"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." — Mark Twain

This philosophy runs deep at Leysin American School, especially in one particular office and with the person who manages it. Violeta Arsic-Stanojevic is Head of the LAS Travel Office, a role that touches every student who walks through our doors. Passports, visas, Swiss residence permits, cultural trip arrangements, airport arrivals and departures, hotel bookings, flight reservations, train tickets, and campus visit invitation letters; if it involves getting someone out into the world or back to campus, Violeta is behind it. Even when campus empties out during the summer, her team is busy canceling graduated seniors' visas, preparing documentation for incoming students, and booking hotels for October cultural trips before availability disappears.

The Power of Travel
On cultural trip departure days, up to 400 students and staff leave the mountain at once, each travel detail coordinated down to the minute. When it works, it looks effortless. And for Violeta, the reward is the gratitude and happy faces of students when they return from their trips.

She believes deeply in the power of travel and how it supports the mission of LAS. "When everybody gets on the train, they are all the same ...when they travel together, they are not traveling as representatives of different countries; they are LAS". Violeta knows that travel is a great equalizer and it is her work, the permits, the passports, the bookings, the late-night calls, the careful rechecking, that makes possible the moments of connection that are, ultimately, what this school is for.

Making It Work When It Matters Most
Anyone who travels extensively has their own passport emergency story. When this happens, Violeta coordinates with embassies, gathers parental consent documentation, and in many cases even drives the student to Bern to handle the problem personally. She once secured an emergency US passport replacement in two days. Over 28 years, she has built the contacts that allow her to move fast when it matters.

Her extensive experience also sharpens her instincts. Before a student group departed for Zimbabwe, Violeta had been told by the airline that everything was in order. But something didn't feel right. She woke before dawn, found a mobile number for her South African embassy contact and called, only to learn that transit passengers did indeed need additional documentation. What followed was a four-hour sprint involving more calls, the preparation of papers, and a colleague rushing to the embassy in Bern for the papers to be processed, then to the Geneva airport to get the correct documents to the group before their flight. By the time the students boarded, the crisis had been quietly solved.

Imparting Important Life Skills
Violeta doesn't just manage the paperwork and processes herself, she teaches students to do it for themselves. She sits with students for hours working through visa applications—many students seeing the process for the first time (but likely not the last). She is direct when guiding students through the process: "You need to get the proof, you need to get the papers, you need to do it on time. If you don't do it on time, you simply won't have it." She reminds them that they will need this independence in the future: "Next year, when you're in university by yourself, there will be nobody behind you telling you these things." Travel teaches patience—whether waiting for a visa or a delayed train—and for Violeta, patience is among the most valuable traits a person can have.

Deep LAS Roots
Violeta has lived the LAS experience first-hand: she first came to Leysin at age 11, when her parents worked at the summer school, her father as chief of maintenance and her mother in the housekeeping department. She spent three weeks in the Summer in Switzerland (SIS) program barely speaking English or French. She ended up attending three sessions of SIS.

After finishing grade 8 in Serbia, she came back to Leysin as a full-time student at LAS. For three months she cried every evening. By Christmas she spoke both English and French fluently. At the end of her first year she was recognized as the school's most improved student. She worked various jobs at the school as a stagiaire throughout all four years at LAS: in the cafeteria, the activities and travel offices, and at reception running the switchboard where all parents had to call in order to talk to their children in their rooms. After graduating from a hotel and tourism management program in Lausanne, she was asked if she would like to take over the LAS Travel Office. She accepted, and she has been at LAS ever since. That was 28 years ago.

From Opposite Sides of Conflict to Becoming Best Friends
During her teenage years as a Summer in Switzerland student, the war in the former Yugoslavia broke out. Violeta was Serbian and Orthodox, her closest friend was Bosnian and Muslim. A teacher once asked how the two of them got along so well at a time like that. They looked at each other. "We are great friends. We don't care what they are doing over there. They are fighting. We are not."

She has never forgotten it. "I don't separate people by nationality or religion. I separate people by how they behave." She has watched the same dynamic unfold at LAS over decades, students from warring nations sharing a table or even a hotel room. "It's like a little bubble where everybody is together and there are no differences. What they learn here, they carry forward. Maybe one day they'll say, 'I know a person from that country and they are great.' That's what this place does."