Submitted by Carolyn Jones on the 2013 fall semester exchange program with the Swiss School of Tourism and Hospitality…
After almost 17 hours on our feet, we finally did it…at least half of it. Wednesday was jam packed with a full day of service and an afternoon dedicated to setting up for the gala dinner that evening. The room turned out to be even more beautiful than any of us could have imagined, and our 10 kilograms of dry ice seemed to wow our guests. The dinner started early for me because I was in charge of running the apéro which included setting up a table of perfectly polished glasses set in a diamond shape and trying to pop numerous bottles of Prosecco without taking out the eyes of the guests. When the apéro was finished and cleaned, the guests made their way to the dining room, and the evening that our entire semester had been built around began. I would be lying if I said the first 20 minutes were not completely nerve racking. The service experts (a.k.a. the strangers in charge of determining 30 percent of our grade) paced the dining room eying us and jotting down our fate on their clipboards. My hands were shaking during my water and wine service, but after the first course, it seemed that we all started to relax. I happened to have my German and cooking teachers at my table and still have yet to determine if that was comforting or completely traumatizing…especially when my scrambled thoughts about the menu and wine list were interrupted with trying to translate my brain into German to answer my teacher. Even so, they were wonderful guests. The night continued with the soup and hot appetizer service. My classmates and I finally got into our groove at this point in the night, and we started to enjoy meeting in the kitchen which was pleasantly humorous thanks to our friendly dishwashers. Eventually, the infamous red wine decanting took place which I am relieved to say was anticlimactic for most of us. One of my friends actually spilt wine onto her candle and sizzled out the flame, but she still ended up getting one of the best grades in the class. (We now have official permission to laugh about the incident.) The rest of the evening was wonderful, and by the end we were exhausted. When the guests finally left, I think all of us had to take a moment to realize that all of the preparation and build up was over. It was a relief, but also very sad to know that our incredible semester is ending. Per usual, we did not have much time to sit and reflect because as always there was work to be done! After a 4 hour dinner, we had to find the energy to clean up and put the dining room back in order. By the end, we were grouped around what has become the “debriefing table” with our service teachers and learned that all of us passed. The other students also threw the traditional party for us downstairs, complete with the what was left with our dry ice. This is the first time I am really taking a moment to sit down and reflect on our evening because round two is tonight! This time we are in the kitchen, so in several hours I will be frying beignets, making sauces, and cutting and piping 150, 3cm squares of cake. It seems we have another long and exciting night ahead of us.
As a side note, it started snowing in the middle of the gala dinner which made the night even more special. The snow did not stick, but I woke up this morning to find a blanket of perfectly white snow over Chur. It is breathtaking.
