A group of asylum seekers has been temporarily housed on one of Switzerland’s most iconic mountains, the Rigi. The authorities say it’s a good setting to help them integrate while critics dubbed the choice “a vacation”.

For the young men given shelter there, it feels more like limbo as they wait to hear whether the country they’re trying hard to understand will remain their home.

A train groaning with tourists chugs up a steep cogwheel track, smartphones hanging out of windows capturing every meadow and peak. It’s making its way up the so-called “queen of the mountains,” once described by American author Mark Twain as “an imposing Alpine mass, six thousand feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains”.

About two-thirds of the way to the top, the train stops at a cluster of houses and hotels known as Rigi Klösterli. This morning, a group of hikers gets out along with an elderly man who bears a resemblance to Twain, with flowing white hair and round spectacles.

He isn’t going for a walk. His destination is a large house, at the end of a steep path marked by streamers and handmade signs proclaiming “welcome to our party!”. The sign is written not only in German, but in Farsi and Urdu too.

The man and other guests are greeted at the door by a line of well-dressed young men speaking their best, carefully pronounced German.

They are asylum seekers, mostly from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iran, who were re-located to this remote spot for three months to get a crash course in Swiss life and await news of whether they’ll be allowed to stay. But when the choice of this house – usually used for ski groups and camps – to take in up to 50 asylum seekers became known, there was some public backlash.

“It’s great that asylum seekers can now also have a vacation in a beautiful setting” was one tongue-in-cheek comment printed in the local press. Another accused the federal government of wanting “to destroy tourism in central Switzerland”.

But a short supply of available housing in canton Schwyz, where the Rigi is located, meant local authorities had to scramble to find suitable places when the federal government told the cantons to prepare for an increase in asylum seekers.

Among the locals in attendance at the asylum centre open house is Markus Blättler, the canton’s director for migration. He says the arrangement on the Rigi turned out well despite people “not being overjoyed” at the prospect. His job was to prepare the asylum seekers for life in Switzerland and to avoid putting them in underground bunkers – a controversial decision taken in some parts of the country.

“We’re here during the off-season, not peak tourist season, and we involved the community from the beginning, including the important players like the railways and people who live in Rigi Klösterli,” he says, noting that the house will only be used as an asylum centre from March to May.

“We teach the asylum seekers how much it costs to live in Switzerland, and what you need to make to support a family,” Blättler said. “We don’t sell dreams, only goals. You can have dreams, but there is a lot of work behind them.”