The principal and three students (including a girl student - the students were selected on merit grounds) of CTAS visited various places in Switzerland to learn about Swiss culture, traditions and its customs and values. The highlight of the trip, which took place from 20th September till 8th October 2010, were live demonstrations of traditional painting and carving of Bhutan at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich. Some of the products made by the students of the school were also showcased and sold to the visitors in order to generate some income for the school. The sale of these items was successful and a total of USD 6000 was generated. On 30th September 2010 a reception was held for the friends and well-wishers of the Fontana Foundation and CTAS in the Rietberg Musuem. The reception was very well organized. Mario Fontana, the president of Fontana Foundation, in his address introduced CTAS and the Fontana foundation’s role and responsibility towards the school.  The principal made a presentation of the school to its supporters and well-wishers, highlighting the successes and future challenges of CTAS. She also took the opportunity to thank  the supporters for their help for the school.

In addition to the interesting and interactive program organized at the Museum, the group saw various breathtaking places in Switzerland such as the Zurich zoo, the mountain Rigi, Zermatt, and also visited schools, Geneva and Zurich University of Art.

The entire trip was organized and sponsored by the Fontana Foundation (FF). Arianne from FF and her family made sure the CTAS visitors had a warm and welcoming home during the entire stay in Switzerland.
Our trip to Switzerland: 

LEARNING ABOUT OTHER CULTURES AND CUSTOMS - By Sonam, Wangmo, Sangay and Jampel.

The visit  helped us to better understand the world outside Bhutan, particularly of course Switzerland. Our stay with the host family provided us with the opportunity to learn about Swiss family life. We were fortunate to have a wonderful and very friendly host family who took care of all our needs and never let us feel like foreigners. 

From the very start, from the Druk Air flight out of Bhutan till we departed from Zurich at the end, everything was a new experience in our life. The students were very excited and at the same time very nervous when the plane took off and landed again. It was their first trip abroad and their first flights.  We had a 2 days and one night stop-over in Delhi, India before our connecting flight to Zurich, so we took the opportunity to visit some of the important places in Delhi too. We visited Delhi Haat. It is a place where Indian handicrafts are displayed and sold. Our visit to Delhi Haat and seeing Indian handicrafts there inspired our students and gave them new ideas for their own work. We also visited the Lotus temple, Qutb Minar, India gate and some of the shopping centers.

Our first impression of Switzerland was how clean the country is and how much technology is present in all aspects of life in Switzerland. One can easily ride up to 4000 mts to the top of the mountains in Zermatt in no time and without any hardships, which is so unbelievable for us.  The walk through an ice tunnel and the ride on the cable cars in Zermatt was another breathtaking experience for us. The public transport system in Switzerland is very remarkable and something we liked very much, it is so efficient and so accurate, always on time but very often we found ourselves running along the platform to catch our trains and trams. If someone is interested to learn about the value of time, the Swiss transport system is the right place. We learned the value of minutes from it.

During our eight days work at the Rietberg Museum we met many people and were also able to see exhibitions of art from other countries such as Japan, India, Africa and Tibet.  Our interaction with many visitors has helped us to understand some of their customs and culture. Further, the interaction with the visitors helped our communication skills and gave us confidence.

Although Switzerland is highly developed and advanced compared to our small country, we could see that there are certain basic common things in life which we share, especially while travelling in the countryside. Overall Swiss people are very educated and respect their neighbors’ and other people’s properties. In Switzerland we noticed that every individual plays his or her role in keeping the country clean and green. It was also very interesting for us to know how people in Switzerland maintain their beautiful gardens and homes and how busy people are all the time.

This trip was very well organized. We learned many new lessons and had insight into different ways of life, culture and food. We gained a lot of knowledge and experience from this trip.  We would like to thank Mario and Elsa Fontana and the members of the Fontana Foundation for giving us these opportunities in our life.

Thank you!

With best regards,