I’m writing this from a Swiss flight on my way from Zurich to Mumbai, and I’m currently somewhere over Abu Dhabi, looking down on the brightly-lit highways that cross the country. 

The good news is that the new Swiss business class cabin is much more comfortable than the old one.  The bed is totally flat, and the unusual layout of the cabin means that I ended up with a huge single seat with a table either side of me – far wider than any first-class seat I’ve ever sat in (although not as long, making the layout feel slightly claustrophobic). 

With only five seats in each row (compared with six or even seven on other airlines), Swiss are sacrificing a lot of potential revenue to give people their extra space.  I guess they’ve done the calculations of revenue vs. load and determined that if they can get people on-board and paying full-fare, it’s worth having fewer, higher-paying passengers.

Mine was like the solo seat on the right of the photo — with a table either side of the seat.

Despite the new seats, I still can’t bring myself to like Swiss.  It’s just a little too much like Switzerland.  You never really feel that you’ve gotten value for your money.

The marginal cost of providing catering can’t be that high.  On Lufthansa, they recognize the good German appetite and cater accordingly.  Portions are generous and you’re served at least two proper meals plus a snack on most routes.

But the portions on Swiss are incredibly small.  Half the menu is vegetarian (catered by the Hiltl restaurant in Zurich), which doesn’t meet my definition of food (it’s not a meal if it doesn’t contain meat or fish), and they’d run out of the meat choice halfway through the cabin, despite the plane not being full.  On my last flight, they fooled me twice – they served me a vegetarian meal of soup.  Breaking two of my rules: 1) no meat and 2) soup is not food.  Seriously, when you’ve spent several thousand dollars on a ticket, you expect something more than a bowl of soup.

If this were an American airline, with loads of upgrades and much lower revenue-per-seat, I could be more forgiving.  But nearly everyone on this flight has paid the better part of US$4500 for their seat.  At that price, everyone should be able to get a decent meal, and one of their choice.

I left my last flight on Swiss feeling the same way – that they’re cutting too many corners unnecessarily, especially with their catering.  I’ve booked the rest of my 30,000 mile trip on Lufthansa & Thai – revenue that would have gone to Swiss if they’d just spent another $20/head on catering.

Enough griping about the food.  It’s just that I get grumpy when I’m hungry.

Shifting gears, I’m secretly jealous of all my friends and family in Washington who are busy digging out of the deepest snow they’ve had since 1922.  Something about the way snow transforms a busy, noisy city is absolutely magical.

I left the house early this morning, walking up our road at around 6:45am on a Sunday morning.  I had the entire village to myself – dark, misty, and utterly silent.  I thought to myself that it’s the last time I’ll enjoy silence for the next week or so.

I’m mentally preparing myself for Mumbai – the cacophony of horns, the chaos of cars, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians and cows that are everywhere, the smells and sights.  I’ve managed to bring a decent camera this time, so maybe I’ll even get the chance to take a decent picture or two.  If I’m brave enough, I may even venture outside the hotel this time…

Calypso seems very happy with the new rug we bought her from Ikea.

After more than a week and a half, our skis still haven’t arrived from France. Never mind that parcels from Hong Kong arrive at my doorstep four days after being posted.  No, in France, it seems, things take longer.  It took more than a week for my skis to make it 280km to the Export Centre, where they have sat for the last three days making no progress at all.

Once they make it over the border, I’m confident that the Swiss won’t waste a second assessing the duty and taxes on my skis, then sending a man around to collect the balance.  Nothing motivates the Swiss like collecting taxes.

So our plans to go skiing this weekend were put on hold, as I’ve found skiing is less fun when you’re simply wearing boots.

Instead, we headed off to Germany to do a little ice-skating.  Nice way to spend a cold winter’s day, and we had some snow outside to make it even better.  Finished the day off with a trip to the German supermarket (always fun, although I discovered that everything is a little picked-over if you wait until Saturday afternoon to do your shopping.  It’s like the beach chairs – the Germans get up early to ensure the best choice!)

We’re crossing our fingers that the skis turn up before next weekend.  We’re trying to squeeze in a day of skiing before I have to leave for India and Australia – we’ve got a week booked in Chamonix as soon as I get back, and I’d like a chance to get out on the skis once before we hit the big mountains.

…and Matt found them first, serving them with a sauce échalotte, garlic mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies (for Naomi, my vegetarian friend).

Everyone goes on and on about Scottish Lamb, Welsh Lamb, New Zealand Lamb.  But I’ve never had lamb as good as we get here in Switzerland, and (comparatively speaking), it’s not too expensive.  I love a good piece of roast lamb, but the lamb steaks here are more flavourful and tender than what I’ve found anywhere else in the world.  They really are superb.

So I bought a beautiful lamb nierstuck (which, if I understand correctly, is a fatless steak off the back of the shoulder) that was so tender it cut with a fork.  I guess they must butcher the lamb differently here, because it’s a cut I don’t know from the US, the UK, or France.  But it’s tender, full of flavour, and delicious.  Sautéed the lamb, served with garlic-infused mashed potatoes and fresh winter vegetables and a sauce échalotte with red wine. Aude has given the meal her endorsement and approval.

Heaven on a plate.  And just the thing to piss off my vegetarian friends on the heels of eating Bambi. 

(Don’t worry – this isn’t going to become a foodie blog any more than I’m a foodie – I just like to remind my vegetarian friends from time to time that there’s a whole world of deliciousness that they’re missing!)

Venison was on sale at the supermarket in Germany, so I decided to pick some up for dinner.  Braised the venison in red wine and balsamic vinegar, added veal stock, onions, carrots and tomatoes.  Went totally Germanic with red cabbage and spaetzle sautéed in butter.  Threw in a couple of green beans to get all of my ‘five-a-day’ on a single plate to keep Aude’s mother happy.

Posted my dinner menu on my facebook page only to receive a comment from a vegetarian friend: “you are horrible.”  No doubt more horrible because I’m eating something cute, despite the fact that Bambi probably lived a far more fulfilled life than most industrially-raised animals.

No, as committed carnivores, we’ll happy eat most creatures regardless of how cute they are.  Daffy, Donald, Bambi (and little Thumper, too), Bugs Bunny, Babe, Shaun, Ermintrude, Foghorn Leghorn, Kermit and Tweety all have a place on our menu.  Just wait until I finally find Nemo.

As Sandro reminded me this weekend, “you don’t win friends with salad.”

I read an interesting article called It’s the Little Things today about the type of small services that only come from loyalty, and it got me thinking.  I’ve stayed at hundreds of hotel over the past ten years, but there are some where the personal service really stood out – and where my loyalty paid off. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, of course, and that’s what I think the article misses out on.  The hotels where you’ll stay frequently enough to build loyalty are the ones that treated you well enough as a guest initially to cause you to return.  It speaks about the commitment of the hotel management to really understand what their guests want, whether it’s for a single stay (when you get the standard package) or for a long-term repeat visitor who gets a little more special treatment.

I’ve certainly had the kind of treatment that the article talks about from a few hotels where I was a ‘regular’, and the extra service really makes them stick out in my mind.

In New Orleans, the sales manager of the hotel knew that I liked a particular room, and she made sure that it was always available for me whenever I stayed at the hotel.  At the hotel bar, the staff learned that I liked Guinness (not on the menu) and arranged to have it special-ordered and kept in the bar when I was staying at the hotel.  It was a really nice, personal touch.  When the lifts were slow, I was escorted to the staff lift and taken downstairs the ‘back way’ to avoid the queues.  Each time I arrived at the hotel, the front desk staff greeted me like an old friend.  The sales manager at the hotel would invite me for a coffee every few weeks to find out personally how I was enjoying my stay.

At another hotel in London, it was the same story.  There was one room in the hotel that was furnished differently from all the others – it was a prototype for the redesign that they rolled out to the entire hotel, but some of the higher-end features were cut from the final design, so only featured in this room – making it the nicest in the hotel.  Once again, the hotel manager learned that I liked this room, and made sure I had it on every visit.  He’d often invite me for a drink in the bar to hear my thoughts about the hotel and service – it was a really personal touch that made a huge influence on my decision to stay with the hotel.  When the food & beverage manager learned that I had eaten everything on the room service menu and was bored, he asked the chef to propose some specials from the main restaurant and have them sent to my room.  It was a nice touch.

In Singapore, there was no formal loyalty programme at the hotel where I used to stay regularly, but it was clear that the hotel was tracking my stay and preferences each time I visited.  There was a sort of one-upmanship in the welcome I received each time I visited.  The first time I arrived, there was a pot of tea waiting for me in my room.  The second time, it was a pot of tea and some cookies.  After that, tea, cookies, wine, fruit, even a tub filled with rose petals.  I was afraid of what they’d think of next if I went back again!  Still, it made an impression that they really valued my business and were interested in making me happy as a customer.

As much as a hotel can track preferences through loyalty schemes and guest preference cards, there’s no substitute for the real customer service that comes from a genuine human.  It’s becoming more and more rare these days, but there are still some places that make the effort.