Thanksgiving in Switzerland

The 6 other Americans in my MBA class and I decided we wanted to celebrate proper Thanksgiving, complete with actual turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, and cranberry sauce. The American Thanksgiving holiday is, of course, not a holiday in Switzerland, so we had to make elaborate plans for getting all the food we needed cooked in time for an evening meal even though we had to be in class for 8 hours that day.

The various necessary ingredients were remarkably hard to find there. We had to order a turkey a week in advance from a specialty shop and the largest size they could come up with was 5 kilos, or around 11 lbs, with which we needed to feed 12 people (the 7 of us plus friends and family).

George and his fiance Anali had offered to host, but their oven didn't work, so I volunteered mine, but we couldn't figure out how to baste it if we were all at school all day, until my classmate's partner, Craig, who lived directly above me, agreed to stop down to my place every half hour to check on it. Pre-made cubed stuffing was not available, so I bought baguette bread and dried it in the oven, then crumbled it into bits and mixed it with onion, celery, and chicken broth. Gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans were fine, but Nicki, who was in charge of cranberry sauce, could not locate cranberries anywhere in Lausanne, so she had to improvise with frozen mixed berries and cranberry juice, but her creation was fantastic and could have fooled the best of us.

Our resident technical expert Nick streamed in American football, which we projected onto the wall, and it felt like a true American celebration. It was one of the most fun Thanksgivings I've had, and we even got the first snowfall of the year that night, with massive fluffy flakes falling before turning to water in the street.