HOTEL DAN – Lugano, Switzerland

By Nancy Wigston

If I considered my plight without frustration, it would seem funny. I am lost in Paradise. Or, more accurately, the neighbourhood in Lugano called “Paradiso.” Lugano, in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton called Ticino has long been beloved by tourists, for its mild climate, Italian-style cuisine, its gorgeous views of lake and mountains. There must be a hundred hotels open in the summer season, at least forty that stay open all winter. I am looking for one that is distinguished from the rest: the city’s only kosher hotel, The Dan. The hotel is hardly hidden from view-there is a sign in both English and Hebrew pointing to it from the street that runs along the waterfront, but I have turned the wrong way after disembarking from the water taxi. My enquiries at a posh five-star establishment elicit confusing directions; an old woman in a magazine shop then tells me she remembers a kosher hotel from many years ago, but does it still exist? She’s not sure.

Eventually I find it, not an old place at all, but a modern-looking building a few steps from the main drag, clearly marked with a sign bearing the Star of David. Guests are bustling into a taxi after their stay, while others are checking in. I plop down in the couches by the front desk, where prayer books are on the coffee table next to a book called “From Central Park to Sinai: How I Found My Jewish Soul.” A glat kosher establishment The Dan attracts visitors from all over: Israel, France, England, The States, Australia, and is very popular for Pesach and other holidays. Families rendez-vous at The Dan from every point on the globe. “Generation after generation” have been coming to stay, they bring their grandchildren,” I am told by Gila Ram, who manages the hotel for much of the year. Originally from Israel, Gila also lives part of the year in New York.

Lugano used to have a thriving Jewish community, but it has shrunk to a hundred or so, most of the young having departed for Israel and elsewhere. There is no Jewish school now, and it’s sometimes a struggle to form a minion. So the hotel has an on-site synagogue. “Everyone mixes, everyone gets along,” Gila assures me. She speaks five languages, including Yiddish, and welcomes guests-including gentiles- to the warm and homey Dan. “All are welcome here,” she says, and proves it by inviting me to come back for dinner latter that day, so I can sample the “clean, safe” food from the hotel’s kosher kitchens. “We cater to diabetics, we’re wheelchair accessible, we have a house doctor.” The message that The Dan is a home-away-from home is underscored when Gila adds of her Swiss neighbourhood,”There is no anti-semitism here.”

After spending the day like many locals and tourists-I took the lake ferry to the spectacular lakeside village of Morcota, where I climbed the steep paths, enjoyed the views, and sipped a cappuccino in a waterfront café-I returned to Paradise and The Dan. “Shalom,” says Mr. Hollander, the new owner, who joins me in the dining room. Like everyone else, he is originally from someplace else, in this case, Romania. Over a multi-course kosher meal, Mr. Hollander, an architect by training, shares some of his plans for The Dan, which he sees as an ongoing project. As I begin a delicious omelette which I mistake for the whole meal-he points out that it’s only forty-five minutes to Lugano on the Autostrade from the International Airport in Milan, so that it’s actually faster to get here than to drive into Milan itself.

Lugano, known as the “Miami of Switzerland” (snow rarely falls; palm trees grow everywhere), makes a perfect winter vacation. Only three or four hours by air from Israel, the city combines what Mr. Hollander calls “Swiss exactment and Italian warmth.” Although Lugano offers plenty of easy walking, the Dan arranges special tours, customized to individual needs. There’s a whole gamut of possibilities-from assisted living for the elderly to kosher ski packages for families. Breakfast buffets are included in the daily rate ($125US) and coffee and cakes are available all day long. Many guests from neighbouring five star hotels (The Dan has three) come here for Shabbos dinner. And the dinners are generous-after my omelette, there comes salad and bread, large servings of chicken, veggies and roast potatoes, and finally, the coup de grace, The Dan’s dairy-free gelato, made from a secret recipe. The strawberry in particular was heavenly.