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Gruetzi from the GSE
team in Switzerland.
I will first apologise for not reporting in earlier...I thought I'd be
able to do weekly updates, but the pace of the exchange has been pretty
hectic and there never seems to be enough time in the days. After saying
that, I have got to tell you that all the team (Ian Wilson, Sandra Cormack,
Peta Jackson, Peter Wilson and myself, Colleen Fish) are having an
absolute
blast.
We left Brisbane on a warm and sunny Thursday afternoon, and landed in
Zurich almost 29 hours later in the middle of a snow storm...and that was
just the first of many wonderful surprises. We are now in our third week
and have nearly finished our time in the Ticino region, which is the
Italian speaking section. In fact, we spent the day in Italy today at
Milan...but that is getting ahead of myself...so I will give you a very
brief rundown of
our first few weeks.
Week 1 - After landing in Zurich we spent the first week hosted by the RC
of Brugg-Zurzach and Brugg-Aare-Rhine. Herr Otto Suhner had arranged a
busy schedule for us that ran like Swiss clockwork (pun intended)...this
included visits to Betznau nuclear power plant, Brugg cables, a reception
with the Mayor and numerous other interesting places. We also did
presentations for the two hosting Rotary Clubs. Everybody was made very
welcome by their hosting families and it made this introductory week to
the exchange program so much easier to get used to.
Week 2 - We then moved on to Lucerne and were very excited knowing the
District Conference would be held here at the end of the week. The cold
weather continued and there was a lot of snow (we re-enacted the battle of
Morgarten as a snow-ball fight with almost as much vigour as the original
was probably carried out). Visits during the week also included a Swiss
fortress, a fantastic Transport museum, the new Gotthard train tunnel
being mined underneath the Alps and many more. However, by Friday it was
the
District Conference that had our attention. The group did a short
presentation at the conference which was very well received, and then
participated in the Centennial celebrations planned for the same time. The
celebrations included a symphony at the amazing KKL building, followed by
a banquet and traditional Swiss singing (not actually yodelling, but some
beautiful melodies) and the Saturday included the formal celebrations followed by 2000 people on 4 boats having lunch on the Lake of
Lucerne...it was absolutely amazing.
Week 3 - We are now coming to the end of week 3 and are loving the time in
Ticino which is a lot warmer and we have seen the sun every day since we
have been here - which has been wonderful. Each day has again been very
busy and, since we are not staying with host families, dinner has been a
part of the program. We have done one full presentation and two shorter
ones to fit into the lunchtime meetings of the clubs. Today we travelled
to
Milano in Italy which was a great way to end another great week.
Tomorrow we head back to Schwitz... another report hopefully next week.
Salute^
District 9640 GSE Team in Switzerland
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