Diabetes and Dining - Medtronic Diabetes Community Exchange 2018

The past few days I've had the huge privilege of attending the Medtronic Diabetes Community European Blogger Exchange in Switzerland. I flew out on Thursday into Geneva, where I joined fellow representatives from the Belgium, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. I'd never had the pleasure of visiting Switzerland before and as the plane was heading in to land, it was evident that it was a very beautiful and picturesque place.

Dinner With Diabuddies at Chalet Suisse

The hotel we stayed in overlooked the Alps and the first few hours in Lausanne, were spent exploring the local area on a walking tour with the lovely Eddie Bruce, Finland's representative. It was lovely to get out in the refreshing Swiss air and take in the views lake side as we talked about diabetes management in our respective countries. Eddie has been living with diabetes for over 30 years and his approach to his type 1 management was very inspiring, and empowering to see that good control can be possible long term.

Getting Startered

Then, it wasn't long until the other bloggers arrived from the airport and we made our way together to Chalet Suisse for a traditional Swiss dining experience in this fabulous log cabin-esque restaurant. The experience of eating with other people with diabetes, regardless of their type of diabetes regimen is always a pleasurable one for me, as this becomes the norm and for a few hours I'm just like everybody else at the table. It was lovely getting to know and catch up with new and old diabuddies and to hear about the adventures of those, fresh back from EASD in Berlin.

We also enjoyed sampling the Swiss food; of meat and or cheese fondu, a totally new experience for me. For those also haven't tried it, the cheese fondu arrives in a big pan and is placed over a flame whilst everybody dips bread and in and shares it. Whilst the meat option that I shared with my friend who is also gluten-intolerant from Sweden, involved the meat being served raw and you're given a pan of piping hot broth and then you use a tea strainer to hold the meat in the hot liquid and it cooks really quickly and very tastily.

Meat Fondu

But what was best about the fondu was the sharing experience, not just the way that all of our meals centred around one or two pans. But also the people from countries where this was a popular dish shared memories and experiences of how they enjoy this tradition with family and friends back home. Which was truly reflective of what the next few days would be about, learning new things and sharing experiences and I felt very fortunate to be involved.