IAAS Belgium got invited to go to the exchange week in Switzerland so Celine Callewaert, me, packed her bags and went.
Saturday 28/04/18. I woke up, packed my bags and took the train to Brussels-South. Here I stepped on the ICE train of the Deutsche Bahn. This was my very first international trip by train (since I wanted to travel responsibly) and it was an amazing experience. The ICE trains are quiet, clean, with lots of space, a restaurant or bar and free wifi. Yes, you heard me correctly free wifi. After 8 hours of reading my book and looking out of the window to the beautiful views I arrived in Zürich and my friend Anna picked me up.
Sunday 29/04/18. We meet up at the ETH university and get to know each other better or say hi to the friends we've already met before. On the first day they wanted us to get to know Zürich better. The way we had to do that was through the Crazy Challenge. The sun is shining and we set out for the challenge. My biggest challenge however were the great amount of steep hills! We had to climb on statues, ask stran
gers their birthdays, sing for strangers,... After the challenge (and the challenging climb back up the hill) we left in our vans for Walenstadt. Here we had a scouts-hut all to ourselves. Back to the roots (no Wifi, no free roaming either) but lots of friends and an amazing view. Who could complain?
Monday, 30/04/18. Field trip day! The main sponsor of the event, Syngenta, showed us two typical Swiss farms, one in the mountains, and a “normal” one. The first farm, Herman, are growing hard vegetables and washing, packing and storing them themselves. They had about 50 hectares of land where they grew potatoes, onions, carrots, … The climate is quite special here, they can have frost until the 10th of may so they might need to cover their plants sometimes but last year they still harvested the 26th of December. So, a quite long growing period.
The second farm was Bergkäserei Mädris. A cheese producer up in the mountains. In a
little town where only 85 people live with a rough climate (no vineyards) 10 out of the 28 households are farmers. They produce cheese out of the 350 000 litres of Milk they get every year. He showed us around his production and farm and then we got some wine and could taste the cheese. It’s a real special feeling to have a cheese and wine tasting so high up, with amazing views of the valley.
We closed of the day by having an amazing trade fair where we could taste the food from every country. Unfortunately, they invited Sweden, who brought Surströmming, and nearly killed us. Kidding, we love you Sweden.
Tuesday, 01/05/2018. Visit to Quinten. Quinten is a small town, only reachable by boat across the lake. The village sides on the mountain and is thus sheltered from the wind (by the mountain) and has the sun on the south side. So, it’s always 3-4 degrees warmer here than elsewhere in the valley, which makes it especially great to produce wine. Currently there are only 44 people living here. This city still exists today because of tourism, otherwise it would have died out already. We walked around the idyllic, quiet town (no cars), visited a herb witch and went up hill to visit the winery. Hamti runs this vineyard all by
himself, he not only grows the grapes but al
so has pigs and donkeys. The pigs looked like sheep, honestly, so fluffy. Since the wine is quite special, because it is grown in such a weird environment and he packaged it in a nice story, the business is going great and he got a 5/5 rating on vino.com. After showing us around, Hamti gave us the wine to taste while he made us risotto. Amazing.
In the afternoon we had a part of our soft skill training about giving pitches. How should you structure a pitch? How do you give feedback? How to deal with stage fear? How to improvise? And practising pitches. Very useful skills for now and later.
We closed of the day with a barbecue outside on the fire. Do you know that in Switzerland they cut open bananas, put chocolate in, wrap them in aluminium foil and throw them in the fire? Very weird and tasty!
Wednesday, 02/05/18. Let’s go for a hike they said, it’ll be fun they said. Yeah, these mountain goats (Swiss people) might be used to it, but I’m not, and I live in the Vlaamse Ardennen, the hilly part of Flanders. We formed a slow army with some people and tried to follow the others. Finally we arrived at the lake where we had our lunch. The views were amazing, the nature, lake and s
urroundings, so cool. The way my legs felt after even 3 steps was not that amazing. But pushing through we made it to the top to have lunch and wine and enjoy the view. The highest point we were on was 1100 meters. Higher than Belgium, amazing, right? We closed of the day by showering (it was quite necessary) and having a raclette evening!
Thursday, 03/05/18. Field trip to a hemp farm. By which I mean, a legal weed farm in Switzerland. In Switzerland it is legal to have weed if it has less than 1% of THC in it, THC is the psychoactive part. In Europe for example it is legal if it has less than 0.2%. They recently found a way to achieve that and will start selling their products in Europe this summer (www.pureproduction.ch). Here they are actively breeding against THC and for CBD, which has a lot of great uses (sleeping, calming,…). They showed us around the production and the quality testing lab and then we could enter the shop and try some of their products.
After chilling and relaxing, we took the cars back to Zurich to have our 2nd part of the training. Here we focused on our body and voice and practised our body language. After which we had to deliver our final pitch about our favourite national food. Guess what mine was? Hahaha yes, potatoes, oh you know me so well.
Next up was the spring party in ETH, where we had vegan, gluten-free and insects for dinner. It was definitely an experience. We chilled some more and went back to our mountain hut.
Friday, 04/05/18. Chocolate factory Frey. We had a workshop where we could make our own chocolate bars. Then an audio tour of the factory and tasting the chocolates. I was in chocolate heaven (even though it was swiss chocolate). With a full belly we went to Zurich to practice the swiss national sport, Schwingen. Which is basically wearing weird underpants, grabbing each other by
them and throwing the other on their backs in the sawdust. Looked weird, was loads of fun. Cleaning out the dust was less fun though. We then had a rice bowl and chilled near the river before going to a party.
Saturday, 05/05/18. Brunch at the ETH and walking around the city. Which meant for us tired people, sitting around the city. After sitting everywhere, we went to sit in the park and had a BBQ and chilled some more, before going to the party.
Sunday, 06/05/18. Waking up way too early, taking the public transport way too early and taking the train home. Stopped in Frankfurt, bought a bratwurst and finally went home.
What an amazing week it was. I've made such good friends with so many people. Never to forget!