Category Archives: Around the campus

Too much to say

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In Cologne

It has been far too long since my last blog post and so much has happened since then.

We all went off on mid-term break in the first week of April. One of the beauties of being in Switzerland is that travel is very easy and getting around Europe is not difficult at all. I made a weekend stop in Cologne, Germany to visit a friend and then took a train to Paris to spend the rest of the holiday. Both cities were absolutely beautiful. The weather was not great but a little break was good and it is always fun to spend time with friends. I even met up with a Jamaican friend in Paris by surprise!

From the Eifel Tour

We came back to school and went straight into the kitchen at the formal dining restaurant Le Tacot. For two weeks we worked as a small restaurant would. Each person worked in a station and completed a part of the dish all coming together for plate presentation. The first week was lunch service and we created a set menu each day. The second was dinner service where guests choose from an a la carte menu. I helped with cold kitchen, but was in charge of the dessert station, and I can now make very good crème brulée and chocolate mousse. Our proudest moment was receiving 100% for our dinner exam!!

Plates of cold appetiser for a Banquet one evening

After that we had the hottest night of the year: Auction Night. The graduating class makes different efforts to raise money for their graduation celebrations. Auction night involves bidding on each other to share a dinner date. I was “bought” for 175 CHF. The evening is always fun and we had a blast this year dressing up and having a laugh with everyone involved.

The girls at Auction Night

This past weekend a few of us braved the Lausanne 20KM run. Only 5 were brave enough to go for the full 20KM and the rest completed the 10KM. It was a very challenging run for us all but it was a good day and we made it back to Bluche safely.

After all of this and in between all of this we are working towards our final projects, assessments and exams. It would be safe to say that Bluche is very busy at the moment.

65 Days in Switzerland

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Hello friends!

I apologize for the very late update but during the past weeks I’ve been so busy with school and travelling to different places that the time to write was non-existent.

Since my last post I’ve been:

  • Skiing and drinking hot chocolate by the slopes

  • Organizing a welcome party for all new and returning students in one of the bars of the school

  • On a trip to Milan. It took us about three hours to drive there from school. We checked in at the Nhow Hotel, went to brunch, walked around the city centre and looked at all the nice shops. We went for dinner, drinks and dancing and drove back the next day. A very short but intense trip and I can’t wait to go back when the weather is a bit nicer
  • On another trip to a place called Blatten where I got to experience the Swiss carnival and go sledging down a mountain in the pitch dark (so scary!)

 

  • Travelling to London for a weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday
  • Enjoying the sun in parks, on a balcony, and during the “après ski”

  • Hanging out with my family who came to visit for a week
  • Booking a flight home to Sweden for Easter break

But I’ve also been…

  • Finishing a huge project involving six different subjects
  • Writing seven out of nine mid-term exams
  • Preparing three presentations
  • On many interviews and presentations with many hotel companies

I’m enjoying my time here in Switzerland a lot and time flies by so fast it’s hard to believe we are even past the half point. In three to four months I’ll be living and working in a city, but I have no idea where…That’s the beauty of the hotel industry–you have no idea where life (or work) will take you.

X Filippa

Wine Tasting Festival

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Hello everyone!

I hope you are all having a great week and working hard in your projects/assignments either if you are a current student from Les Roches, part of the Alumni or even a prospective student reading this blog!!

On my side, I can tell you that I feel like time is definitely flying already and as deadlines are approaching I feel the need to work faster and harder. The Hospitality industry is known for this and it is in fact one of the reasons why I selected this field because it has helped me to become more organized and manage time better.

Having said that, I strongly agree that along with the learning, it is always important to have time to learn new things, attend workshops, presentations and see places where they show something new or important from a particular region.

Last Saturday, we had a great opportunity to go to the Sierre Wine Festival, which was a really nice experience for all of us who had never tried wine tasking before. The festival took place in Sierre, which is one of the closest cities to Bluche where Les Roches campus is located. Sierre has about 14,000 inhabitants and in the city you can do some shopping in the many stores, or find restaurants and banks. When you are a student in Bluche, you go there often.

Every year, Sierre becomes the host of the Wine Festival which is really popular in the Valaisan area; for many people foreign and local, it becomes really interesting as several wine makers come to this festival with their products, people attending can pay a small fee for the wine tasting and you receive a wine glass which becomes your tool to try several sorts of wines made by the different grapes produced in the area.  The producers from vineyards from the region are happy to explain to you where they are located and if there is any specialty in their wine. It was really interesting!

Check out how it was in the following video where I have posted a few pictures of this day!

Welcome to Summer Batch!

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Hello everyone!  It has been a while since I last posted blogs and I have really missed it!

After finishing an internship in Geneva, I am returning to Les Roches in order to complete the Postgraduate Program in Hospitality (PGD II). I am positive this semester is going to be amazing for everyone and I really hope the blogs I will write will help current and prospective students to know more about the school and its activities.

First of all, I would like to give a warm welcome to everyone, although by the time this is posted it will already be week 4 … New and returning students have been arriving to Les Roches for summer batch in the last couple of weeks and there have already been a few activities going on.

One of them of course was the Swiss National day that took place on the 1st of August when most students were already on campus. We had the pleasure of seeing the parades in Crans-Montana and afterwards an amazing show of fireworks that lasted around 15 minutes, which was awesome. You could really feel the happiness of Swiss people during this day, I have made a short video about it…

After my internship in Geneva, which I will talk about in my next post, I went back to Ecuador to visit my family and friends, it was a nice break from Europe but I was actually looking forward to coming back to Blûche. Each batch, either Winter or Summer batch, enjoys a special feeling when they come back after an internship period. In the first couple of weeks, it was a feeling of excitement to see everyone again, not only your classmates but also the returning students from last summer batch in different classes, teachers and everyone who helps out at Les Roches.

We all get to share a lot of stories regarding the previous internship and the places we have discovered. All this is real feedback that you get from your friends which is really important because you start building up different criteria concerning future job or internship opportunities that might help you to find the right path in the field of Hospitality which is so broad. I will share some advice and tips in regards to internships from my previous experience in Geneva.

Here a few pictures of new friends and people having already a good time at Les Roches!!  I am really happy to be back!

PGD 2 returning students welcoming PGD 1 new class! In Atlas, a little pub in Bluche where you can meet everyone!

 

Making friends with my new classmates…. So happy to be back !

Events at Les Roches

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Integrated Project by Postgraduate Diploma students  IP EVENT, Come Fly with Me

All of the programs at Les Roches train their students to build and improve their skills in different areas of the hospitality industry. In order to get their diploma, the postgraduate students (PGD2) from Les Roches have to design an event in which they apply all of the techniques and knowledge that they learned in their first part of the program as students of PGD 1.

This is a very challenging activity that requires their entire disposition to work in groups so that they can present an exceptional idea for this event. The one that they presented this semester was based on the theme “Cities of the world”.  It was an outstanding performance of their cooking skills, service skills and also organizing, presentation and entertaining abilities.

The evening had a great ambiance, live music, great food and beverage, and amazing entertainers in general. It had the support of the PGDs 1 and also students from the school and staff in general.

Projects such as these really enhance the student’s talents to step out from the classrooms and put them into practice to show it to the school.  Following the meal there is a compiled video with pictures and a short clip of this marvelous night.  Congratulations to all of the PGD2 who did an amazing job!

PGD2 STUDENTS , contratulations to all of you!!

Besides the trekking activities, excursions and the visits to wineries that the school organizes, there are also different trips around Switzerland. We recently had the chance to take a fantastic trip to the GRUYERE area, famous for the delicious cheese of the same name and the beauty of the region.

During this trip, students were able to visit a chocolate factory which is always a great attraction for all those who love chocolate and want to try a bit of some of the best Swiss products.

It’s very interesting to get to see these places because they are part of the Swiss culture and part of the learning experience that every student here at Les Roches should experience.

Check out the pictures of the area, these charming towns made the trip very significant for those who want to feel and see the country side of Switzerland.

Visit to a Vineyard and extra-curricular activities

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The learning experience here at Les Roches is not limited to the academic or practical parts of our days on duty or attending classes. The school schedules frequent lectures for the students to attend, workshops and even field trips in which we learn about companies related to the hospitality industry. A few days ago we were able to attend a session given by a former student, Reza Ghazali who talked about “Career Planning”.

Mr. Ghazali is a great example of how far former students from Les Roches can go! Currently, he is the Office Managing Director for Korn/Ferry International in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. This executive recruitment agency is considered as one of the world’s premier providers of talent and management solutions with nearly 80 offices in 40 countries. Mr. Ghazali described some pitfalls to watch out for and how to plan our careers, which is always worth hearing about, especially in this industry when you have so many options and possibilities.

Our PGD class visited a winery, or vineyard, located close to Sion which is not far from Bluche!! We have a few wine producers and vineyard territories in the surroundings of Les Roches and it is indeed a quite nice area.

The Canton of Valais, where the school is found, is quite well recognized in Switzerland for the tasty wines that they produce; this time we visited the Giroud Winery where we were able to taste some of the wines produced there and gather lots of information about the production stages. Thank you Mr. la Sala for arranging this for our class, it was great fun! http://animoto.com/play/21Ss1Wjq7ABj4XWfo0l5OQ?utm_content=challenger

Last but not least, I have been taking a few pictures of the surroundings here at the school and you can clearly see the change from Summer to Fall and the upcoming Winter slowly approaching. It has even snowed once already! I will be posting a video about this too, hope you like this new application to see several pictures. http://animoto.com/play/1N2vj5cPNeTFKHVK39P9WQ

Sports, activities and hiking around Les Roches

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Switzerland is famous for its Swiss Army knives, fabulous chocolate and top-quality watches. To travelers from around the world, Switzerland is most famous for its Alpine beauty and majestic landscapes.

I must say that we are lucky to be surrounded here in Les Roches by such natural scenery. I find myself looking at the mountains quite often since the views from the campus are so beautiful. When I need a break in between classes, I find it really refreshing to go outside for a while.  The weather is constantly changing.  In just one day we see different types of weather including rain, sun, and wind, typical of Switzerland by the way.

Recently, you can feel Winter slowly approaching and the temperature dropping, especially at night! However, we have been told to look forward to the winter as well!

During this season, when there are still sunny days, you can take advantage of the good weather and go out for a walk or plan a trekking route to admire the lakes, waterfalls and very nice paths of the area, you can always check out this webpage with more information: www.valais.ch

Its great to take in the scenery through activity, rather than just sightseeing: skiing, hiking, hang-gliding and rafting are only a number of the outstanding opportunities. These pictures are of a group of students reaching a departure point by car and taking one of the routes towards one waterfall.

Thank you Luis for providing information about this and the pictures!!

Traveling in Switzerland

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Before coming to Les Roches, I had heard a lot about all of the advantages of living and studying in Switzerland.  Its geographical central position and the well-developed transportation system make Switzerland very accessible for everyone who wants to travel both within the country and to other European cities.

I have mentioned several times before about the beauty of the area where the school is, but my first trip out of Valais to a big city was really amazing. First of all, I had to start by visiting somewhere important in Switzerland that I had cherished for a long time…  Zurich!  I had heard so much about the city and had actually met so many people from there in the past that I could not believe it when I actually got there.

From Les Roches in Bluche, it only takes approximately 2 hours to get to Zurich by train if the times you pick have precise connections, and in fact most of them do. This is something that I need to highlight because the organization makes it so easy to travel by train, also the school highly recommends in the beginning of the semester that  every student gets either a half price card or/and an “after 7” card. Accordingly, these cards allow students to pay half-price fares in all the funicular, train and bus transportation, and the advantage of having the “after 7 card” is that you don’t pay anything for any rides taken after 7pm at night! This makes the travelling a lot cheaper, no matter where you go within La Suisse.

Although the city of Bern is the capital, Zurich is the largest and it is also recognized for having one of the world’s largest financial centers.

When my sister and I got there, the weather was amazing.  We were able to take a walk along the main station street, “Bahnhofstrasse” and visit several stores.  One of which I loved because it has the best Swiss handmade chocolate!

The old town in Zurich is so charming, lots of beautiful architecture, several churches and their cobblestoned, car-free walking streets add a pleasant touch to this part of the city.

There is a main river that sort of divides the city and its bridges in between are wonderful with very interesting buildings and houses on each side.  Also different brasseries and restaurants with international food can be found throughout the entire city, and you can go by foot everywhere.

Also, here the transportation within the city is mainly by trams that drive around all over and are quite regular too. Thanks to these trams, you can get from one place to another in almost no time.  One part that you shouldn’t miss is of course the Zurich lake, it is pretty large and people get together here for swimming when there is good weather or taking long walks along the lake.

During the weekend that we were there we really felt like we needed more time to see everything else,  and we cant wait to come back! I look forward to the rest of cities in Switzerland, after this experience it will just get easier to travel next time!

Getting around Les Roches and meeting new people !

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These past few days have been really wonderful.  Finally, I was able to meet my classmates from PGD 1! We did the check in as PGD students last week and we felt very welcomed by the school staff and the PGD2 students (PGD second semester students). They had prepared several documents that came in handy for everyone with useful information. They were open to our questions and doubts and really put interest into telling us more about the way of life in Les Roches.

I think we all enjoyed the first days during the introduction week getting to know each other in our class and making new friends. As the time goes by, I think I am getting to know more and more people from the school and from so many countries. There is a cultural diversity which is quite noticeable as you walk in campus and the best thing is that everyone seems to be getting along very well in spite of the difference in languages and cultures.

There is something important that I need to highlight about the programs in Les Roches, and I would not have been able to value this if I had not heard other students’ outlook on their schedule during the first days. My sister for example, she is in HO1 (first year) and in the beginning she was a bit confused because of the new environment and the mix of the practical and theoretical lessons, and honestly I couldn’t understand much either. But I finally realized that the practical hours either in service or stewarding that students in HO1 have to complete (which by the way for some of the students might seem too exhausting in the beginning), have been designed so that students can easily get the real meaning of team work. During these shifts, the students can get to know their classmates better since they have to cooperate with them all the time.  The fact that the students can live these real situations right away is outstanding; it helps us to see ourselves involved in this industry in the future so we can understand the operations in these areas.

I really like my class in PGD1 and I think we are getting along pretty well. The learning experience of being in such an international environment has to deal a lot with socializing too, and the PGD2 students welcomed all of the new PGD1s during the weekend with a welcome party at the local bar, Le Pub, in Montana. We really felt welcomed by them and the time they used to even prepare a video for us, it was very nice, check it out:

I am attaching a few pictures of some of the PGD2 welcoming us, the facilities around Les Roches, the pool is nice and the views from the mountains are really cool, there is another picture of inside the funicular that goes from Sierre to Montana and stops in Bluche. And my friend from Egypt asked me to write more about Egyptians in the school but I think we have to have a little chat so I know what to write! Anyways I am posting this other picture so he knows I will write about it too eventually ;-)

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Arriving to Les Roches !!

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I have arrived to Les Roches Campus at last!

It is great to be here already and I could not be happier. Once you get to the area, you have the real feeling of being in Switzerland. I am used to living in a valley, surrounded by mountains in Ecuador, but the scenery here is breathtaking…  I don’t know where to start to tell you all about it.
Frankly, my flight over here was a little bit of a nightmare because my flight was already delayed when I left Ecuador so I knew I was going to have a delay in my connection flight from Madrid to Geneva and I was really nervous.  Once I finally landed in Madrid, I had to literally run with my bags from one terminal to the other terminal, and waiting for customs took so long. Finally, when I got to the check in point, I knew they had probably closed the flight to Geneve because I was too late and I had no hopes to get on another flight on the same day.

But there I was, only 5 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave for Genève and I thought, what do I have to lose, I will ask anyways, maybe this one is also delayed… and it was!!!  They said that it had been delayed for an hour or so because of a lost bag! I asked if they could help me checking in, and so they did. The flight went smoothly and in Genève I was able to find my Danish family who had been waiting for me at the airport.

After all of the waiting and the running, I could not believe that I had made it in spite of the circumstances, I was really lucky. It is a shame that I was in such a hurry all the time that I could not take any pictures of Genève to share with you, but it is a beautiful city from what I could see.  The very next day I had a bad jet lag but we drove early in the morning so that my sister could do the proper check-in at Les Roches.

Once you get into the canton of Valais the views are impressive, for those who have not been here before, you will only understand me when you see it for yourselves. Everything is so neat and it really looks like the pictures that we see on the internet. Right now there are a lot of green areas and tons of flowers all around the Bluche village and Les Roches campus.

At the main building, everyone seemed so happy to welcome new students and all the check-in procedures were easy to follow thanks to the assistance of the staff. There were a lot of new students too. My sister and I were assigned a room together and we really like it, for what we have seen all of the accommodations are neat and everyone seems quite happy. Once you get to Les Roches, you feel surrounded by people from all over the world,  people from Asia, Europe, South America, and when you are walking around campus you see everyone talking to each other and it is, in fact, like they were family.

Since I have not started with my PGD program yet, I have had time to explore the region a little. It is indeed like they mention in the brochures and the websites, the transportation here is really easy and they try to help you in every way possible.

Some advice for the new comers next week, try to have all of the documentation ready for the check in, so that it goes smoothly and then you won’t feel so tired at the end of your first day.

Also, all the IT information that they request for your computer should be followed, like the software in English and if you have a MAC computer, make sure the IT staff can have access to Windows in it, otherwise you will have to install a Windows software and it will take more time for them to get your computer ready. So yes, read through all of the requirements.

The weather has been nice most of the time although it has rained a bit, but everybody says that it is not normal at this time of the year, but the views when the sun goes down are amazing as you can see in some of these pictures.

I am sure that all of you who have not arrived yet are looking forward to be here and to study in this institute, and you should be. All of the staff have been very helpful with us and always trying to make you feel welcome. I am really looking forward to meeting the rest of the coming students and my future classmates. All this experience has been so exciting already for the first few days that I cannot wait to start with the classes and the practical learning. I hope you all are having a great start here in the school and for those who have not arrived yet, hope you have a better flight than I did!

See you soon in Les Roches!