As told to Elisabeth Easther.
I was born in Switzerland, and when I was 4 my father got a job in Kenya with an engineering company. He was supposed to go for two months, which turned into two years, so my mother, my brother and I moved there too. I went to the German school so I could easily integrate back into the European system, but we never went back.
For school camps, we did things like climb Mount Kenya or go white-water rafting. We went on a camel safari and travelled in big overland trucks to go camping. We also went for a dinghy trip across Lake Naivasha and hippos popped up all around us. On Sundays, we'd say, "Let's go to a safari park for the afternoon" and go to places like Masai Mara. I loved the giraffe centre. You could stay there and giraffes would visit you at breakfast. They have enormous heads, almost as big as you are as a child, and they have huge blue tongues. They'd eat out of your hand, so you'd come away covered in slobbery giraffe slime. I always wanted my own giraffe. We had a big acacia tree in our driveway and I thought a giraffe would be perfect, but Mum said no.
Sometimes we'd go to the coast 500km away. We would travel on old colonial overnight trains with our own cabin. Setting off from Nairobi we'd pass through the slums, then into the openness of national parks and deserts, stopping now and then at stations so people could get on and off. Then we'd wake up at the seaside, all white sandy beaches, palm trees and beautiful sunsets. In the morning local fishermen would come by our villa and show us their catch and we'd buy their fish for dinner.
My love for hospitality and tourism was born in Africa and ever since high school I knew I would study hotel management. In the summer holidays when I was in Year 13, my parents encouraged me to experience working in a hotel, to be sure it was what I wanted. I worked at the Lausanne Palace Hotel. I was just 17 and it was my first time living away from home. I stayed in the girls' boarding house next to the railway station. I worked weekends, early starts and long days and, over two months I worked in housekeeping, the restaurant, the kitchen. And that sealed it, I knew what I wanted to do and after school I studied hospitality management at the Glion Institute of Higher Education in Switzerland.
