Day 8 : Andermatt – Hotel La Claustra

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 Station3:30pm: 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)

Lessons Learned:

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 result.

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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!

In the afternoon Shevy, Asha, Gia, Adele and I decided to give our Gore-Tex a real workout. We explored the gravel and dirt trails behind the school and were amazed at the traction our shoes offered. The roads for the cars are steep around here, but the paths for the people are steeper still. There were a few points where I actually stopped in my tracks and looked at my feet, surprised that I wasn’t sliding back down the mountainside just from the force of gravity. We found a small herd of cows just above our host school and below another school for younger kids. Higher still, the gravel ran out. Then the dirt ran out. Even on the rain-flattened grass of the mountain slope, I wasn’t slipping. Pretty nifty. Eventually Gia and I started worrying about cat-and-tree syndrome – could we have climbed too high to be able to come down without falling? When we turned around and started back down, it was with very small and slow steps. Even as I started straight down, I was considering trying to traverse the mountain as if I was on skis and on a slope that was too difficult for a beginner, going back and forth and a little down with each pass instead of in a direct line. But taking little steps and going straight down didn’t lead to any slips. I tried to be braver and walk at a normal speed, but I didn’t manage to go much faster until we were back on the gravel.

Near the turn to SSTH we heard a strange noise. It sounded a little like a squeaking clarinet, but turned out to be a pair of mountainbikers holding their brakes as they rolled down the path. We all moved on to the grass and watched as they finished the decent from the gravel path to the paved road a ways below. When they reached the road they must’ve let up on the brakes because they suddenly went much faster. We were torn between continuing down the path ourselves and having dinner at Mühle, or returning to school and ordering pizza. Pizza won out for two reasons: it meant we wouldn’t have any hike back up after we ate, and it was something different than the local recipes of meat-and-sauce-and-starch that we’d been eating all week.

While we waited for dinner we all worked on our various homework assignments, and after eating we took a break to try out the pinball machines in the lounge beyond the lobby. Adele was a little freaked out by the Adams Family machine, because she hit the ball into a holding pocket and it didn’t come back right away – instead a red pannel raised up and a hand holding an eye popped out like a jack-in-the-box. I tried the Monster Mash machine, and the best was when I woke up Dracula – he had been sleeping in an upright coffin and slid out on a track to get in the way of the pinball.

After that I helped a few people edit their blogs, and called it an early night. Maybe it was the hike, maybe it was the hectic week, but I was ready for a shower and bed by 10.

For Sunday I didn’t set my alarm. When I felt like I couldn’t sleep any longer I got up and stumbled to the bathroom to brush my teeth and really wake up. When I looked at the clock I found it was only a quarter of 9, and I was pleased that I felt so fully refreshed – the evening before I’d been worried that I might sleep until noon. The computer lab was nearly empty, so I had no trouble concentrating on my own writing. As the day went on and more people came down, the conversations started getting distracting, so eventually I moved back to my own room. In the afternoon Sarah came over for help with her blog, and then there was dinner, and then I spent some time helping Katherine with hers before trying to finish catching my own up. …It’s now a quarter of nine as I type this, and I really feel tired. I like having a blog so that I can share what’s going on with everyone at home, but it’s so hard to write everything out.

(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.

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.

We began with a group assembly at 9am, and split into the vans to travel to the Heidi House and Museum outside of Maienfeld. I have very mixed feelings about the place. On the one hand, it’s a worthy model: an attraction built for the sole purpose of attracting tourists and tourist money, which does net lots of visitors. On the other hand, it was built for the sole purpose of making money and the attraction is not any more true to the book than most movie “adaptations” are to their original source material. There is an admission fee, and the admission is good for a self-guided walk through “Heidi’s House” – an old house donated by a wealthy farmer (and far more well-to-do than what the characters of Heidi and her Grandfather “would” have lived in) set up with furniture, clothing, and figures of Heidi, her grampa, and Peter.

After Dr. Garely and Professor Blake-Neis spoke with the lady at the museum’s admission desk, she walked our class (in two groups) through the house, explaining why the rooms were designed and filled as they were, and stressing how different life was before modern technology. (Yes, no tv, no radio, no thermostats… …but also wood heat when wood had to be chopped and carried – so ovens would be built in between rooms so that more space would be warmed, and the attic was mostly for storage because in winter it was too cold to be lived in, and food had to be grown or made and stored over the long winter because it was too hard to walk all the way down to the village and back with anything to cook or eat.)

After our tour we piled into the vans and returned to SSTH for lunch. Then we traveled by van to the (five-star) Grand Hotel Quellenhof (aka the Grand Resort at Bad Ragaz – bit of a strange name for a town since there’s nothing so “bad” about the place in English). We were ushered into a lovely conference room (comfortable rolling chairs, marble table, fancy coffee machine, fresh fruit, still and sparkling water at each place, pen and paper and pad of sticky-notes at each place, projection screen, and very welcoming hosts), and treated to a presentation about the resort’s current setup, the major renovations and additions underway, and also the philosophy that guides each aspect of their services and offerings.

The Hotel Quellenhof is a five-star property with its own casino, 18-hole golf course (they’re building a second 9-hole course at the moment), and thermal water from the famous hot spring (Pfäfers) on tap and in the bottle for everyone who crosses the threshold. They have a fantastic spa complex which also features water piped in from the spring in Pfäfers (and everything is in duplicate, so locals and guests staying in the hotel each have their own areas to visit), and a medical center offering everything from plastic surgery (some people want work done, but don’t want their neighbors to see the bandages after – doing it while on vacation solves this neatly) to fitness and nutrition and wellness counseling to group and individual therapy for cases of burn-out, stress, and the like.

The hotel prides itself on its medical, spa/wellness, and business offerings. It also has a philosophy of catering to both the physical and emotional needs of its guests. So yes – the rooms will be beautifully decorated, the spa will be fantastic, the beds (which have adjustable density to cater to the soft and firm persuasions) will be comfortable… …but the hotel and its staff will be equally concerned with all the not-so-physical aspects. Do the guests feel welcome and at home? Do they have an environment to help them rest, rejuvenate, work at their best? As someone working for a (fairly) new bed and breakfast, hearing about this philosophy and how it is practiced (especially the attention to detail) was inspiring.

The process begins when the reservation is made, because the reservation desk will ask for details about why the guest is visiting and what their preferences are. Two days before arrival, the hotel calls and gives them an update on the weather so that they’ll be sure to pack everything they need, and also expresses how much their visit is anticipated. At the end of their stay, the hotel thanks them for visiting. (And when we took our leave Friday afternoon, we were each presented with a parting gift of chocolate.)

Our last stop of the day was to a local winery. The Lambert family has been growing and pressing grapes for three generations now, and in addition to making wine from their own five hectares of grapes they also process another 7 hectares’ worth of grapes from other farmers. We were given a tour of the building where they make and bottle the wine, all a story below ground – the ground level has a bathroom, a writing/office area, and a lot of storage space for the farm equipment. In the basement there’s a room with a machine that deposits the finished wine into bottles, and another machine that labels the bottles and holds them for a worker who packs them into boxes for delivery or moves them to big wire-mesh holding bins. Beyond that room is another which houses the wine press (there’s only one, but they clean it in between each kind of pressing) and giant tanks that hold the fresh-pressed wine (each tank will hold between 3 and 5 thousand liters). The next room had more giant tanks, and the room beyond that had oak barrels – the small ones hold 250 liters each, and the large ones hold 3,000 liters. The Lambert family ages most of their wines for a year in the oak before bottling, but some wine is oaked for two years (and the better stuff comes from the smaller barrels).

After our tour we were treated to a tasting of three wines accompanied by bread, (really good) local salami, and local cheese. The first was a 2007 white cuvee (a mix of different grapes). To be honest, when I swirled the glass and sniffed the aroma, all I smelled was wine. I’ve never been good at picking out notes in wine bouquets. The first sip was jarringly dry, but after a bit of the mellow white cheese I found the wine more palatable. And after a taste of the salami, the wine suddenly had a definite honey-flavor, and even seemed ever-so-slightly syrupy. By the fourth sip I was envisioning how well it would go with a feathery salad of mixed greens and dried cherries. By the fifth sip I saw our host coming back with another bottle and a few containers to empty our glasses into, so that was the end of the white wine for me. Next he poured us a 2007 Pinot Noir, and I liked it, but felt that it was a little sharp. The last wine was a Pinot Noir Select, and I will display my lack of refinement by saying I didn’t appreciate it as much as the first. It was more noticeably oaked, and I have never liked the taste of tannin.