Whether you sit by the fireplace to catch up on your reading or decide to spend the day out at the Verkehr Museum in Lucerne, stay home with the family sipping on something hot, while nibbling on mouthwatering ‘paneer masala puffs’, or head out to the various Christmas markets that lure you in with the tantalizing scents of fresh bakes and gluhwein, and why just gluhwein – Zurich HB’s Christmas Market’s hot favourite is ‘masala chai’ with lip-smacking Indian food – it’s wintertime – and the intention is to be warm and happy!
In our ‘My Story’, meet Rajani Battula who shares her story and her love for painting and art. With the holiday season almost here, we bring you easy DIY cards to create for Christmas and the New year. Whichever part of Switzerland you live in or are travelling to, we share with you a few holiday phrases in the three local languages.
We bring you a part 2 in our education series – a brief guide on the local school system in Switzerland, which ensure that your young ones are equipped to handle their adult, professional lives.
With December here, this winter seems to be the season of ‘taking it easy’. The snow hasn’t quite set in, the temperatures haven’t yet plummeted, and the change in season is not being felt to the fullest. Global warming is certainly beginning to show its impact.
Change is really what we need.
And at Namaste Switzerland change is what we plan to bring in the year ahead.
We’ve already geared up by expanding our team beyond the core team of Aradhna, Keerthana, Manasa and Shinta. We now have an expanded team of voluntary contributors, including: Sharanya Mageshwaran, Banu Balaji, Chetana Parameswar, Deepty Mundhra, Kirti Sharma, Maria de Conceicao, Nayana Chakrabarti, Rajan Thambehalli, Smita Swamy, and Sowgandhika Krishnan.
Our collaborations with movie distributors, international and bilingual schools, food suppliers and Indian association and embassy connected events has increased the information side of our platform. And now, with a reach of over half-a-million readers, we intend to slowly but surely create a stronger impact on our readers’ community by bringing more information to them through Namaste Switzerland, the magazine and our social media handles.
With this issue, we bring you two new columns: ‘Generation Next’ and ‘Reflections and Reminiscences’ where we hear from two different generations of Indians who call Switzerland home. Have a look – and if you know of people with stories such as these to share – do let us know!
Another big change: not only do we aim at bringing more and relevant content to you, we also intend to bring you something new every month starting March 2019. Yes, we move from being a quarterly to being a monthly. So stay tuned to this space!
With our Winter Stories edition, Namaste Switzerland bids farewell to 2018 by expressing our gratitude to our guest writers for their contributions. Thank you – Mahima Agarwal, Jeyanthi Senthilrajan, Renuka Sankaran, Vantika Singh, Sita Sreeraman, Surekha, Tijo James, Karishma Duggal, Sriprabha Kasthuri, Rachna Soni, Yamini Deenadayalan, Prat Das Kanungo, Niti Jain, Pragati Siddhanti and Parul Chhaparia.
Wishing all our readers, contributors and social media followers a Merry Christmas and a fantastic start to 2019.
Yours
Team Namaste Switzerland.
Illustration by Sharanya Mageshwaran
Disclaimer: Namaste Switzerland does not undertake any financial, reputational, legal, misrepresentational or other obligation or liability which may arise from the content of this article.
