Christmas in Toggenburg: the holidays in the mountains

In a lot of families there comes a Christmas Eve when home is simply too small. The dining table seats six and nine people have arrived. The grandparents sleep in the children’s room, the children on a mattress in the hallway. And one person spends half the day alone in the kitchen while everyone else is laughing next door.

There is another way to do it. You spend the holidays somewhere with room for all of you: a holiday apartment in the mountains. Our house in Alt St. Johann in Toggenburg is the historic SutterSport building at Hauptstrasse 36, about an hour from Zurich. Two apartments under one roof, two kitchens, two terraces, and snow right outside the door. We are Isabel and Sandro, with our dog Lou, and over the past winters we have noticed one thing: Christmas up here feels different from Christmas at home.

You cook the festive meal yourself

The biggest difference from a hotel over the holidays is the kitchen. Both apartments have a fully equipped one, the kind you can genuinely cook in rather than just make coffee. The roast goes into your oven, the biscuits onto your baking tray, and anyone who would rather sleep in on Christmas morning has breakfast at eleven.

For the festive days there is a fondue set and a raclette set in both apartments. Cheese fondue in the evening, raclette on the quieter days in between: up here that is not a holiday gimmick, it is simply what people eat in winter. Whatever you forgot, you pick up at the village shop, two minutes on foot. And because a week with children always means wet clothes, a washing machine and a tumble dryer are part of the deal.

The best part is the rhythm. Nobody is waiting on a seating plan and nobody clears your plate away. You eat when you are hungry, and afterwards you stay at the table as long as you like.

Room for three generations under one roof

Louisa’s Loft is on the ground floor, around 85 m2, and sleeps up to 6 guests: two bedrooms, a sofa bed, one bathroom, plus the extra room called the Schafberg-Chalet upstairs. From CHF 110 per night, plus final cleaning and visitor’s tax.

Louisa’s Gallery is an apartment with a gallery level, around 106 m2, for up to 6 guests, with two bedrooms, a sofa bed and a bathroom with a bathtub. The gallery level holds a table tennis table and a workspace. From CHF 130 per night, plus final cleaning and visitor’s tax.

When the whole family comes, you take both together: the whole house sleeps up to 12 guests and gives you two kitchens, two terraces and two whirlpools, from CHF 280 per night, plus final cleaning and visitor’s tax. That is the point of a multi generation holiday: eat together, sleep apart. The grandparents have their own front door, the family with small children has theirs, and you are all still in the same house.

A travel cot and a high chair are here, and so is a children’s play corner. Each apartment comes with a parking space. The dog is welcome too, as you can read in our post about holidays with a dog in Toggenburg: CHF 40 in the Loft, CHF 50 in the Gallery.

Snow at the door, quiet in the valley

What carries the holidays up here is the location. The cross country trail starts about 10 metres from the house, the ski school is around 200 metres away, and in winter you are ski-in/out. For families that means nobody sits in a car for half an hour before anyone gets snow under their feet. And when someone has had enough, they simply walk home.

All around you stand the Churfirsten, the Schafberg, the Säntis and the Chäserrugg. Our post on the ski area at the Chäserrugg describes what a ski day here looks like. If you would rather not ski at all, that is fine too. A walk through the snowy village, a sledge, a lap through the deep snow behind the house: it does not take more than that.

What guests mention most often after the holidays is not the snow, though. It is the quiet. In December the valley goes dark early and gets very still. No traffic, no strings of lights to the horizon. That is what makes the days feel long and the evenings even longer.

The evenings, once everyone is full

After dinner the best part begins. Outside, your own outdoor whirlpool is steaming, the family sized one in the Loft, the large one for up to 5 people in the Gallery. Warm water, cold air, stars above the valley: that is the moment everyone still talks about in spring.

Inside there is a film on the smart TV with Netflix, Disney+ and replay, or a round at the table football. The wifi is fast enough for relatives in Canada or England to join by video if they could not travel over for Christmas themselves.

Arriving without losing the day

Check in here works on your own with a numeric code. There is no key handover to schedule and no need to be punctual, which is worth a lot when you arrive in December with children, presents and snow chains. Zurich is about an hour away and the bus stop is two minutes on foot.

On Airbnb our guests have rated us 5.0 from 16 reviews and we are listed there as a Guest Favourite. Nicer than any number, though, is the sentence we keep hearing after the holidays: that for once there was finally room for everyone at one table. If you would like Christmas to feel different this year, there is space for it up here in Toggenburg.