In my free time I am doing sport and try to maintain contact to my friends.
I am Naima Pfister (on the right)
I am 18 years old, a cook at 3rd year of education in retirement home Im
Spiegel, CH-8486 Rikon and I am living in Zell ZH. My hobbys are playing piano
und sport.
Due
to a request of vocational teachers, as talent promotion we got offered to do an exchange.
Flight and accommodation, we had to organize ourselves.
We inquired about the environment and the Hotel, in which we had the chance to do the internship.
From Dinner by Heston Blumenthal we received a detailled documents with the most important informations and rules.
At our arrival, it took quite a while before we were allowed to enter the restaurant.
Apparently, not all employees were informed about us and the person in charge arrived an hour later.
The introduction was very short. Thereafter we were directly divided into different positions and immediately involved in daily work.
In addition to the long and monotonous preparations, cutting vegetables, vacuumising, what arose daily, we were able to learn many new things and as well experience.
For us it was very exciting to see such a famous kitchen and how it works even with such a big team.
One of our highlights was certainly the participation in the service, which was very stressful.
And it was interesting to watch the handling between employees at work.
We were surprised and at the same time slightly shocked, about the big amount of residues in this restaurant which were not for other purpose used.
Also, about the "every-20minutes-Hands-wash" we were very surprised.
Very unusual were the endless working days, which we sometimes had to overcome since we began our work at 8am in the morning and ended at 12pm at night.
In between we had a half hour break only two times, for lunch and dinner.
The foreign language difficult our stay enormously, especially in stressful situations or when the relevant person had a strong foreign accent.
Our accommodation was a small twin bedroom in a hotel. The hotel is located in the area, one tube station away from the working place and reachable by bus or as well 20 minutes by foot.
In our free time we visited many London landmarks and ate full English to educate ourselves culinary. Of course, one or the other shopping stroll in Oxford Street had to be there too.
It was a great experience and a great opportunity of working and getting an insight of the operation of a 2 Michelin-Star Restaurant.
For us it was very exciting to see such a famous kitchen and how it works even with such a big team.
Working in a foreign country with a foreign language was a big challenge.
Nevertheless, we were able to learn und to benefit from exactly the two factors very much.
Our professional knowledge has largely extended and improved by this two weeks stay.
Basically, we would recommend such a stay to everybody.
This is a huge opportunity and you can only win.
Next, we would like to thank Visit, that had supported us in many ways, especially financially.
Also a big thank you to the guest operating Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, who welcomed us so friendly and had a lot of patience with us.
Finally, we would give a thank you to our employers who have had granted our permissions for this internship.
With kind regards,
Corinne & Naima
