THE ALPINE PEARL ARAUS

Our gratitude to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series for making skiing popular and giving a method of transporation a boost it needed. Back then Conan Doyle, an avid sportsman, was wintering in Davos. For entertainment, he ordered some skiing “boards” from Norway and hiked up the mountain with two local guides. They then skied down into Arosa, ending their journey with a luncheon at a local inn, the Seehof, the first hotel in Arosa. Conan Doyle wrote of his pioneering Davos/Arosa ski adventure in a British magazine, The Strand, in 1894, and the story attracted British skiers to Switzerland.

Later Erwin Schrödinger, the Austrian physicist, was vacationing in Arosa at Christmas 1925 when he made his breakthrough discovery of wave mechanics.

In 1933, Thomas Mann, German novelist, stayed in Arosa during the first week of his Swiss exile.
The film Over the Moon (shot 1937 to 1939) has brief Technicolor exterior shots of the train station and ski resort areas.

Germany’s Hassall met with British J. Lonsdale Bryant in Arosa on February 20, 1940, to make a plan to overthrow the ruling German Nazi Adolf Hitler.
Since then Arosa is a recommended alpine pearl.