Swiss Gastronomic Adventure
Life on cheese and chocolates – sounds mouth watering and too good to be true? Read on! This how my life was spent for about a week in Switzerland. I was a vegetarian by choice and after being served ‘veil’ on a flight, where the air-hostess called it vegetarian and later realizing that it was [...]
Ishita Bhattacharya
25.02.2009
Food
Life on cheese and chocolates – sounds mouth watering and too good to be true? Read on!
This how my life was spent for about a week in Switzerland. I was a vegetarian by choice and after being served ‘veil’ on a flight, where the air-hostess called it vegetarian and later realizing that it was actually calf meat, I had to find options to survive. Plus the killer cold and a small town, where the best mode of exploration was on foot, I had valid reasons for my umpteen surges and hunger pangs. In addition, not to forget the not so cheap prices and an extremely tiny budget, considering we were students traveling on sponsorship belonging to modest income group families. The high price of ACTUAL food, which we consider FAST FOOD in India and also the animal fat used to cook vegetarian food at places like Mc Donald’s, brought down our options.
Chocolate bars became the last resort. They were vegetarian, quite filling and cost less even for Lindt (local made bars that were the size of a Pringles large box and much cheaper). Cheese was not so cheap but something vegetarian (at least that was what we thought!). My friends suggested we try the famous Swiss bread instead of the normal soft white bread. I’m glad my teeth are still somehow intact! I felt like I was chewing on rubber. The tragedy actually started way before the chewing, when I had to tear the bread off for a bite.
I was practically living off on solid, liquid cheese and chocolate. The treat though was the cognac chocolate. A bar that was the size of our dairy milk with 8 blocks, each block had a chocolate at the bottom and a tiny cup made of chocolate on the top as a cover filled with one peg of cognac. This totally reminded me of DDLJ and warmed me enough to walk down the street on a cold windy night without any woolen clothing!
We later found “ready to make veg pasta”, which we were able to cook thanks to the pay and use kitchen of the International Youth Hostel, at a nominal charge.
The final googly was that, on reaching home when my younger brother was rummaging through my belongings, we discovered that the cheese we feasted on, thinking it was vegetarian, actually has pork bits in it!
Ishita Bhattacharya
[ratings]
[image courtesy: http://tinyurl.com/apkjms]
awesome…what a luck…good and bad both i’d say…lindt bars are so cheap there?!?!? sweet…and umm those cheese…thrs one which is left to rot…my mom ddnt let me hv that
One can walk from one end of Geneve to the other within a few hours. Walk across the lake and you come upon the old city….a part of Geneve or Europe that is as exotic and exquisite as their chocolate! Infact, companies like Lindt were just like the many chocolate shops that line up old Geneve alleys…just that Lindt saw the international reputation of Swiss chocolate and leveraged on it while most of the others continued to make their fine authentic chocolate sold at only their outlet…no chemicals, preservatives, additives…just pure hand made chocolate…the left over thrown away at the end of the day to promise daily freshness.
Then there is the countryside still untouched. You should try Jundfraujoch – the highest point in Europe…you get to this really beautiful exotic small town Interlaken (the towns main road is by the side of tree laden mountains – which at night is almost like a fairy tale movie), from where you take a boat ride on a super still lake and then onto a train thats more like a long slanted elevator (its that steep)! You pass by these hilltop mini towns and the view of mountain laden homes (like hill stations) is breathtaking.
The reason the country retains its beauty till date is because the govt has not allowed any commercial development except for the necessary. Most of the business is done out of commercial Zurich. The rest of it is mostly just tourism.
from food, looks like we’re moving to tourism…
@samir i can recall all those calendars my dad used to get from his clinic with the swiss landscape plastered on them…oh how i wanna go to the alps now!!!
Actually besides Fondue, cheese and chocolate the swiss dont have much culinary claim to fame. The food is either French, German or Italian – depending on which side of the country you are at.
c’mon..even swiss wines r a delicacy..
so basically its a complete meal..cheese bread chocolates and wine!
Of course, swiss wine is very well known. Unfortunately dont remember ever having much because I was on the verge of entering the legal dirnking age then!
Of course, swiss wine is very well known. Unfortunately dont remember ever having much because I was on the verge of entering the legal drinking age then!