BMCC 2008 Switzerland Blog

Sunday, June 10, 2008

Finally Food I can Recognize !!!!

Written by: Sasha Munoz

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.

Relaxing in Chur, Switzerland on Sunday after lunch (From left to right: Shevy, Adrienne, Sarah, Prof. Blake-Neis, Mark, Sasha and Andy)

“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 actually 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 actually 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 and banquet service from different parts 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.

From Luzern to Zurich and back to Chur

Written by: Asha Burton

I felt a little groggy from the night before, but ready to discover Zurich. We got up a little later than I hoped but reached the rail station feeling a little more awake.

Zurich Train Station

Gia getting in the spirit of the Euro Cup

Asha taking a seat at the feet of soccer Gods

We took a train to Zurich around 11 am and reached there with enough time to do some sight seeing. The Kunsthsaus Musuem we originally wanted to see didn’t take our Swiss Passes. It was on the list we received early for museums that would accept the Swiss Pass. So we pulled out a map and looked for another location to find. The Museum for Hospitality and Tourism was supposed to be around the corner. Only problem was we couldn’t seem to find it. Even a local looked baffled when we told her the location.

In front of the Kunthaus Museum before we got rejected with our Swisspass

The old regalia of Grossmunster Cathedral

We eventually looked for other things and stumbled across Grossmünsterplatz, a historical cathedral near the lake of Zurich. We kept looking around and noticed the Euro Cup madness followed us from Luzern there, only times 5. We already purchased our Swiss shirts from Luzern station and decided to put them on. We looked like twins and took pictures along the bridge.

Time was against us so we made a couple of purchases at Coop supermarket, then headed to the train station. Once on the train, we talked about how good the trip was. We took a nap each and reachChur in one piece. We took the bus back to the school, and made it just in time for dinner. I noticed that there were the new students in the other dining area. They are the students who are completing there course in dining room service and cooking. We had dinner with the group and professors, then had free time. I chatted with the others then did some school work in the textbook. The bed was calling me after a couple of hours, and I answered willingly.