Our tour guide of the day was Asha who knocked at 6 AM and when she did, I wanted to disappear into the sheets. I was so tired but had to get up and assume responsibility. We came downstairs and had breakfast at 7:00 AM, but apparently the cow from which they extracted the milk for my cereal was dying because I got sick immediately after breakfast; however, the day had to continue. Elliott gave me Pepto Bismol tablets which provided me with temporary relief.
We started our day by visiting Heidi Village and Heidi House. Sophie drove us to visit Heidi House which is located in Maeinfeld. When Dr. Garely went to pay the entry fee she was informed that we needed to hire a Tour Guide in addition to buying the tickets… so – we now had Carolina as our Tour Guide. I must say that I would have preferred to burn the money because her enthusiasm was as bland as a white wall at a sanitarium. She explained to us that Heidi was a fictional character made by Mrs. Joanne Spyri. The writer of the story used to visit a friend where the village is located and she was told that there was a little girl in the village (not necessarily Heidi). The house used for the museum was donated to a foundation after the owner died.
Caroline(our expensive Tour Guide) told us to walk around the house and look around and come to her if we had any questions. Absolutely not was the answer from Dr. Garely. She was paid to give us a tour and we wanted to know all the facts and figures about the House.
We met an Italian magazine editor who took pictures of us for her OGGI magazine article celebrating the 30 years of the Heidi cartoon. We then departed Heidi Village and came to SSTH for lunch. I was feeling sick all over again and I thank Dr. Garely for stepping into the kitchen and requesting a soup for my upset stomach – it turned out to be the perfect remedy.
After lunch Sophie drove us to the Grand Hotel Quellenhof Bad Ragaz which is a five star resort, wellness and business center. I must say that I thought I had seen something nice before – but I had no idea how marvelous a hotel could be. Even at the entrance I felt the elegance and the special ambiance designed for relaxation and pampering. We were greeted by Katherine Berger who is the Personal Assistant to the CEO of the resort. She was extremely professional and her outgoing personality filled the room. She seated us in this amazing conference room where even the chairs were unforgettable. We were treated as though we were important executives. We had the honor to speak to Mr. Peter P. Tschirky, CEO of the resort. Mr.Tschirky gave us a brief presentation about his work experience and informed of his valuable employment in the United States. The Director of Human Resources even suggested we apply for an internship at the hotel. This opportunity has not left my mind since that meeting. We were given goodies on our way out and Katherine even walked us to our car. I must say she definitely left a positive impression on me.
After this meeting we went on to the Lamberts winery to have a brief history on the wine that his company produces and a taste of his exquisite work. He explained that he is the third generation to own the company. There we sampled three different types of wine which are his specialty. Cuvee Blanc, Pinot Noir, and a Pinot Noir Seleccion. We learned how to twirl the wine in the glass, to savor the bouquet and explore the color, take a small sip and let it linger on the palate – all while discussing the complexity of the taste. Some of the student’s detected apples, strawberries and bananas, while other noticed cranberries. An assortment of salami, cheese and pickles and a basket of bread were presented to accompany the wines. Mr. Lambert did not speak English therefore Sophie did the translations for us. Dr. Garely also discussed the method for wine tasting, and how to discuss the bouquet and clarity of the wine. This was a great experience and I learned now that wine tasting is divine. We headed back to SSTH for dinner.
My roommate Shevarma was today’s tour guide. I told her to please wake me up when she came back from waking everyone up. We had a departure time scheduled of 7:25 AM. We were exploring Davos today.
We left for Davos at 7:58 AM and arrived at 9:28 AM. Once we arrived at Davos we went into the tourisms office where I can’t even begin explain what we went through. First of all they told us that we should have called in advance to announce our visit, when Shevarma had called and confirmed the day before – TWICE!! We were supposed to meet with Cornelia Linder, but apparently she was too important to come out and speak to us. So instead a gentleman by the name of Cédric Kienscherff who to my opinion was still in training – came out to speak to us … or so we thought.
Once we started to ask him questions looking for him to recommend a place for us to see, he didn’t know anything. I think the people at the local supermarket were more aware of tourism than the tourism office. They even pretended like they did not speak English just so they would not have to speak to us; however, hey got caught in their lie when a British couple walked up to the counter and entered into a conversation with them in English. We asked if we could do a museum or so but everything was closed until the afternoon since apparently all their business comes during the skiing season. We then thought it would be a nice idea if we took a ride on the tram since that was the only thing left to do, and Cédric informed us that it was $7CHF per person/ each way, a total of $14CHFf p/p; but that he would negotiate the price. He walked out of the tourism office and returned about ten minutes later where he informed us that we could get a $2CHF discount per person. What kind of student discount is that? But anyways we had a day to continue, so we walked towards what was supposed to be our next destination, the Arabella Sheraton Hotel.
On the way there Dr. Garely spotted a really nice hotel – the Steingenburger 5 star hotel which she recognized seeing before during her wonderful travel experience and decided to just look around the entrance, when this pretty lady saw this group dressed in the same colors (black/white), and approached us to ask if we had reservations because she could not recall. Dr. Garely then proceeded to explain to her who we were and that we were wondering if maybe we could have a brief tour of the hotel. It turned out that the brilliant lady we were speaking to (Sylvia Wyrsch) was the general manager of the hotel which she and her husband had been running for many years.
She showed us some of the rooms at the hotel which were absolutely fabulous! The decoration inside the hotel was beautiful. The rooms were breathtaking and I would have to admit that she definitely made up for the embarrassment that the tourism office put themselves through. We told her about the experience we had with them and she apologized and said that she would handle the matter. We finished up there feeling so warm and welcomed by Sylvia that this turned our whole day around. I would definitely come to this hotel as a guest and in the future recommend it to my clients.
We then proceeded to visit the Arabella Sheraton Hotel which was a little further up the road. At this hotel we met with Robert Attenburger who is the executive assistant manager. He showed us a couple of rooms and the spa, but I must say that for this to be a so called 5 star hotel in Davos, I was not impressed at all. Considering that I had just been blown away by the previous hotel. We then took the train to Chur and had dinner.
Today (June 9, 2008) was Lilliana’s turn to be tour guide. She woke us up at 6 AM and we all met for breakfast at 7 AM. We were scheduled to attend a Swiss hospitality class. However, we discovered that Curtis was not feeling well today. He had a toothache which meant he had to be taken to the dentist immediately. Therefore, Dr. Garely and Prof. Blake-Neis requested that Mark accompany Curtis to the dentist. Mark gladly took on the responsibility, made arrangements with the SSTH to find dentist in Chur, who spoke English and escorted Curtis to and back from the dentist in Chur. Good thing that thanks to our professors we had travelers insurance.
We compared the way that American hotels run compared to Swiss hotels. In American hotels there are different departments that don’t exist in Swiss hotel management. Some of these hotels do not even have security stations. After the hotel lecture Sophie explained to us the different types of beverages that are served in Switzerland.
These beverages are Café crème, café natural, espresso, ristretto, cappuccino, café mélange, schale, latte macchiato, portion café, café hag, café complet. All these beverages are coffee based. In hospitality operations Sophie specified that you have to always warm up your cup before serving these drinks with steam. Also a point of advice, if the milk is too hot, it will not foam so keep that in mind. The prices of these drinks rank from 3CH to 5CH. We then discussed teas which are Tee Nature, Tee Crème/ Au Lait, Tee Citron, Portion Tee, Ceylon, Darjeeling, Lapsang Souchong, Jasmin, Ice-Tea (homemade/fresh, packet/carton), Herbals Teas.
Afterwards, we went over some alcoholic beverages that are mixed with coffee to address specifically the skiing crowd. These are served during the winter to cater to the coldness of the skier. She then explained to us the different types of beer which vary from dark and light. These are served in two different cup sizes which are 3dl and 5dl. The also have a different type of drink which is Panaché, a mixture of lemonade and beer. She showed us the different types of wine glasses and how to distinguish them from water glasses. We then met for dinner and proceeded to bed.
Today I awoke at 6:00 am in order to prepare myself to attend church with Professor Blake-Neis, Mark, Sarah, Shevarma, Andy, Elliott and Adrienne. Although we did schedule breakfast I saw that SSTH had set-up the dinning room for breakfast “unfortunately”. I met the group in the lobby at 9:00 am and waited for Sophie, who drove us to church in Chur.
We attended High Mass at the St. Marie Catholic Church in Chur. The mass began promptly at 10:00 a.m. and the entire service was in presented in German. Although there was a language barrier, I was still able to follow the order of the service since I grew up attending a Catholic church. The mass was an hour long and it felt good to take the time to relax and pray for a lot of things. After mass we walked to the Chur train station to have lunch at Cindy’s Diner.
“Wow”, finally some food I recognized!!! I happily ordered an American burger with everything on it, with an extra large order of french fries and a soda for 20.00 CHF, which was extremely reasonable compared to my last meal in Chur at Otello (approximately 20 CHF per person for pizza, salad and something called lasagna). Talk about a golden burger- the burger was acutually very good and considering that life here seems to be very expensive, it was well worth it.
Afterwards, we attempted to catch the 12:10 pm Die Post bus back to Passugg but since we were so busy enjoying our meal we actually missed the bus by a mere 2 minutes. Therefore, we decided to walk around Chur for a little while, which was acutually a very, very short journey being that everything is basically closed on Sunday.
We took the 2:10 pm bus back to SSTH. I was amazed to find the lobby full of international students. About 60 students arrived at the School for a two- week training session in food service and banquet service from differents part of Europe.
Dinner was served at 6:00 pm and to say the least, it was an adventure within itself, since there were a few issues get our meal and table set-up correctly. We dine as a group for all three meals and Dr. Garely prefers that we all sit at the same table. Since the European students were not skilled enough to serve many people at one time – the compromise was two round tables. This way the TTA students can dine together and the Food Service students would not be overwhelmed. (In the end Dr. Garely solved the problem with such professionalism and grace that it was another valuable lesson learned in “tour management”).
After dinner most of the group met in the computer room and tried to catch up on blogging before bed.
Today was one of the most exciting days ever. Professor Blake-Neis, Elliott and I rode the Bernina Express into Tirano, Italy. We arrived at the train station by 8:00 AM with a departure time of 8:28 AM. We started to board the train and realized that maybe we should upgrade to First Class since we had Second Class tickets. We spoke to the conductor and for $19 CHF we upgraded to First Class. I am glad we upgraded because this made a big difference in our trip. The seats were leather and the leg room provided great comfort, considering that I have long legs and need to stretch. However, the train ride to Tirano was four hours long and amazing.
The view that I experienced through the panoramic windows was unexplainable. You would truly have to take the ride yourself in order to enjoy the experience. We arrived in Italy at 12:35 PM which is siesta time for the Italians; so we didn’t get to see much, but we did walk around and saw the locals and some closed shops. Sightseeing was a whole new experience considering that it is a whole different culture. We had lunch at a local Tirano Italian restaurant and thank goodness I took Italian 101 because that’s what got us through our lunch order. The food was great, very fresh and tasty. The meal was a bargain compared to the prices in Chur. We had lunch for $17CHF each. After lunch we headed back to the train station and took the 2:25 PM train back to Chur, which was another four hour train ride. Although we were on the train for a total of eight hours, I still could not get enough of the view.
We arrived in town at 6:29 PM and went to another Italian restaurant in Chur because we couldn’t get enough. We went to Hotel ABC to ask for a local restaurant, since we arrived in Chur and it looked like a ghost town. We were recommended to have dinner at Otello, an Italian restaurant. This was the worst mistake ever!!! We walked into the restaurant after carefully viewing the menu outside, and we were coldly greeted by one of the waiters whose name was “Melano”. We took a look at the menu once again inside and he came to our table to take our orders. We told him we wanted lasagna, a salad and a pepperoni pizza. Surprisingly according to them whom claim to be an Italian restaurant, a pepperoni pizza to them is a pizza with yellow and green peppers on it!!! Are they sure they are an Italian restaurant? We then ordered water and they charged us $2 CHF FOR GLASS SERVICE, in order to serve us water, which was absolutely absurd.
After having the supposedly Italian chef come out to discuss the pepperoni factor, the waiter had the nerve to never come back to our table! Talk about customer service negligence. I felt as though I was being discriminated against, because I noticed that the first waiter walked away from our table and a young African came to our table to continue serving us. He did an excellent job trying to make our experience better and I was appreciative of that but the dinner was already spoiled. It’s repugnant to see people’s attitude this way. But I bet he had no idea of who he was serving.
After we finished our dinner, I kindly told our kind new waiter who we were and that this experience was going to be shared with the world. Also, I told him that I was grateful for him trying to resolve the situation but his colleague had already spoiled my view towards the restaurant. He must have shared with the staff that we were attending SSTH and studying tour management, because they all waived goodbye to us on our exit from the restaurant in the most exciting manner. TOO LATE!! I will never go back to this restaurant and if I were you I wouldn’t either.
Please never eat here!!
The knock came as usual by 6:15 AM, following breakfast at 7 AM. We departed for our destination, Andermatt at 7:56 AM and arrived at the train station by 10:25 AM. Andermatt is located 180km from Milan and 120km from Zurich (approximately 1 ½ hours). We then took a taxi service high above the clouds and deep within the mountains; to a surface of 4000 m2, deep within the rocks of the Gotthard were La Claustra hotel is located.
La Claustra sprang from the vision of artist and sociologist by the name of Jean Odermatt. The visionary quoted “Over a period of five years this former artillery fortress, right in the heart of the Swiss Alps was transformed into an extraordinary oasis, a laboratory for reflection and communication”.
My first impression of the hotel was not good at all; they later explained to us that the cave used for the hotel once belonged to the Swiss army; and this is why the entrance is so mysterious. The walk inside the cave was wet and muggy, and to be honest if I was brought inside without further notice I would have thought I was being mugged.
The first room which they called the lobby had nothing to do with what a lobby looked like. It was nicely decorated by it was not identified to be a hotel lobby.
After coffee and tea we heard a power point presentation about a new resort community in the area. The developer is an Egyptian entrepreneur Mr. Samih Sawiri who was born on January 28, 1957 in the city of Cairo. Mr. Sawiri is the chairman and CEO of the Orascom hotels and development (OHO). He purchased property in Andermatt on February 2005. His plans include the development of an ideal area for a resort upgrading the tourism in this quiet village. The locals agreed that the area was ideal for the project with a 96% vote on March 2009; the government approved the project by April 2007. The project will run up a cost of 1.8 billion CH. I
n the plans the resort complex will include 1 hotel, a resort, villa accommodations, a sports club, golf club and an exclusive 5 star wellness center. The project is estimated to be completed by 2015, but overall the project will average a 20 year spotless completion. The first project which is the Bellevue Hotel has an estimated completion date of May 2009 and will have an amount of 173 rooms; but the resort itself will take longer to complete.
We then proceeded to tour La Claustra with Mr. Odermatt. The hotel has 17 individual Asian designed rooms with a total of 30 beds. They have a co-ed bathroom which is shared among the guests. The have 2 wine cellars and a dinning area which is fairly nice and very modern in design. The funny part of everything (and I saved the best for last) is that they offered us coffee and tea and charged us for it!!! How do you offer someone something and then charge for it. Overall I would not recommend this hotel for any of my clients.
Back in Chur…
After dinner Andy, mark, Sarah and I went into Chur to research the night life. Honestly throughout the day Chur is a very quiet town; but I must tell you that Friday nights everyone comes out. There’s lots of music in the and lots of people having drinks and walking around. We first entered Extra Bar and explored it carefully. The people there were a little older and seemed to just lay back and enjoy the soft music and drinks. We then went into 10 Dieci, a pizzeria on the corner of Welschdörfli. We had some really good pizza and decided to keep exploring the town. Our next stop was Felsen Bar where we just stepped in to compare the atmosphere. This space is really popular with a younger crowd. We then visited Q bar and then decided to hit a game of pool at Rubin’s Bar. The night finally ended and we made it home safe. There will definitely be a story to tell.
Today the group got together for breakfast at 7AM. We were supposed to go to Italy but last night was not much fun; for reasons I will not detail. Long story short, there were skeletons in the closet when we got here and apparently some of us (including myself) forgot to put some very important information on our applications. For example, I do not eat pork, and completely forgot to specify that on my application, which brought up a not so pleasant situation at dinner last night, when the service at Paulaner’s placed a plate with a nice piece of pork in front of me.
Thank God the situation was handled appropriately last night and our study abroad experience continued in peace. I am very grateful to have the professors that I do, because they handled the situation in the best way that it could have been done; and even though it was my fault, they sat me down and told me that this is just something that I have to keep in mind because it is a special dietary restrictio. I was lucky this time – in the future I might come across a situation where I would just have to deal with it.
During the afternoon hours we stayed in our classrooms and discussed tour conducting, city and site guiding and multi-day tours. All of the practice exercises were assigned as homework and then we got a couple of hours to blog after dinner.
We reunited for breakfast as usual at 7 am. Our wonderful professors gave us the opportunity to take a cooking class with an excellent team of professional chefs from SSTH, such as Chef Schmidt. The school has a spectacular kitchen which provides comfort for the students to prepare a meal as though they were professionals in the culinary industry.
We meet up with Chef Schmidt at 9am and he split us into groups. Each group was assigned to different stations so that everyone could participate in the preparation of the lunch. The menu included: Smoked salmon on puff pastry pillow, an appetizer, Sauteed pork steak with paprika cream sauce, Spätzli and steamed broccoli with Parmesan as our main course with Dark chocolate mousse for dessert. Once I heard the menu I happily volunteered for the Dark Chocolate Mousse team and totally enjoyed this responsibility.
My group members included Sarah, Liliana, and myself. The ingredients for my dessert were: Whole egg, Sugar, Couverture-chocolate dark, heavy cream, 35% fat, and a hint of Cognac. We all had an amazing time, and Mr. Schmidt was incredible! He made my experience unforgettable. We all participated within each others stations and worked well together as a team. In addition, Elliott and I washed dishes which was not bad at all considering the size of the sink is 4 times the size of my sink at home.
Afterwards, we all sat down for lunch and surprised our professors with our extremely tasty food. It was also Adele’s birthday today so the chef and I decided to arrange a special chocolate mousse plate for her and bring out some candles and sing happy birthday. Later in the afternoon we took a trip down to Chur to visit the tourism office to meet with Michael Meier, Director of Chur tourism. We were seated upstairs in a conference room and Mr. Meier provided us with a detailed presentation about the future plans of tourism in Chur.
Gia was our tour guide of the day and when she knocked on my door at 6 am, I got up with no trouble because I knew that I was having an adventure today. We departed Chur at 7:00 am by train and arrived into Luzern at 10:23 am, which is where the mountain is located. There is a distance of 145 km/30 miles between the cities. Once at Luzern, we took a 15 minute bus ride into Linde-Pilatus in Kriens, Luzern; which is the stop for the mountain visit. Once at the entrance we met Mrs. Colette Richter, marketing/ public relations representative for Pilatus Mountain who was very excited to meet us.
She gave us a brief history for the mountain and told us the reason why the attraction is visited so often by tourists, which is linked to a dragon story. She provided us with complimentary hats with the mountain logo on them, and we showed our appreciation by presenting her a BMCC t-shirt, for which she was very grateful and very happy to receive.
Mt. Pilatus stands 7000 ft/2132m above sea level and is filled with exciting attractions. The park consists of 2 aerial cable ways, 2 hotels, 7 restaurants, and the world’s steepest cogwheel railway.
There are two forms of transportation up and down the mountain, you can choose to ride the tram, which holds four people or the train (which is a very special ride and I will explain later, nothing like a New York subway). We rode up the mountain by tram which had a breathtaking view of Luzern. The entire ride up the mountain takes approximately 35 minutes. The first stop up the tram is Krienseregg which stands at 3369 ft/1026m. At this location there is a playground for young children, a restaurant, and a hiking trail for nature hikes up to the next station. The next stop is Fräkmüntegg 4649 ft/1416m; this is the middle station between the peak of the mountain and Kriens. This stop offers various forms of entertainment. They have Switzerland’s longest toboggan run (6km/1350m) and Pilatus Seilpark which has the biggest suspension rope park in Central Switzerland. At this station you also have to transfer to a different tram which takes up to fifteen people at once the rest of the way up the mountain. This tram is only a 5 minute ride up to the highest part of the mountain.
Once we got to the top there wasn’t much of a view because it was foggy, but there was still a great atmosphere up there. The school provided us with pre-packed lunches which were really tasty, but since I had mine a little too early, I went up to an express restaurant located within the hotel Bellevue and had a Swiss beef sausage with French fries, which did not look too good, but after I took my first taste it was delicious.
The group met at 1:30 PM for a ride down the world’s steepest cogwheel railway which runs for 4618m. This long stretch of railway was opened in 1889 (steam operation until 1937) and its 48% gradient is still the steepest cogwheel railway in the world. The railway takes you down the mountain into a part of Luzern called Alpnachstad (436m/1431ft).
From there we took a breathtaking boat ride in beautiful weather to Luzern which was where we had to take our train back home. This is definitely a place worth visiting and I will certainly be back once again to indulge in this adventure.
Today was my day to be tour guide. I had to wake everyone up at 6 am this morning. We met for continental breakfast at 7am in the dinning room as usual. After breakfast we met with Sophie Blattman, SSTH Junior Consultant, for an orientation session on the new unreleased audio-guide tour of Chur. Ms. Blattman also had to exchange our Swiss rail passes from group passes to individual passes. We toured through the city, while listening to the audio guide of Chur, which was put together by the German speaking students at SSTH. This audio was translated in English and very informative. We had to return quickly because we were having a lecture with Sophie in the afternoon at the school. The lecture with Sophie was very informative and provided a wealth of answers to us about SSTH. We learned the statistics for tourism in Graubünden, and the amount of hotel bed/nights occupied in the 26 cantons through Switzerland. She explained the steady growth of tourism in Chur, Switzerland and how each Switzerland canton, has benefited from the economical growth over the past five years.
Currently there are 166,000 jobs available in the tourism/hospitality industry, which is 5.2% of total jobs available in the Graubünden. Tourism has also had a turnover of 22 billion. The most important guests in hospitality for this area are the Swiss who come in at 15.2 million (46%) of nights, then follow the German who are at 5.8 million nights, Great Britain at 2.2 million (33%) of nights. The entire canton of Graubünden generates 5.6 million of nights. The most important branches following tourism in the economy are metal and chemistry industry. There are 5,693 hotels in Switzerland, of which all together form a total number of 240,000 beds available. Parahotelliere’s which is a general category for hostels, holiday flats, etc., have an average number of 800,000 beds. The number of tourists and accommodations has been rising over the past 3 years. Transportation throughout Switzerland is very well organized and their schedule is the most prompt I have ever experienced, considering that I come from a city whose transportation system is unpredictable. For those who use trains as their mode of transportation, there are a total of 5,270km in railway tracks. There are 5,600 trains available on a daily basis, which helps with the accuracy of their schedule. In addition, the local coach transport system (Die Post) has 81passenger buses with a track system that expands over 16,516 km of land. Another form of transportation is the boating system which offers 177 boats with seating for 51,102. Every year over 33 million guests arrive in Switzerland by airplane.
The professors gave us the option of having dinner or not, so we chose to go into town. Katherine,Mark, Andy, Curtis, Lilliana, Sarah and I went into Chur and shopped for a couple of things at H&M. We then took a small walk around the town to become familiar with the area. We had dinner at a nice cafe in town were I had some pasta. We stayed in chatting and then realized we only had a couple of minutes until the bus left the station so since the weather was so nice out we decided to walk up to Passug. I must say that the walk was no joke!! We were all happy campers the first ten minutes up the mountain but after that everyone besides Katherine started to drag. Fourtunately we made it up the mountian in one piece. We ended our day by getting prepared for an enormous adventure tomorrow.
