My first time. . .Switzerland

I was chatting the other day with Igor from Brazil – he spent four months with us as a CEEDer, he had just read the first posting on my blog. Told me to write more about my adventures and philosophy, etc… I was having difficulty in what the next article/edition is going to focus on – after 23 hours of thinking I found a starting pointJ.

Six years it has been in this organisation (…well for us South Africans – our year is Jan – Dec so we always have 6 months of nothingness before you get into office, so if we were going according to the international academic year cycle you would remove 1.5 years from that 6 years!), as I am to exit as the Member Committee President of AIESEC South Africa, I look back at some moments in my AIESEC Experience that were a memorable for me (there are so many so I’ll tell you those I can remember), I have extracted the following writings from my journal written in march 2004 , the 1^st time I went abroad – on a CEED to Switzerland:

‘Switzerland is a first world country, I always had the impression that it has everything, well according to me it does and some even surprised me. The first thing that shocked me was the public phone in the airport, I stepped in the telephone both (Swisscom) and realized that I could send an sms, an email and phone - all on a public phone, even when I was sitting in the airport I had this sense and smell of wealth about the country, I then knew I was far from home.

One has to remember I come from a developing country that has both the features of a first world and a third world, landing in a place where poverty doesn’t seem likely – and poverty I heard of in comparison to South Africa sounded like the basic standard of living which is experienced mostly by immigrants.

Life in the country is good, expensive with an extreme low crime rate. The trainees I met from different countries made me realize that in Switzerland one earns according to the standard of living despite the high taxes.

The transport system is very developed – the train (which is for longer distances) connects to almost every city, town, and village in the country. The buses are used pretty much for within a town or city and buses going on long distances were usually on special hire, the alternative for a bus within a town would be a tram i.e. a smaller cable train.

Communication is very much advanced too, every train, bus, tram has intercom and I also realized almost every household has a computer with Internet and those who can afford would buy a laptop – which is mostly everyone J. In a public phone I already explained my amazement and now that I am back home I see the vast difference between the two countries in just these two aspects.’

…I spent two months there and they were & still are the most memorable times of my life. . .will tell you more about my adventures next time, thanks for reading - grazie mille (thanks a million in Swiss Italian).