Adrienne’s Summer in Switzerland, 2008

End of the Line (Day 22)0

Yesterday evening we brought our checkable luggage down and loaded the vans.  After dinner SSTH opened its disco for a fare-well dance, and therefore some of us were up quite late.  Around midnight I played a last game of pinball and retired to my room.  This morning the alarm went off at 4am.  Yes folks – I was up before the sun.  Along with Curtis and Asha I made sure everyone else in our group was up and moving – getting dressed, putting out the linens for the cleaning staff to collect, confirming that all personal items were packed, all trash taken out, nothing left behind or out of place.

We gathered in the lobby to turn in our room keys (I don’t believe I’ve mentioned them before, but I’ve been meaning to: the keys at SSTH are magnetic.  Each door has a lock with a place to touch a key, and each key is a small round magnet with a little plastic handle.  The locks and keys are programmable, so room keys open only one bedroom and the corresponding laundry room (and hall bathrooms if applicable).  All keys look completely identical.)

…Where was I?  Right.  Checking out and loading up.  We turned in our keys, collected packed breakfasts, and piled into the SSTH vans for one last ride.  The airport parking lot did not have anywhere near enough luggage carts available, so we sent some members of the group to go get more while the rest of us unloaded the vans.  Then we each loaded our own luggage onto a cart and wheeled out (pretty well in formation) for the check-in desk.

The airport staff were polite and (I think) a little flustered at the arrival of our “large” group and so many bags.  They decided to process us in little groups of three or four, asking how long we’d been in the country, if we had packed our own bags, if we were carrying anything for anyone else, if we had any electronics and if so – details about the electronics, and taking time to hold up each passport and compare the picture to the corresponding person.  In short, they were very meticulous before they let us approach the agents at the check-in counter to surrender our bags and claim our tickets.

Then we continued with our carry-on luggage first to a bathroom break and then through security – metal detectors for the people, scanners for the bags, no liquids, not very much of a wait.

Once settled on the plane, I knew I should try to sleep.  Because the long flight (about eight and a half hours) traveled from east to west, we were crossing into a much earlier time zone and would land in the early afternoon, local time – not an evening hour similar to the time zone to which I was accustomed.  …I don’t think I did much more than doze.  After a while trying to sleep, I gave up and watched the in-flight movie and television lineup, as passively as possible, and resting/dozing as much as I could (I must have rested somewhat, because I really don’t recall what the film or the television was with much clarity – I feel like I keep getting the entertainment from the flight over confused with that of the flight back.)

We landed at familiar JFK, and hurried to Customs and Immigration, where we happily inched through the line to the officials who checked our passports and welcomed us home.  Then to the baggage carousel, and a bit of a wait for the luggage to appear.  We had fun getting all the (nearly identical) American Airlines duffle bags reunited with their proper owners.

When I walked out of the customs section and down the hall where people wait to meet deplaned passengers, I met quite a surprise: not only was my boyfriend waiting for me, he’d brought my best friend and her boyfriend as well as a giant welcome home poster.  There were many hugs all around, and they helped me with my luggage but wouldn’t tell me whose car they had borrowed or where the car was.  We waited on the curb a few minutes, catching up on all the news and (in my case, at least) adjusting to the summer heat and humidity and then a very familiar car drove up.  It was my mom’s car, with my mom driving, because my friends had persuaded her to leave work early (I hadn’t dared to ask her to) and pick me up.

We drove back to her house in Brooklyn for a late lunch, and then I visited a few more friends at their house in Brooklyn.  The idea was to stay up and go to bed at a reasonable local hour, the better to adjust my internal clock and reduce the effects of jet lag, but it didn’t really happen.  By nine-thirty I was nearly asleep on my feet, despite the good company and the consumption of caffeine, so I reluctantly said goodnight and traveled home to bed.

On the trip, we had joked about experiencing culture shock when we returned home.  In some ways I did feel a little shocked.  I’d forgotten how busy and crowded and diverse New York City is, I’d completely forgotten the feel of summer heat and humidity, and after so many weeks of different food, a borrowed room, and a small group of constant companions – getting home with all its freedoms and options and usual responsibilities was a little overwhelming at first.

Still, I’m glad to be back, I’m glad I learned so much, and I think in a few months I might even be craving fondue again.

Posted: daily log

Packing it all In… (Day 21)0

Today was a fairly free-schedule day. After breakfast, we all met in the computer room to confirm our seats for the plane ride home and to go over the rules for packing (no liquids over 3 ounces large in the carry-on, one carry-on per person, you know the drill), and to go over the schedule for tomorrow.

After the meeting, Asha and I went back to our room to start packing our luggage, and this afternoon a few of us went into Chur for some last-minute shopping. We hit a few clothing stores for souvenirs, and I picked up a box of fresh chocolates from a confectionery shop for my mom.

As it happens, our last day is also the last day for the 60 kids about to go on their internships. To celebrate, SSTH put together a “BBQ” dinner for us all.

There was no barbecue sauce.

There was grilled chicken and sausage and beef kebab – what we in the US would probably call a “cook-out”. But it was tasty.

As this is my last evening in Switzerland, I think it’s a good time to share a few odds and ends. First, the words. Then the pictures.

1. Breakfast in this part of Switzerland has a lot in common with what we Americans would typically view as “lunch”. Thick loaves of bread, cold-cut style meats, cheeses, butter, fresh fruit and iced tea (Nestea) are paired with a few more recognizably breakfast items (jam, croissants, cold cereal, orange juice, hot tea, cocoa and coffee).

2. Traveling in Switzerland makes the ears pop as if taking a tour of high-rises in New York. The country is in the Alps, and the roads all go up and down. The temperature also varies – the lower reaches might be warm and sunny and no-sleeves-required while the upper reaches are still icy and home to cold winds. If you visit, be sure to pack layers and different thicknesses of insulating clothing.

3. I know The Hobbit backwards and forwards, but never before have I had such a clear picture of what the Misty Mountains must’ve looked like. I think they look like Switzerland, where the clouds seem to hang just above the trees – not even as high as the mountain tops – and the mists seem to rise out of the very ground and curl along on errands of their own. It’s really beautiful, and sometimes a little creepy.

(clouds amid the mountains)

(looks like you could almost walk into them, doesn’t it?)

(This is a little picture, I know. Imagine this view being the width of the visible horizon and you’ll get an idea of how intense and low-hanging the clouds could be.)

(There was a small community of gnomes on our host school’s grounds)

(and some cows – Adele could here their bells from her bedroom window)

(Swiss Rail – an excellent way to travel)

(Switzerland’s smallest tourism office.  Holds half a dozen: Shevy, Lilianna, Adele, Sarah, Gia and Sophie!)

Posted: daily log

Waste and Waist Management: Day 200

Today Mr. Wiki gave us a very detailed lecture about Ecological Disciplines (ways to live in the modern world without overly harming the environment) and then took us to visit a waste management plant, a sewage treatment plant, and dinner. The sheer amount of information is a little daunting to provide here, so I will try to offer just highlights instead.

At SSTH, our rooms all have small dustbins, and the laundry rooms have many different waste bins. There’s a place just for used batteries, a bin for glass, another for aluminum, another for food scraps, another for paper, another for other waste. This is not the school being super-ecological. This is the school following the rules for Switzerland, where for the last five years, no waste may be disposed of without being treated – on pain of fines. Switzerland is practicing sustainable waste management.

It’s kind of a revolutionary thing, and it takes several things to work:
- the population must be willing and able to separate and turn in their waste
- the government must be willing to collect and treat wastes
- there must be enough roads, treatment plants, and staff to perform treatment
- the businesses must be willing to use treated wastes (recycled paper, reclaimed metal, etc.)
- the culture must appreciate and value sustainability

(you might begin to see why we have considerably less sustainable waste management at home)

Mr. Wiki also offered a novel and yet obvious observation: as much as we humans influence the environment (through buildings, farming, landfills, mining, harvesting, existing), the environment also influences us – we seek beautiful scenery and unspoiled lands for vacation and adventure. …When we consider this, it can make it more enticing to lessen our own footprints and so create more of what we’re looking for.

He continued to explain with Switzerland as an example. Without human settlement, this land would be virtually all forest. The people settled, prospered, built, and changed the landscape with farms and pastureland. There is less forest, and even the forests are cultivated by people. Saying humans should have truly zero impact on the environment just isn’t feasible. But we must proceed in a sustainable manner. And we must look at the picture holistically – if we focus on just one area, we could create solutions for that area which have seriously negative impacts on other areas and parts of the whole.

So yes – use energy-efficient machines and appliances, use energy-efficient light bulbs and as much sunlight as possible. Construct buildings which will automatically insulate to keep out the heat of summer (air conditioners are a rarity around here) and the cold of winter. Use machines that require less water, and have systems that reuse water where possible (soapy water isn’t good to drink, but it will flush a toilet). And stop using landfills for untreated waste. Not only are these space-wasters, they release methane which creates extra heat and messes up the atmosphere.

Gevag Waste Treatment Plant (pictured above)
It isn’t the largest plant in Switzerland. You could call it a mid-size model. But it processes some 330 tons of waste every day. (The largest plants handle 2,000 tons a day). The efficiency of the system is still blowing my mind.

The heart of the plant is a kiln which burns constantly, forever renewed with fresh waste. Staff with machines and computers regulate how much waste enters the system at a time, and do their best to provide an even, homogenized diet of trash. Too much of any one material can cause the internal temperature of the kiln to get too hot or not hot enough and that reduces how well the plant produces energy. (Plus if it really really gets too hot, parts of the kiln and feeding mechanism can melt, which isn’t good at all.) (Also like a heart, the kiln is one of the smaller elements of the plant – the rest of the space is for a very large and complex filtration system, sorting bins for recovered materials, and storage for waste awaiting burning.)

As the kiln burns, it produces a lot of heat, which is captured and turned into energy both to power the entire Gevang plant and most of the energy needs of a paper plant nearby. (In numbers, the heat energy Gevang diverts to the paper plant is equal to about 6 million liters of oil each year.) It also produces lots of dirty steam. This steam goes through a very complicated filtration process, separating each element back out until only pure water is left. The water is cooled and released into an adjacent river. The recovered elements (mostly different metals and dusts) are either dumped into collection bins for magnetic and non-magnetic metals, or sent to landfills (as completely inert dust – no gases to release, no decomposition to attempt). The solids left after burning are sorted the same way.

Gevang’s name, translated, is something like “Energy from Waste”. Not the prettiest name, but very true and to the point. The plant has 28 full-time staff and 5 part-time, and a selection of gift items. We were presented with some pretty nifty things: hats, cloth bags, and key chains with carabineer clips. I can now say I’m less likely to lose my keys, and more likely to take my own bag when I shop for groceries. 

(best. warning sign. ever.)

Our next stop was to a sewage treatment plant, and yes – it smelled. Some of it was highly flammable. It was also very efficient. The plant’s function is to filter and clean the waste water vented by the sewage system. The raw water goes through a series of open-air holding tanks (some with special bacteria, others with chemicals) and filters that separate all the elements. Heavy metals and other solids are collected, dried out, then transported to another facility and burned. The dirty water left after the solids are removed is held in a tank and treated with air and bacteria for about 20 days. At the end of this time, when it tests clean, it is released into the river.

(Pictured above are the brave souls who stuck it out to the end of the sewage treatment tour. L-R, kneeling: Gia, Sophie, Adele.  L-R, standing: Sarah, me, Curtis, Mr. Wicki, our guide, Shevy, Lilianna, Katherine, Asha)

After all that, it was back to the vans and off to dinner. Some things can’t be rushed, though. We drove a while to a cable car, and took a 15 minute ride up a mountain to a small restaurant which specializes in fondue and doesn’t care much about advertizing. If you know it’s there, you know you have to eat there. If you don’t know – that means there will be tables enough for the people who do.

While our dinner cooked, we had soft drinks and admired the view. Then we filled two tables and rolled up our sleeves and got down to eating. Each table was given two large pots of fondue, along with baskets of cubed bread (I’m used to this), plates of cubed baked potato (a variation for me, but quite tasty), and plates of cubed pineapple. It took a while before I was willing to try a cube of pineapple covered in melted cheese, but it was actually pretty good. I don’t know what the restaurant’s recipe is, and they don’t share it. I know it’s a mix of cheese (maybe gruyere, ementhal and something else, maybe more or less), some alcohol, and a lot of garlic.

Anywhere I’ve seen a recipe for fondue before, the garlic is treated like something of a necessary evil: take a clove, cut it in half, rub the pot before you put in the cheese, and then throw the garlic away. Not so here. Many, many cloves of garlic went into each pot. I think they were roasted or sauteed for a bit before being added to the cheese (or cooked first in the pot and then the cheese was put in after), and they were absolutely wonderful. I like garlic. I really like getting a forkful of potato and garlic and cheese after a long day of lecture and tour.

Posted: daily log

Buses in the Rain, Day 190

Today we at breakfast at 7am, as usual, and caught the 7:29am bus to Chur, as usual, but we did not go into Chur nor depart by train! Instead, we caught the 8:10am bus to Lugano. …We had reservations on the local, but Katherine and I noticed that the departures board listed two buses to Lugano, so we went to the reservation desk and had our group moved to the express bus. Knowing that we’d shortened our travel time helped make up for the cold drizzle usurping the summer sunshine.

Once on board, I sat with Sarah, and we both felt like the trip was going to be different even before we left the outskirts of Chur. Perhaps it’s because the bus winds through little roads and neighborhoods instead of barreling along like the train. Perhaps it’s because the slower speed is more restful and relaxing. Soon enough though we were cruising down the highway, almost as fast as the trains. It felt like we were actually riding through a forest because the trees were so close to the road. Even with the rain, the scenery is breath-taking. There are hills so liberally covered in wildflowers – swaths of yellow, white, red, purple and places where the colors are all mixed in a solid blanket over the ground. The effect from a rain-blurred moving bus window is of driving through a Monet painting executed on a mountainside canvas.

Lugano is much closer to Italy than Chur and German-influenced Zürich. The Grand Hotel Eden in Lugano is proudly and luxuriously Italian – managing not only to pull off a lobby of dark wood and zebra-print lamps with leopard-print furniture, but to make it look good. As befits a five-start hotel on the water, the Eden has its own dock, and the hotel restaurant is used to guests showing up by private boat and proceeding directly to reserved tables. (The restaurant has giant picture windows with stunning views of the water.)

The hotel itself is actually two towers connected by underground passage. When the hotel first opened the passage contained small shops, but those have given way to decorative displays. The walls in the hotel’s hallways are not adorned with mere paper, but with softly patterned brocade. The rooms are spacious, and the suites are immense – I’ve seen smaller apartments at home. Another striking difference is the hotel’s smoking policy: several of their rooms are not non-smoking, and this is not likely to change until required by law because so very many of the hotel’s guests expect to be able to smoke in their rooms.

The rain, which was pouring when we took the ten-minute walk from the local bus to the hotel, was still pouring when we took the ten-minute walk back to the local bus. My feet stayed dry, which is a serious credit to the Gore-Tex shoes, and my raincoat offered some protection for the rest of me. Our planned picnic lunch by the water was nixed in favor of an earlier bus back towards Chur. We stopped in Bellinzona for a lay-over and a connecting bus.

Bellinzona was under more of a light rain than a deluge, so Andi and I walked around a bit before stopping in a cafe for hot chocolate and tea with Dr. Garely and Professor Blake-Neis. The chocolate came in the form of a glass of very hot milk (perfect for a cold, wet day), and a packet of cocoa mix. …Switzerland has chocolate factories and chocolate shops, but it seems like the majority of the country just isn’t as devoted to chocolate as I had been led to believe. The velvet-textured hot cocoa I’ve tasted in Prague, and the pot of melted chocolate mixed with milk I’ve been served in Bruges, don’t have much competition from this trip.

Posted: daily log

a ski-town in the off-season: Day 180

St. Moritz, twice host of the winter Olympic games, was our host today. World-renowned for its skiing, frequented by celebrities from all over, this alpine town welcomes families and pensioners as well – just ask the Hotel Laudinella.

A three-star complex with a bar, a few conference rooms, and a wide range of casual-dining restaurants, the Hotel Laudinella offers basic comfort and family-affordable prices. In ski season, they house skiers, and have a series of rooms at ground level where guests can find tools for ski and snowboard repair and maintenance, storage for boots, storage for skis, and storage for boards. In the off-season they house tour groups, usually older folks, primarily from Japan, visiting for the scenery and photo opportunities.

After all the four, five and five-star-plus hotels we’ve visited, the Laudinella is something of a surprise. It is clean, spacious, with very gracious staff, but it is also plain and sparse compared to the luxury places we’ve been frequenting. The bar and adjacent seating area feels like a cross between my grandparents’ basement (they have a rec room with blond wood paneling and a dark-red formica bar) and a student lounge, definitely a 1950s/60s feel. Instead of framed paintings or artwork, a few posters of old skiing ads have been taped up. The bedrooms have basic furniture – bed, armoire, nightstands, tv, dresser and/or writing desk – and pragmatic carpets and linens. You’ll have to bring your own soap and shampoo. The hallways are mostly unadorned, though here and there the walls have sketches reminiscent of cave paintings re-imagined in middle school art class – a rayed sun, various wild animals, line drawings with a few pastel colors.

The restaurants are non-smoking, though there is a smoking lounge. The pizza place was very inviting and smelled wonderful, but it was too early for food. (Other options are a French brasserie, an Asian restaurant, a traditional-fare room with raclette and fondue, a general restaurant (usually with buffet service), and a regular bar.

The hotel’s quiet flair, however, is music and art. Down a hallway and past two computers with internet service for guest use, there are rehearsal rooms and performance rooms. Here musicians, choirs, and singers come to study, practice, and perform. The hotel also hosts an event schedule of music, film, and art exhibitions, supplementing its accommodation revenue with ticket sales.

As has sometimes happened before on this trip, we wound up cutting the day short. The weather up in St. Moritz is still quite cool, and today there was a truly cold wind, and we mostly came dressed for the warmer temperatures further down the mountains. So instead of a scenic walk around the lake, we took an earlier train back to Chur and enjoyed a little free time in a town where we were appropriately attired!

Posted: daily log

Zurich! (Day 15)0

Our 6am wake-up call the morning of Day Fifteen pulled us out of warm beds to face a cold and gray-misty world. By 7:25 we were finished with breakfast and waiting for the bus to Chur. Luckily our connecting train came to the track early and we were the sooner rescued from the cold and damp. As we left Chur at 8:15, the sky was looking a bit more hopeful – brighter despite the cloud cover. …At 9am, as we approached Ziegelbrücke station, the rain and fog prevailed. …Twenty minutes later, beyond Pfäffikon SZ station, the sky lightened and scattered sun won out over the rain. …And then as we reached Zurich a half hour after that, the rain was falling again. So it goes.

(The Zurich train station is home to people even taller than Andi)

After a quick stop at the tourism office for maps, we found our way to the Tram stop and caught the number 13 (I told you it wasn’t an unlucky number) to the Four Points Sihlcity Hotel (a Sheraton/Starwood property).

The Four Points Sihlcity is an interesting place. The hallways are extra-wide because the building was originally a paper plant and the carts that moved the paper were big. The rooms are compact, with the furniture and amenities tucked in very neatly. (I appreciated the aesthetics, especially the sleek modern style
of dark woods paired with chrome and jewel-toned patterned fabrics, but I felt like some of the double-occupancy rooms really only had space for one person, unless the pair was traveling very light and were very close).

The Sihlcity does have the most complete and amazing spa I have seen in any hotel, anywhere. The Asia Spa is run by an outside company, inside the hotel. It has a full complement of exercise equipment, from banks of treadmills, elliptical trainers, bikes, and weight machines to balancing stations and rope stations. The ropes can be adjusted at different levels of resistance, and are pulled by the hands or ankles to increase the benefits of stretches and motions from aerobic routines to Tai Chi. The equipment room has a juice bar, and the level below has a room with comfortable seating and a full range of beverage service along with fresh fruit and small snacks. There are massage rooms, saunas, and pools. It’s all very elegant and lush.

The hotel also has a few conference rooms of different sizes – to best suit the needs of everything from intimate business meetings to conferences with beverages and refreshments, to formal sit-down lunches and dinners.

Rounding out the major points of interest are the hotel bar and restaurant – both sleek, though the bar felt a bit dressier than the restaurant, as if the former was designed for business suits and the later for business-casual. (Our guide, Alexia, finished the tour with tea and coffee in the bar, and the presentation was beautiful. Each order came on an individual tray, with milk and multicolored packets of sugar and bites of chocolate. We chatted with her about our experiences so far, and learned about her experiences in school and working at different hotels around the world.)

After our tour, we strolled to a nearby park and ate lunch next to the (fast-flowing) river. Then we continued to the Swiss National Museum. It’s really big, and to see everything would probably take at least a day. It gives every impression of having once been a palace (built and later expanded), but this is a calculated effect. In fact, the building has always been a museum, and was designed to be an example of historical Swiss architecture at its best. Gustav Gull was commissioned to design the structure in 1892, and he produced a composite with a tower, a copy of the city gate at Baden, some gothic touches, fragments of actual monastery walkways, a great hall with 14 bay windows, more towers, more wings, granite, limestone, volcanic limestone and sandstone. (whew.)

The newest exhibit is about Family, and what it means to people today and from the past in various places. Interesting topic, but a bit difficult to fully appreciate as not all of the text was provided in English (some sections were just the standard German/French/Italian).

I wish I could have taken a picture of a table on display in another section. Its top was very intricately inlaid wood of several different colors, showing a geometrical pattern with words around the edges. The table was commissioned by a Zurich councilor, Felix Schneeberger, and his wife, Catherina von Schönau. Translated, the words were “Those who enjoy casting aspersions on others in their absence are not welcome at this table”. At the time, it was fashionable to have intricately inlaid tables as a sign of wealth and status – Scheeberger and Schonau just didn’t like the equally fashionable pastime of gossip.

Originally, the idea had been to take a quick visit at the museum and then spend some time shopping in Zurich, but we hadn’t planned on the crowds of the World Cup. By the time we left the museum, what had been a fairly uncrowded city was looking more and more like Times Square during a tourist rush. Rather than wade through the masses of people, we opted for an earlier return train to Chur, and the less crowded streets and shops nearer to SSTH.

Posted: daily log

The Great Unknown… (Day 14)0

Remember the itinerary I started building back on day 11?

It looked like this:

6:00am (wake-up call for people who want breakfast)
7:20am (wake-up call for everyone else)
7:00-7:20am Breakfast (optional)
8:20am group assembly in lobby of SSTH
8:22am group departure for bus station
8:29am bus departs for Chur (arrives 8:42am)
8:42am group continues to Kulturforum Wurth Sculpture Garden (3 minute walk)
8:45-9:15am visit sculpture garden (outside Kulturforum Wurth Museum)
9:15am group departure for Stadtgarten (10 minute walk)
9:25-9:40am explore Stadtgarten
9:40am group departure for Rätisches Museum (10 minute walk)
10am guided tour with Museum Director: Dr. Jürg Simonette
10:45am tour ends
10:45-11:45am group may explore rest of museum or walk around town
12pm group assembly at bus station
12:10pm bus departs for SSTH (arrives 12:20pm)
12:20pm lunch at SSTH
1:30pm class in room 104
6pm dinner at SSTH

…looks pretty sharp, doesn’t it?  I’d contacted the Rätisches Museum and arranged for a tour, I’d contacted the Kulturforum Wurth Museum and confirmed that their sculpture garden is open 24/7, even when the museum itself is closed, I’d looked at a city map and figured how to get from each point to the next with ample time for strolling.  Adele was the tour guide for the day, she nominated me to be assistant, and I was sure I was ready.

Then somehow I managed to get on the bus today without any map of the area.  And when we got off the bus in Chur station, there were no helpful signs pointing to the road or the museum we were meant to visit first.

Lesson of the Day, #1:
Before leaving your room to begin a day of tour guiding, double-check that you have everything you need.  Do not get complacent, or the day will come when you walk out the door trusting that you packed everything only to find that something got left behind.

Luckily, Katherine had a map.  Unfortunately, it was not the one I’d used to build our itinerary.  According to this map, it was a much longer walk to that sculpture garden.

Lesson of the Day, #2:
Research is everything.  Wherever possible, do NOT attempt a tour cold.  Walk the walk and see the sights before taking a group – make sure you really know where you’re going and how to get there.With smiles, confidence, and the newly-drafted Katherine as navigator, Adele and I led our group out of the station.  Adele and Katherine took the front, I brought up the back and helped the group stay together.  After a quiet 10 minute stroll through a more modern, residential, side of Chur, we found the Kulturforum Museum.  And around the corner was the garden.

(from this angle, it looks kinda like a snail.  from others it looks like an elephant, a boat, a roller-coaster…)

(L-R: Dr. Garely, Adele, Mark, Gia)

Besides small plaques displaying the artists’ names, there was no information available in the garden about the sculptures (some information on each piece is available at the museum’s website), so we were free to form our own conclusions about what the works said and represented.

After checking the time, Adele and I agreed that it would be wiser to walk straight to our next museum, without trying to cram in a visit to the park.  Our walk led us past a few sites of major construction (from the poster displays, Chur is building luxury apartment complexes that would fit right in with those of NYC), and back into the cobblestoned Old Town we’d explored before.

Dr. Simonette gave us a wonderful tour (he has a quiet sense of humor and is fluent in English, though he rarely has cause to speak it), providing information about the museum and its exhibits as well as a bit of history about the region and the city of Chur (after all, his museum is dedicated to the history of the Canton of the Grisons).

The first settlement of what became Chur dates back 10 or 12 thousand years ago, so while it might be hard to verify that Chur is truly “the oldest town in Switzerland” as the ads claim, it is certainly one of the oldest.  The museum itself is about 130 years old, and has slowly grown to fill the former residence of Baron Paul von Buol zu Strassberg und Rietberg.  Except for the attic, the progress of time is vertical: the oldest relics are in the basement, and the more modern exhibits are stacked above.  The attic houses a permanent collection of farming and peasant relics, and the Director really wishes they could be moved.  The current arrangement suggests that the Grisons has not yet encountered the Industrial Revolution, and this is simply not true.

The museum’s newest permanent collection, Power and Politics, offers the history of the men and women who shaped history through armies and wars, castles, alliances and leagues, persuasion and force.  The walls are thickly covered with portraits of the key players, and the booklet explaining the various events and subsequent actions and reactions was (for me at least) the most page-turning thing I’d come across in a while.

That said, I still liked the attic.  I’ve seen tapestries and furniture, coins and muskets and bladed weapons, and history is filled with stories of powerful people, brave people, martyrs, wars, and sudden reversals of religion and fortune.  The attic had esoteric things I’d never seen before, like devices for straightening the horns of cattle, and books detailing what cows should look like.  Apparently, the Swiss have a very long tradition of liking things to be neat, tidy, well-maintained and attractive.

Posted: daily log

A Day in Davos (Day 12)0

On Tuesday (Day 12), we traveled to Davos. Before the discovery of penicillin, this was a major destination for people suffering from TB – the dry alpine air was sometimes an effective cure, and the various spas and wellness locations made for a pleasant stay. When this was rendered moot by modern medicine, Davos reinvented itself as a ski resort (still with good spas) and a business center (each year the World Economic Forum is held here).

We have visited a few tourism offices so far, but none so lukewarm as in Davos. Despite having been called, despite confirming that they were expecting a school group, the office was surprised when we arrived and was not at all prepared to greet us. After a bit of prompting, Cedric Kienscherff did give us a pleasant and informative lecture about Davos’ history along with brochures and tips about summer and winter attractions. …The dairyfarm was not ready to accomodate a surprise group visit, and the trolley up to a scenic view was (pardon the pun) steeply priced, so we decided to walk along the upper main street (Davos has basically two streets – an upper and a lower – which house all the hotels, restaurants, shops, and bus stops).

We were scheduled to visit the Arabella Sherraton Hotel Seehof, so we knew it was a detour of some variety that rocketed Dr. Garely up the drive to the Steigenberger Hotel Belvedere. As our group of fifteen (all in business attire) approached the steps to the main entrance, a lady in a gray suit came out to greet us and expressed curiosity because the hotel was not expecting a group to arrive. Dr. Garely explained that we were a study-abroad group learning about travel and tourism and that we had planned for a morning excursion that fell through, and then an afternoon site inspection of the Hotel Seehof. The lady in gray then very graciously asked if we would like a tour of her hotel as well.

She was in fact Silvia Wyrsch, and has been running the (five-star) Steigenberger Hotel Belvedere with her husband for the last 12 years. My first impressions of the hotel were that we had reached a place determined to set an example of luxury and hospitable service. I would not hesitate to recommend the hotel to anyone looking for a warm welcome in beautiful, tasteful, and spacious surroundings. (Bill Clinton would likely recommend it as well – he visited once while in office, and four times after). The standard rooms are roomy enough that two people wouldn’t feel cramped, and the suites are larger than some Manhattan multi-room apartments.

Each year the hotel plays host to the World Economic Forum (and is closed to non-forum travelers), and closes entirely from mid-april to mid-june as well as mid-october to mid-november. For the winter ski season and the summer off-season, it is definitely a place to visit. Check it out here: www.davos.steigenberger.ch (if it comes up in German, there’s a drop-down menu at the top of the page to change the language).

After the tour, Mrs. Wyrsch gave us directions to the nearby park, and we had our lunch on benches near a pretty little pond. There was also a playground with a treehouse and spiral slide hidden behind a stand of trees, but as I didn’t see it until we were leaving there was no time to indulge.

While the Belvedere is in the middle of the Promenade, surrounded by shops and restaurants, the (four-star) Arabella Sherraton Hotel Seehof is at the far end, so the view in one direction is of a main shopping route, and the view in the other is of a little road headed into the mountains. And while the oldest part of the Belvedere dates back to 1875, the oldest wing of the Seehof can claim seven hundred years and original pinewood paneling (in the panneled conference room there was a heavy scent, not particularly pleasant or pine-smelling to me, but the panneled bedroom was not noticeably scented at all). The Seehof is the other main host of the World Economic Forum, and some of their conference rooms will hold as many as six meetings in a single day. Check it out here: www.sheraton.com/seehof (if it comes up in German, there’s a drop-down menu at the top of the page to change the language).

If you can’t tell, I am a little in awe of having walked through a hotel built 700 years ago. Generally speaking, if I’m in a structure 700 years old, it’s somebody’s castle or something’s ruin, not a hotel that’s been up and running all that time. After the initial “wow” factor, there was a feeling of excited exploration mixed with amusement – the hallways are narrow, and the ceilings and doorways are much lower than in modern buildings, so at times I felt like I was suddenly tall, and at other times (because the rooms and furniture in the common rooms of the old wing are also a bit smaller scale) I felt like I was walking through an exquisitely crafted child’s playhouse. (On their website, the candlelit table is in the pine-panneled conference room in the old wing, and the room with the arched stone ceiling is a common sitting room in the old wing.)

When we crossed to the new wing (part of the original building that was refurbished in 1989), the enchantment faded a bit. Now it felt like we were in a Sheraton (they do have similar decoration, no matter where you go it seems) that was squished into a building with too-small hallways. I cringed at the thought of tall businessmen or businesswomen in heels being booked into the place – they would probably feel even more claustrophobic than little 5′4″ me in my flats.

For people planning a luxury vacation in Davos, I’d suggest booking the first night or two in the Seehof if they have room in the old wing (especially the bedroom with original pine paneling, if possible), and the rest of the stay at the Belvedere.

Back at school (which I’ve caught myself referring to as “home” in casual conversation – it’s amazing how fast the imprinting occurs sometimes) and after dinner, I checked my email and found a reply from the Rätisches Museum. Specifically from Dr. Simonette, the museum’s director, offering to provide us with a personal tour at 10am on Thursday. How cool. I responded with thanks and confirmed the date and time as well as the size of our group. Then I printed the (now-solid) itinerary and handed a copy to Adele, the designated tour guide for that day. She asked me to email it to her as well, so that she could print and distribute copies to everyone. Then she buckled down to research the itinerary as we all do – making sure she understood how to get to each location, and finding information about the various points of interest. For my part, I took a shower and then buckled down to the homework waiting in my textbook.

Posted: daily log

Quiet weekend, quiet day (Days 9, 10, and 11)0

Saturday (day 9), I slept in for the first time since we arrived. Then spent some time doing laundry, reading, and completing assignments from our textbook. In the afternoon I went with Shevarma on the bus into Chur hoping to catch the weekend market. …Farmer’s markets in Chur, unlike in New York, are not all-day affairs. When we reached the square a little after 2pm, we found no trace of the market – it had ended at noon. So we strolled through the old City and through the new, and were amazed at the level of noise. Swiss drivers really lean on their horns! For dinner we split a pizza, which is how we learned that in this part of Switzerland at least, “pepperoni” means sauteed mixed bell peppers.

Sunday (day 10), woke up early and took the city bus with Mark and Andy into Chur again. We first went to a diner, hoping for hot breakfast, but we were greeted with coffee and an array of pastries. Cindy’s Diner in the Chur train station is mostly a lunch counter, and they do not cook breakfast. We settled for the local bakery instead (I had a very rich chocolate milk and a chocolate croissant, Andy had a soft pretzel with butter, Mark opted for fresh strawberries and chocolate milk). From the train station we walked up to the Kathedral, and joined Professor Blake-Neis and a few others for mass.

This was my first mass, and it was in German, but others assured me that everything was the same except for the language. I was struck again at the difference between group singing in Europe and at home – there was no choir, but the people in the pews sounded just as professional and beautiful as a trained and experienced choir would at home, not like the enthusiastic and unpolished voices I would have expected.

After the service, we all strolled back to the train station and (out of curiosity and limited options) sampled the fare at Cindy’s Diner for lunch. In addition to offering both ketchup and mayonaise for the french fries, they offered three sauces to accompany the chicken fingers: sweet and sour, barbeque, and curry. …The curry tasted neither like Carribbean curry, nor like any Indian curry I’m familiar with. It tasted like tartar sauce without any pickle relish. (In other words, almost but not quite just like mayonaise.) Incidentally, there was an evening earlier this week when our dinner at school was given as chicken curry. …it tasted very, very mild, and seemed to be a cream sauce flavored with tumeric.

Dinner that evening at the school – salad, spaghetti with marinara and meatballs, icecream and a sort of poundcake with golden raisins for dessert.

Monday (day 11) we stayed on campus. After breakfast, Ms. Blattmann gave us a lecture about the differences between American and Swiss hotels, followed by a discussion and demonstration of coffee drinks served in Switzerland. The most interesting differences between US and Swiss hotels are size (US hotels are typically much larger than in Switzerland, where anything over 100 rooms is “large”), and the lack of security departments or personnel at Swiss hotels (more on this to come).

As for coffee, in addition to black (”café nature”), with cream (”café crème”), espresso, and cappuccino, there is also ristretto, café mélange, schale and latte macchiato. Ristretto is made using the same amount of ground coffee as for espresso, but with half as much water – it’s really strong. Café mélange is black coffee topped with soft-whipped cream. Schale is somewhat like café au lait – it’s 3 parts coffee to 1 part hot milk. Latte macchiato is a layered drink to be served in a glass cup (about 12 ounces in capacity) with a slight V – narrower at the bottom than at the top. The glass is filled 3/4ths full of steamed milk and foam, then a shot of espresso is poured over the back of a spoon and near the edge of the glass, and another spoonful (or more) of foam is then placed on top, creating a layered drink dark on the bottom, lighter in the middle, and white on top. And yes, there is decaf here – just ask for “café hag” (like “hoover” for vacuums, this brand name has come to mean any form of decaf coffee).

After lunch (lunches and dinners, by the way, are now fancy affairs with table linens, formal waitstaff, and three courses each because 60 students arrived from eastern Europe for a whirlwind course in cooking and waiting tables before embarking on 3-month internships, and we get to eat what they prepare and be waited on so that they have more people to practice with.) …after lunch (puff pastry shells with mixed veggies in cream sauce, beef with spatzli and brown sauce, napoleon ice cream (chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla with citron), and still or sparkling water to drink), we returned to the classroom to discuss our impressions of La Claustra (that cavernous hotel from Friday), and then moved into the computer lab. There, we practiced filling out expense reports (aka T&E or Travel and Entertainment forms) using the receipts we had each accumulated over the weekend, and also caught up on our homework a bit.

After dinner I went up to take a shower, and had just gotten out when the phone rang – it was Dr. Garely, asking if I could meet her at the front desk. I jumped into my casual clothes (suits, or at least black dress pants and a white business shirt, are required for all classes and meals at SSTH) and rushed down. There I was offered a special assignment: create a replacement itinerary for this Thursday, of things to do in Chur instead of a planned visit that would have been several hours each way by train. Dr. Garely expressed interest in the the local cable car and in visiting a museum.

I began my research by reading some of the information we had been given by Michael Meier (the Director of Tourism at the Chur Tourism Office). A booklet gave me the websites of each museum in Chur, and also gave me the spelling of the cable car (bergbahnen brambrüesch). A little more research and I knew that the Rätisches Museum (www.raetischesmuseum.gr.ch/) seemed the most unique and therefore the most interesting, that the sculpture garden outside the Kulturforum Würth Museum (www.kulturforum-wurth.ch) also looked interesting, and that the cable car is only open on weekends until June 14. A map of the city helped me gage the distances between each point of interest, and also suggested the Stadtgarten – a municipal park built in the 1860s. At Dr. Garely’s prompting (it turned out to be an excellent suggestion and lesson), I emailed the museum to ask if a tour for our group could be arranged. Then I spent some time in the lobby with my TTA friends, working in our textbooks and sharing jokes until bedtime.

Posted: daily log

Best-laid plans, and a thawing hotel. (Day 7 and 8)0

Day Seven:

Instead of getting up early and taking another all-day tour, we spent today at School (the chance to catch our breath and focus was really a relief). Breakfast was followed by a few hours in the classroom, then lunch, then an afternoon in the computer lab. First we went through some exercises, doing research and preparing tours to satisfy examples of things people might ask for. Then we were turned loose to do our own research: the weekend is coming, and many are looking to prepare their own self-guided tours.

For my part, I sat down to research tomorrow’s tour – for which I will be the guide.

When we arrived at the Swiss School of Tourism and Hospitality, we were provided with itineraries listing each day’s events and excursions, including travel details. The research required by each tour guide of the day is first to make sure that the travel information is correct, then to get an idea about where the tour is and what it’s about, then to share this information with the group.

Well. The itinerary stated a bus to a train to the village of Andermatt (and a few hours free – which I would have to fill in), a taxi to the Hotel La Claustra (and a guided tour by one of their staff), then a bus to a different train station and a journey home. …I could not verify the bus that was supposed to move us from the hotel. At all. And when I called the hotel the woman who answered said there is no bus in the entire region. Mind you, it is now a little after 5pm, and we are scheduled to depart for tomorrow’s tour on a 7:29am bus. Fortunately the person who prepared our initial itineraries (Ms. Blattmann of SSTH) was still in her office. She apologized and explained that the itinerary had been changed (because the bus was suspended), but that the information had not been passed along.

So after speaking with her and finding that our entire schedule was now different from 10:25am until the end of the day (the new schedule was to visit the hotel, then visit Andermatt, then return via Andermatt station and not Airolo station) I went back to the computer lab and typed up a new itinerary. It included a few tentative times because while the trains and buses were at fixed times, the length of the hotel tour was not fixed – and without knowing how long we would be visiting the hotel I could not say for sure when we would depart the hotel (via taxi and not bus) to visit Andermatt, nor could I know how much time we would have for sightseeing in Andermatt. Sometimes knowing how to be flexible and play things by ear is needed in this job.

At dinner on Thursday I passed out the revised itinerary and explained why there were a few tentative times listed on the schedule. The next morning the real work began.

Day Eight:

6:15am: wake-up call for all rooms
7:00-7:20am: breakfast (school dining room)
7:22am: group departs for bus station
7:29am: bus departs for Chur (arrives 7:42am)
7:42am: group continues to train station
7:56am:train departs for Disentis/Muster (arrives 9:11am)
9:19am: train departs for Andermatt (arrives 10:25am)
10:25am: group continues to taxi stand (taxi prebooked)
10:30am: via taxi, group continues to La Claustra Hotel (arrive 11am)
11am: presentation of Mr. Sawiri’s project
followed by hotel tour
followed by refreshment (included)
1pm (intended) group depart via taxi for Andermatt (this time could change)
1:30pm group explore Andermatt (Attraction TBA)
3:20pm: group assembly at Train Station
3:30pm: train departs for Disentis/Muster (arrives 4:42pm)
4:45pm: train departs for Chur (arrives 6:02pm)
6:02-6:55pm: free time in Chur
6:55pm: group assembly at bus station
7:05pm: bus departs for SSTH (arrives 7:15pm)
8:30pm: dinner (school restaurant)

(looks like a long day, doesn’t it?)My alarm went off at 6am (it didn’t wake my roommate), by 6:15 I was dressed and making the rounds of the rooms to be sure everyone was getting ready. I returned to my room, reset my alarm, checked that my roommate’s alarm was set (for 6:30am), and went back to bed. At 6:30 she woke up, at 6:50 I took my portfolio and my bookbag and headed for the dining room. I was the first to arrive, but the rest of the group was there at 7am, when breakfast was scheduled to begin. By 7:20 we were wrapping up, by 7:25 we were on our way to catch the bus. At the train station, our designated photographers took pictures, and our designated information gatherers checked with one of the train crew to confirm which car we should sit in, and which station was our connecting station. Everything was very smooth, and a lady on the train who spoke only German tried to ask me a question – I guess because I really looked like a Tour Guide!

Once in Andermatt I had no trouble finding our waiting taxi van, and we took an otherworldly half-hour drive up into the mountains on a winding cobblestone road through very thick white fog. At the end of that half hour, the taxi pulled up into a little parking area that looked like absolutely nothing, and led us across a graveled way to a large and forbidding door. We walked down a long passage that was dark and concrete and wet and so cold that our breath misted in the air. When I looked up, I saw thin icesicles hanging from the ceiling. A few of us had flashlights and were glad of the extra light, but the driver walked as if the space were well-lit and dry. At the end of the corridor we found a lobby-lounge area with a shiny black floor, rough-rock walls, furniture that would have been quite at home in a New York City club, and a glassed-in restaurant with pale walls, blond wood tables and floors, and waitstaff in familiar dressy-casual black attire.

The Hotel La Claustra is very small (17 bedrooms, one restaurant with two rooms, and two conference rooms) and very unique: it is entirely underground (carved out of a mountain), in caverns and passages which were once a Swiss army base. In the winter it is not open. In the spring, the entire place suffers from thawing – melt-water runs down the walls and is collected in gutters at the edges of the floor, and until the outside temperature warms up the inside of the hotel is anywhere from cool to icy. There is no front desk, and just seven or so staff members to handle the typical front-desk, bellhop, concierge and management responsibilities. The hotel’s guests are almost all from Europe and Japan, and the space is a blend of the sparse yet elegant Swiss/Scandenavian style and more Eastern accents such as rock gardens and art objects.

Due to local laws, the hotel was not permitted to install bathrooms within the new bedrooms, so the bathrooms, tubs, and showers are shared and in the style of an upscale spa or gym (though the facilities are also coed – a la Ally McBeal). There are no televisions in the rooms, and no windows to the outside world. To combat the possibility of claustrophobia, every door contains a glass pannel (frosted for the bathrooms) to remind that there is at least another room or passage beyond. For privacy in the bedrooms, the clear glass may be hidden behind a rolling clothes and luggage rack. Having this rather than a shade or curtain means that it’s very obvious when the room is occupied and does not wish to be disturbed, versus when it is vacant or occupied but willing to open to service.

In addition to our tour of the hotel, we were treated to a presentation on the resort underway down in the valley of Andermatt. It will revitalize the area, providing tourism income to replace the overland trade-route income lost with the implementation of more efficient (and less proximate) underground trains. The designs are both ecologically and location- friendly, with a few buildings being constructed within the village of Andermatt, and the bulk of the resort being constructed on two shooting ranges outside of Andermatt purchased from the Swiss military. A golf course is to be built on outlying farmland, but the remaining open space in the valley and on the mountain slopes is not to be built on – preserving the beauty of the landscape and maintaining open space is a key element of the construction. What impressed me the most is the length the designers are going to in order to make the new resort “fit in” with the existing villages design of the region: not only will the new buildings have similar designs, but multiple architects have been hired to draft plans for them, further ensuring that once everything is built the resort will seem like a natural extension of Andermatt – buildings and roads which grew naturally over the generations, just as the village of Andermatt itself expanded and developed new styles over time. Also, while the initial phase of construction is quite agressive (and quick), once the resort opens (scheduled for 2014) it could be as many as twenty years before it is fully complete – the designers anticipate that the destination will evolve over time.

When the tour and presentation were over (about 40 minutes) the hotel’s manager and I had thought we would be departing. (We had discussed with each other how long it might take to tour the hotel and see the presentation, but each went longer than expected). We piled into the waiting taxi van and headed back down the mountain (incidentally, the entrance to La Claustra is 2050 meters above sea level, and the main body of the hotel is covered by another 80 meters of mountain) to Andermatt (1400 meters above sea level). We returned to the train station surrounded by a cold rain, and a horror-movie mist. A unanimous group vote nixed attempting sight-seeing in Andermatt, and instead we checked the train schedules and left on earlier trains. My group of 14 dimished to just 8 on the route back to Chur, with 3 students departing from Andermatt to Geneva for the weekend, and another 3 students heading to Lucerne.

I had fun guiding for the day, the more so because La Claustra was (for me) one of the most exciting places on our three-week itinerary, and especially because the entire group was working with me and staying focused. We didn’t have straglers or wanderers, and we had photographers and fact-finders ready and willing to help.

My leanings in the travel and tourism sphere have always been more aligned with hospitality (so of course I’m excited by a unique hotel), and while I like seeing new places I often dislike the time and trouble it takes to reach them (especially because I don’t like sitting still for long periods). Part of my learning on this trip is to realize that I might also really like on-site or city guiding, where the format is that people come to the guide, and then the guide shows them a specific place or area. The tour escorting and trip guiding (where the tour guide travels with a group for several days or even a few weeks), is probably not for me – though I think with a little more study I could do the job if I had to.

And, of course, the day (and the day before) did bring a number of lessons:

1. If as a tour guide you are handed an itinerary, do not trust that it is complete and accurate. Check the information, confirm that you understand the routes and transportation, and (where applicable) confirm with the destinations that they are expecting your group.

2. Check with the person who prepared the itinerary and with the destinations to see whether they are expecting to be paid! There was a bit of a shock for me as we were wrapping up our visit to the hotel: not only had the (prebooked) taxi not been paid for, the hotel itself was expecting payment for the coffee and tea served to us when we arrived (the itinerary I was given said that refreshment was “included” – I took this to mean “paid for”, not “part of the day and subject to fees”), and to top it all off the hotel’s bill offered charges for our guided tour, the presentation, and the use of a projector and laptop in said presentation! (In fact, the hotel was expecting to submit its own charges as well as a bill for reimbursement (they paid the taxi driver for the roundtrip) directly to SSTH, and not to our group as we left – but it was still quite a surprise.)

3. As our textbook says, be ready to be flexible. I could have insisted on completing our tour as written, leading the group in a cold rain through the village of Andermatt and out to the Devil’s Bridge and back… …and they would have been wet and cold and miserable and annoyed. Instead I changed the itinerary to suit the weather and needs of the group, and everyone was happier with the day.

Posted: daily log