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Aged 17,trying to look –and, perhaps naively, think- like John Lennon (I will try to dig out a picture of that era sometime!), I remember telling my parents that I just wanted to complete Semester 1 at the EHL (the acronym for Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne) and then head out to discover the world… of course they were not that impressed with the idea, but I did change my mind a few years later, when I discovered what it meant to be a student there!!
First impression : serious and focused looking people all dressed up in suit and ties, I was impressed and somewhat intimidated, having barely knotted my first half Windsor a few moments before!

Soon I realized that appearances are what they are : external signs, sometimes welcoming, sometimes not, but just a surface anywyay, something that enables you to be as neutral as possible… and why do we insist so much, in hospitality, on the importance of uniforms?

Precisely because during our careers we will be dealing with clients from all (well, almost!) walks of life, from many different cultures, and that in order not to offend anyone, you need to be as elegant as possible but without overdoing it… that’s one of the most important thing I have learned at hotel school, and EHL has a particular way of transmitting that spirit!

So, there you are, forget about finance, F&B, Marketing, Communication, and all of that?? Well, not quite, but it sure would not be enough to prepare the future “dots” on the map…

EHL was for me an eye opener, a cultural blast in my face, and it hit the right buttons in me… I was not the best student in terms of grades, but I did understand and adopt EHL’s philosophy straight away, I knew I was really becoming part of a big family :

“The Dots”

I always looked up at the future « Anciens », as Alumni are called in EHL, and I thought to myself : “How will I make it through all these exams and graduate to get where they are???!!”

Years later I realize the “real world” is much more challenging than school, exams do require hard work and many hours of learning and practicing, but life in a business environment is another story altogether! And perhaps that is the most difficult things for a school to teach its students…

My work & best friends group was called

The Shamrocks

maybe we thought this would bring us luck! (it was also the name of a pub we enjoyed going to  ), George from Cyprus, Bas and Jos from the Netherlands, and Rolando from Mexico….

After graduation in 1990, George, Rolando and I took a trip to Cyprus through Ancona, Italy.

George had a family type Lancia that he loaded up with 4 years’ worth of stuff collected and bought whilst studying, and us two, in what little space was left out for us to sit!

After two months of travels which eventually took Rolando and I to Cameroon, it was time for me to say goodbye to my friends…. as the army needed me for a year, back in France!!

My friend Rolando was the one who drove me to the 19th Regiment du Train in Besançon a month later, where I was due to start my military service….I promised we would meet again soon, and we eventually did, will tell you about it in the next chapter, the beginning of my hotel career as an EHL dot… in Cape Town, 01st of January 1992….