My first memory of Switzerland was when I drove through it with my father. I was maybe fourteen or fifteen and we'd stopped for the night in Lucerne. After dinner in the hotel my father suggested a walk around the town, maybe we'd find a bar open where we could kill an hour or so. We found what seemed to be the only open bar. It had a sign on the door that read 'No dogs. No Italians.' In that order.

Over the years I've had a few Swiss experiences - I was busted by two cops in a park in Geneva for whistling and I got fined another time in Lausanne for jay walking. It's probably thirty years since I was last there, so when an invitation came to cover the gourmet festival in St. Moritz my curiosity was piqued. Was Switzerland the same xenophobic country it was forty years ago? Was it still highly policed and over-regulated? Had it become a foodie paradise? I thought I should go and find out.

I had to find my own way there, the St. Moritz Tourist office weren't giving out flights. But as it happened, I was in the South of France the week it was taking place, so driving there was an option. My friends there told me that I was mad to even contemplate a five and a half hour drive from Nice, but I kept replying 'It's a gourmet festival. I'm a gourmet. I should be there.' Which is why I set off very early one Thursday morning to get to St. Moritz for lunchtime. Apparently much was going on there - caviar tastings, an array of internationally renowned chefs cooking up a storm, talks on foodie philosophy and cookery demonstrations. How could I say no?

I took to the road with optimism in my heart and within a few hours I was making my way around Milan's ring road heading north to Lecco. From here the road skirts the eastern edge of Lake Como, one of Italy's great lakes, but since huge parts of this road are tunnelled under mountains, you don't get a lot of chance to see it. At the northern end of the lake I took the road to Chiavenna, Italy's last town before Switzerland. Shortly after this you reach the Swiss border. If you're used to travelling around Europe by car, you'll know that border controls have gone, but Switzerland isn't part of the EU, so there are border guards, which remind you of that. Two fresh-faced young policemen pulled me over, searched the car, photocopied my passport and kept me some fifteen minutes before allowing me to continue. So I knew the rigorous policing hadn't changed.

Once over the border the road runs through a steep-walled valley that appeared to have no exit. The road seemed to lead to a dead end. Only when I was near the valley end could I make out a tortuous, sinuous road zig-zagging up a near vertical face. This was the Molloja Pass. At the bottom of the pass the outside temperature read 6 degrees, at the top - in the town of Molloja, it read -8 degrees. Quite a drop in a very short space. From Molloja to St. Moritz the road is essentially on the flat, you pass through some pretty places where people are cross-country skiing, and then you get to St.Moritz. It stands on the left of the road, rising up against the mountains, and on the right is the frozen lake, which during the winter becomes a ice playground. It even has a race-track marked out for horse racing.

I was staying at The Carlton, one of five five-star hotels in the town, which dominates the eastern skyline. I went to the check-in desk where there was no sign of a room for me. Was this a bad omen, I wondered? Eventually they decided that Mr. Tulli must be me and I was shown to my room by the concierge. On the way there I asked him, 'So what is planned for me?' 'There's a press pack in your room, Mr. Tooley,' he answered, 'and it has all the information.' There was indeed one, much of it in German, including a list of what was on. I called reception. 'Who should I talk to about your festival?' 'Ah, you should talk to the hotel's public relations. I'll put you though.'

The conversation went like this: 'So what is there for me to do?' 'You could take a look at the town, there's a bus every half hour'. 'Will that take me to gourmet events?' 'No, but you can see the shops.' 'Actually I came to see the gourmet festival'. 'I could show you around the hotel's facilities, if you like.' 'No thanks, just the gourmet festival.' 'Would you like a massage?' I said 'no' and hung up. It was time to call the PR firm that had set this up.

I explained my circumstances to the nice young man who made sympathetic noises at the other end and assured me he'd arrange something at once. Perhaps the caviar tasting? That sounded good to me and I relaxed. 'I'll call you back.' Ten minutes later the phone rang. 'This is the manager of the hotel. I've checked into the caviar tasting, but they have no tickets for journalists. You could go to the Electrolux presentation, if you want.' I didn't want.

It was now four o'clock. I was tempted to get back into the car and go back to Nice. I found myself pacing the room and asking myself out loud 'How the feck can I write about an event that I can't participate in?' It seemed I'd wasted an inordinate amount of time, effort and money on a fool's errand. The phone rang, it was the hotel manager again. 'I hope you'll be coming to our gala dinner tonight in the hotel. It starts at seven - I'll see you then.' So that was it then, I'd driven 500 kilometres to get here, I would have dinner and then I'd drive 500 kilometres back again. No gourmet festival, no caviar tasting, just a wasted day making pointless phone calls, plus a thousand kilometre drive.

Seven o'clock found me in the grand dining room for the gala dinner, prepared by Michelle Bernstein, a rising young star of Florida cuisine according to my brochure. I was seated at table of strangers, a couple of whom spoke some English. I don't speak German, but I do speak Italian and French, which are two of Switzerland's official languages, so at least some conversation was possible. On my left was the manager of the St.Moritz casino with his pretty Romanian wife, and on my right a young doctor from the St. Moritz hospital, who specialised in traumas occasioned on the slopes. Neither of them were Swiss; the doctor was German and the casino manager was from Luxembourg, but both of them had been living in Switzerland for three years.

A wise man once said if you get stuck with a lemon, you might as well make lemonade. I was clearly not going to get much on the gourmet festival, but perhaps I could get some updates on Switzerland and the Swiss. The casino manager and his wife were surprisingly open with their opinions. It seems that his wife has had her share of Swiss xenophobia, as indeed had he. He was philosophical about it, 'we're guests here. It's their country and they remind you of that. When we lived in Cape Town it was the same, we were told by the Afrikaaners 'adapt or die.' If you want to live here you'll be well paid, there's almost no crime, everything works. But you'll never be accepted.' The doctor had similar views. He was a snow-boarding dude with long hair and he'd taken the job in the St. Moritz hospital so that he could slide the slopes when he wasn't working. But with the insouciance of youth he didn't really care, he was only passing through, not making his life here.

As dinners go the gala dinner was good, and some good wines were presented to go with the food - although the presentation was in German and therefore incomprehensible to me. Luckily the sommelier - like all the waiters - was Italian, so he translated the salient points for me. There were three whites, three reds, a cheese and a dessert wine and I particularly liked the biodynamic Alsatian Gewurztraminer.

By midnight the room emptied and it was time for bed. Early next morning I headed south, back to Nice. I felt more than a little disgruntled; I'd put in a lot of effort for little return. It was a good dinner alright, but there's no dinner on earth that can justify a thousand kilometre journey. Until Swiss PR gets its act together, I'll be in no hurry to go back again