Daniel Barthel
Google
My wife and I attended an Alpine cooking course on September 12, 2015 run by two wonderful gentlemen both named Tobi. Chef Tobi's teaching style is calm, smooth, and effective with a heavy emphasis on core principles that comes only through practiced mastery. In other words, you may work through a recipe during the course, but you're not there for the recipe. You're there for the principles you didn't know you should've learned already: how to let the knife cut, how to cook meat evenly without drying it into boot leather, what you should be doing with your food waste, or whatever other fundamentals apply that day. You'll leave amazed that your feeble hands produced food that good.
That said, enrolling in the course was a logistical challenge. All reviews were in German, and I had to pay for the course with a wire transfer which is expensive and inconvenient, so enrolling was a wild gamble as well as a hassle (but still a top 5 event on my long trip). Villandry should at least start accepting PayPal for course reservations.
Bottom line: when in Dresden, visit Villandry.