Admittedly, I wasn't exactly amused when I had to wash dishes for an hour and a half on the first evening.

I only arrived at noon, hiked around Lake Sils for a long time and came back just in time for dinner.

After that, I would have liked to end the day with a glass or two of red wine.

Instead, about forty plates of unsavory leftovers were piled up in front of me.

The cheese from the pizzoccheri was still sticking in the bowls, unsightly puddles of pudding were swimming in the bowls.

At least two other guests helped me wash the dishes: a solo traveler from Lucerne in her sixties and a young family man who had come from Berlin with his wife and two sons.

Completely different people.

But both regular guests of the Salecina, who could tell a lot about their stays.

What drives you to spend your holidays in a self-managed holiday and education center, where you have to share a room with three or eleven strangers and help with cooking, washing up or cleaning?

On the one hand, many are attracted by the price.

In one of the most beautiful landscapes in Switzerland, near Sils Maria, you can live and eat from as little as 40 francs a night.

Depending on their budget and self-assessment, guests pay 40, 55 or 66 francs, children and young adults even less.

Once a year, even those who have very little can stay for a week for only two hundred francs.

Including half board.

In this way, less well-heeled people can enjoy the same mountain world for which others in the neighboring, noble Waldhaus pay more than twenty times as much.

“But there are also high earners who come to us.

Otherwise the project would not be sustainable,” explains Silvie Kiefer, who works in the Salecina management team.

A 300 year old farm

Around the old mountain farm on the Maloja Pass at an altitude of 1800 meters there is nothing but alpine meadows.

No roads, almost no cars, but all the more cows.

On my first night, lots of kids frolic around the campfire outside and can hardly get to bed.

Meanwhile, adults can get enough of the night sky.

"The house with the most stars between Bergell and Engadin" is the slogan of the Salecina.

And there really is an abundance of them here.

They do not stand for luxury, but for an incomparable mountain world with peaks such as the 2600 meter high Piz Salecina without any light pollution all around.

Right in the middle is the farm, which seems to have fallen out of time.

The main house with dining rooms, kitchens, pantry, office, a sizeable library, games room and a small shop is over 300 years old.

The bedrooms are located in the neighboring former stable, which is "only" 270 years old.

One could feel as if one were in the 18th century if there weren't a few stickers here and there pleading for "Black lives matter" or "Refugees welcome".

The farmstead was farmed until 1970, when the last tenant gave up.

This was the hour for Amalie and Theo Pinkus, a Swiss couple who were looking for a suitable property at the time and bought the property with the help of donations – they didn’t use the word crowdfunding yet – in order to realize their vision of a self-managed holiday center .

Shaped by the spirit of the 1968 movement, they wanted to found a house that was open to everyone, but above all to those from left-wing movements who were politically interested.

Here they should be able to exchange ideas and try out other forms of living together.

Ideologically not clearly defined, but always based on a humanistic attitude.