Die Austauschschülerin Li-Fei Liu-Calver am Flughafen. Sie hat einen pinken Koffer und einen Rucksack bei sich.
Li-Fei Liu-Calver

From Canada to Switzerland 

LiFei Liu-Calver
I left for Switzerland on September 3rd. It was the longest and most tiring trip I had ever done. Maybe when people think about Canada, it may only be an 8 hour flight, but not for me. I come from the west side of Canada, a province called British Columbia. Not part of the UK, even if our flag has the union jack! Fun fact, British Columbia is about four times the size of the UK. 

This trip, I had to trav­el two hours from my home city, Kam­loops, in the inte­ri­or to Kelow­na where I would fly out­wards to Toron­to where I would then have a 15 hour lay­over fol­lowed by a delayed flight. My province was rag­ing with wild­fires, and I was scared I would not make it on time to Switzer­land as the air­port I was sup­posed to leave from was closed, but the Inter­na­tion­al Office was so kind and under­stand­ing. This amount of time was so awk­ward I couldn’t do any­thing, so I just stayed in the inter­na­tion­al depar­tures, awake the whole time. By this point I was awake for almost 30 hours. Even­tu­al­ly I made it to Switzer­land, and I met up with my bud­dy who is the sweet­est ever! 

My first impres­sions of Switzer­land were wow, what a land­scape. For some­one com­ing from British Colum­bia, known for its wide range of nat­ur­al beau­ty, and com­ing to a coun­try that is just as pret­ty, it can be hard to tell which is pret­ti­er! I nev­er thought I would sur­round myself around the Swiss Alps, which are just so incred­i­bly breath­tak­ing. Swiss air is also so clean, some­thing I wish I had back in British Colum­bia, because every year we always get wild­fires and smoke, so it is nice to breathe fresh air, and con­stant­ly too. 

Breathtaking view
Breath­tak­ing view

The way FH Graubün­den had set up class­es was so much dif­fer­ent from my own process back at my home uni­ver­si­ty, Thomp­son Rivers Uni­ver­si­ty (TRU). At TRU, I would select cours­es on my own, and some­times there are mul­ti­ple class­es of the same course so I can choose times as well. How­ev­er with FH Graubün­den, they do that all for you. I was not used to hav­ing one course every few weeks. Back in TRU, if I had Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling class on Fri­day at 15:00–17:00, it would always be on Fri­day at 15:00–17:00. This means I have to con­stant­ly be check­ing my time-table! 

Dur­ing my free-time, I nev­er had actu­al­ly prop­er­ly tak­en a look around Chur. So I did! Bahn­hof­platz is con­ve­nient­ly a 10–15 minute walk from Kon­vikt, where I am stay­ing. Bus­es are always on time, some­thing that is not com­mon where I am from. Even all the stops have a dis­play time when they arrive which was so con­ve­nient, and I did not have to wait long at all. Even the trains are on time. Chur is extreme­ly clean as well. I had nev­er seen a place so lit­ter-free, includ­ing the trans­porta­tion. I even saw one guy clean­ing the train tracks. 

How­ev­er, trans­porta­tion is also very cost­ly. To find a train tick­et costs near­ly 50 CHF from Zurich Flughafen to Chur was a lot, which is with­out the half-fare. At the time of writ­ing this blog, the cur­rent exchange rate from one Cana­di­an Dol­lar to Swiss Franc was 1 CAD to 0.66, which meant I was pay­ing more for Swiss Francs. How­ev­er, for the fact the trains are always on time (some­times 1 or 2 min­utes late at the most!!), and how clean and fast they are, I think it is alright! 

Com­ing from Kam­loops, a city of about 100,000 peo­ple, Chur is like the per­fect size for me to move to. It is not too big, and even if it has a pop­u­la­tion of 34000–36000 peo­ple, I didn’t feel over­whelmed or suf­fo­cat­ed by the city. It is the per­fect size, and had absolute­ly no rea­son to be so cute! Peo­ple here are so friend­ly, but mak­ing friends in Switzer­land is hard. Every­one will smile, and always greet you. I love Switzer­land so much! I am so glad to have come here.

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