Switzerland and Rome 2019
In February of 2019, I got to visit both the charming city of Zurich and the massive city of Rome. Both cities are unique and offer travelers different perspectives.
I was invited to speak at the EF Office in Zurich to the wonderful team about my experience as a teacher. I was only there for two days, but after a walking tour and a couple of restaurant visits, I started to get a sense of the city. The city is the largest in Switzerland, even though it is not the capital. I loved walking along the Limmat River which connects to Lake Zurich.
A trip to Switzerland is not complete without trying their famous fondue. The cheese of Switzerland is famous, but fondue has a very interesting story. In post-World War II Europe, Switzerland had a problem. They had a surplus of cheese and didn't know what to do. Europe's economy was struggling while Switzerland, which came out in better shape because of their neutrality, had to try and come up with a remedy. The government decided to create the Swiss Cheese Union (the OPEC of cheese) to control the price of cheese and to limit its production. Switzerland went from 1,000 cheeses to just 7 in post-War Europe. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Union looked to boost demand by copying what some people did in the Alps, melt large amounts of cheese in pots which they called fondue.
They used good - looking Swiss people with their red fondue pots to sell cheese to the public, and it worked amazingly well, at least for a while. The Swiss Cheese cartel starting having problems with corruption, and people starting questioning why the government was spending so much money on subsidizing the cheese industry (at one point they were spending more money on cheese then they were on their army). The cheese cartel fell in the 1990s, but fondue (and those pots) are still sold worldwide today.
Fondue (melted Swiss cheese) is typically paired with bread and fruit.
Rome
An ad of the 1960s
After leaving Zurich I headed to Rome for another wonderful training tour. Training teachers on the merits of travelling with students is always one of my year's highlights. I have written several posts on the amazing city, so for more details on the city, visit my previous writeups. Below, I wanted to share my video I made walking around the city with my GoPro Hero 6 and some pictures of the trip.
From the Spanish steps to the Colosseum, from the Trevi fountain to the Vatican city, Rome is a wonderous place full of history and culture. These are just a few of the reasons Rome is one of the most visited cities in the world boasting over 58 million tourist a year.
