, or do characters drop their phones into snowdrifts?

All the Chalet School domestics are real Luddites, aren't they? Gaudenz won't have central heating, Anna won't have a washing machine or whatever it is. I wonder how Rosalie reacted to the arrival of photocopiers and computers...

“Me!” Joey returned in German as she held out her hand. “Why did Anna not tell me you worked here? She knew? She must have known!”

“My Cousin Anna has not seen me for a long time,” he replied. “It is only one month since I came here. Before, I was in Wien, and have not been able to leave. But now I am at home, and I stay.”
[...] Joey suddenly remembered her duty and, with a final handshake, left Eigen to deal with the luggage while she swept the girls before her, explaining, “That’s Eigen, brother of Madame’s Marie and Rosa and cousin to my own Anna. I haven’t seen him for years and years. It was thanks to him that I had my precious old Rufus. I’ll tell you that yarn later, if you don’t know it already. He’s had a dreadful time, poor Eigen. I can see that. He’s so thin.

Anna and Gaudenz really get to me - especially Anna refusing to use the easier blacklead liquid Joey buys her because it didn't make the grates quite as shiny as the old-fashioned 'good old paste and elbow-grease', as Joey says. Especially when the traditional method was very labour-intensive and needed redoing very often, and when the grates in question weren't even your own! But I think that's part of EBD's conception of the perfect servant/employee, that their reluctance to save themselves extra labour is precisely what makes them such paragons!

I think in 'Island' there is a description of Anna leaving the Saal giving Joey ' a look of pure adoration' this always annoyed me, even reading it as a child
why for goodness sake?





I've sometimes wondered whether those hints about Eigen's wartime backstory and 'bad time' cover up something quite traumatic. It doesn't seem very EBD - and let me confess I know less than nothing about how Nazi collaborators were treated in postwar Austria (some of it presumably depended on wich Allied 'zone' they were in?) - but isn't there something odd about faithful Anna not telling her beloved employer about Eigen's whereabouts at any point before he returned to his home at the Tiernsee (let alone news not coming via his sister Marie in Madge's household), and the fact that it sounds as if Eigen is trying to be evasive about that, by saying Anna hasn't seen him in a long time? (When of course she hasn't - she's been in Guernsey and the Uk and there's been a war - but there are always letters in which family news is passed on!)

And the fact that Joey can see he'd had a 'dreadful time', partly because he looks so thin, and Eigen says that he'd been in Vienna and 'not been able to leave' until a month before - basically I wondered if he'd been in prison in Vienna for Nazi collaboration, and that was why he looked so harrowed, and why neither Anna or Marie had apparently ever mentioned his whereabouts to Joey or Madge...? One could even speculate about a potential split in the family between Anna and Marie and their British associations and residence and possible collaboration elsewhere in the family...? There's no mention of Joey seeking out the Pfeiffens during her first trip back with the prefects, is there?

I've always assumed that Eigen was either one of the Austrian POWs who, because of the worsening relations between the Soviets and the West, wasn't released for several years after the war ended or, as JayB said, was stuck in the Soviet sector. We aren't given any clue as to why he'd had a "bad time", but I just can't imagine EBD casting one of the Pfeifens as a Nazi collaborator.

I can't either, really - very un-EBD - and your explanation is much more likely, but it struck me as unusual that Joey, with her hunger for news and her fondness for Anna and Marie, clearly didn't know why Eigen had had such a bad time, or had been stuck for so long in Vienna, despite having his cousin and sister in her home circle. Surely Anna and Marie, and hence Joey and Madge, would have known if Eigen were a POW for years? (And Jem would have managed to secure his release via one of Ted Humphries' old Russian contacts, obviously... )