Grüezi! (“hi” in Swiss German) to all my friends and former colleagues in Canada as well as prospective students who are seeking to obtain an MBA in general or an MBA at St Gallen in particular.

The blog serves not only as my diary of the MBA St Gallen journey but also as a forum to learn and to discuss the business issues. You will find some questions and discussion points such as globalization, personal vision and mission posted on this blog in future entries. For now, here is the recap of my first few days in Switzerland….

After arriving in Switzerland and before going to St Gallen, I spent 2 days and 2 nights in Lugano – an Italian-speaking city in the southern part of Switzerland. The weather was relatively warm. Despite some cool wind, I could lay down at the lakeshore and enjoy the scenery. Below is the photo from the city:

Yes, there’re palm trees in Switzerland!

Then I took the train directly from the Lugano all the way to northeast of Switzerland to St Gallen to check in at my house. I’m sharing the house with 8 other students. The house is quite big and there’s plenty of storage. I always joke that we live in a “big brother” house except we don’t vote people out.

This is the view of the house:

Many thanks to Angela Prajer, the school’s housing consultant. She spent a lot of time searching for appropriate housing for the students.

As for food, to stay on budget, I mostly look for discount on meat near expiry date. In Switzerland, the meat has very high quality. This is what I bought at 50% discount.

It’s chicken breast which is still very fresh and tastes great! The package is very clean. The Canadian grocery stores should package their food like this instead of the plastic wraps and styrofoam trays. By the way,”Aktion” is my favorite Swiss German word because it means SALE.

There is a lot of information for us to take in during the Welcome week. Here are some highlights of the week:
- Class of 2011 comprises of 24 nationalities with various academic and professional backgrounds. From engineering to English, from entrepreneurship to the public sector. (complete statistics are posted on our director’s blog).

- The school has developed a top notch career development program. Each student will have 4 career coaching sessions. Throughout the program, there will be a speaker series, corporate presentations and workshops to help us gain more insight into the industries and professions we want to pursue.

- The class schedule is quite intense. Students need to complete 9 courses from now until end of December. The daily schedule is mostly from 9 to 17:00. On top of that, non-German speaking students will have to take a German course 2 nights a week.

- We have couple of group exercises to learn about group dynamics. The tent-building exercise was a fun one where we learn how to communicate to each other while being blindfolded. (See picture, courtesy of the St Gallen MBA photo album)

On this past Saturday, we went hiking in the Appenzeller region. I only know Appenzeller before from its delicious cheese . My classmate Clemens said that you can not find any other region more Swiss than this region and that is very true. I let you decide for yourself by seeing the pictures below.

We were hiking through the picturesque country-side in Appenzeller region

Old town of Appenzell

Enjoy traditional Swiss folk music played by Johannes Fuchs – a well known swiss musical instrument maker – on a hackbrett. You can visit his website at hackbrett.ch

Johannes was in full traditional costume.

Last but not least, here is a picture from old town St Gallen which is 3 minute walk from the the MBA building

Song of the moment: Marching On by OneRepublic (link to videoclip posted on Youtube)