YUCK, I'm in Zürich...
Oct 11th, 2008, 12:48 AM
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YUCK, I'm in Zürich...
Sorry about the weirdness in the US Forum last night....I WISH I'd spent the day in a wine cellar....Something was amiss with the various electronic gismos I am traveling with, and my cut-and-paste technique wasn't functioning, but here goes....
October 10, 2008
I booked a trip to India to meet my daughter, using FF miles. It takes me through Zürich, I have no choice about it, and I have the option to do a stopover enroute. I decide to do it. I’m traveling alone, and I don’t want to go straight from the USA through Zürich and Vienna and on to Mumbai and land there at 1 am on my own. I’m an intrepid traveler, but I know my limits. I’ll stop for two days in Europe, Zürich to be precise, and recuperate before the long haul to a new continent.
The flight is full, jam packed. But wait, the blonde Swiss wraithe seated next to me in 35A nabs the stewardess the minute the cabin doors are closed and asks if she can move to those two last empty seats at the back of the plane. No problem, says the stewardess, as long as you leave your bags in the bins above this seat. No problem with that, either. So the thin young blonde gets two seats to herself….and so do I. Miracle! It’s a smooth flight. I pick at my dinner, drink two of those now $6.00 tiny bottles of wine, pop a half a Donormyl, pile up two pillows, a blanket, my fleece jacket under my head, screw in my earplugs, cover myself with one of United’s finest scratchy blankets, and roll myself up into a ball for almost 5 solid hours of sleep, awakening just in time to be thrown a cup of stale yogurt and a “banana-nut loaf” that is about the size of my thumb and boasts a whopping 23 carbs. Whoa! Coffee, a good wash-up, and I feel like a new woman as we land in the soupy air of Zürich.
I don’t have a good relationship with this city. I’ve had unpleasant times here in the past, encountering parks full of drug addicts and loony creatures bent on scaring passersby, a general sense of uppity gloominess, a surfeit of dour bankers, a strained amicability, and overpriced mediocre food. I’ve returned prepared to rasa the tabula. It’s not that easy. Some suggested I get out of town to another more appealing place, and I think I will do that tomorrow, but today I just need to reconnect with Zürich and see what happens.
It’s a woolly gray morning, damp and bleak. We descend through thickets of clouds into a fleece of fog that seems to soften even the landing. We puff into the gate and are into the sleek Zürich airport, which seems to embody that cutting-edge coolness combined with Heidi-like weirdness the country so prides itself on. Every thing is sharp and metallic and gleaming, but you get on the dashing little train that takes you to the baggage area and are regaled with Ricola-like horn tunes and the deep lowing of cows and the sprightly tinkle of cow bells. You can tell the tourists from the regulars at a glance – who wouldn’t be startled by the moo of a cow on a train? I certainly was. And I remember this from visits past – the whole gosh-darn hills-are-alive saccharineness meshed with metal piercings and tattoos and studded boots and jackets and a pornish undercurrent that hints at, but doesn’t quite reach, the real raw zaftig sexiness you find in more pure Germanic culture. Swiss is a blending, Swiss has holes in it like the cheese, Swiss is wanting to be many things and achieving only some of them, Swiss is not quite anything.
I find my way to the Bahnhof and buy a ticket to Zürich Hauptbahnhof, my eight years of German somehow surfacing in my jetlagged brain amazingly well. It was, when I was young and studying four languages at a time, the hardest of them, but I always had good pronounciation, so even if I maul the grammar I think they get what I’m saying. But what they speak here in Zürich is a bit of a mystery to me. They say Hallo. They say Merci. They say Vielen Dank, Merci, even. And there are French speakers everywhere, though I am loath to speak French because I am thinking this might be a place, like Bruges, where if you speak French, they don’t like you so much. So I muddle on in German, which is actually fun, as so many phrases just come back to me – Die Rechnung, Es tut mir leid, Entschuldigung Sie, Bitte, Ich habe Deutsch in der Schule gelernt, vierzig Jahre seit, und jetz ist mein Deutsch ganz schrecklich! And so I manage to get to the train station in Zürich, which is blocks from my Gasthaus, with ease and feeling pretty cool, I should add, that I can talk in German after all these years. And every sign I see on the streets, and every notation on every item for sale in every shop, is a Zing! Into the language brain that has been dormant. It’s amazing how much information the brain can hold, and with respect to languages especially. In about two hours’ time I think I have revived my German vocabulary to almost where it was when I left off studying in college 30 years ago. I’m not equipped for intelligent conversations, but I’m darn-well equipped to buy the 4GB Memory Card for my digital camera I left sitting on my desk at home.
I get to the iPR Guesthouse at 10 am after having a coffee at the café opposite. It’s clean, it’s cool, it’s spacious, it’s got every high-tech convenience, it’s good. Apart from the lady overseeing the welcome desk whose native language is Spanish and who has a harder time in German than I do. We settle on bad English and she scans my passport and tells me the rules of the house, which are that after 10 pm I must use a key to get in the front door. I go to my room and clean up and pack a small bag for traveling round.
I hit the streets and walk. The length of the Bahnhofstrasse to the lake. It’s a Champs Elysées, a 5th Avenue, a stretch of international brand-name stores, mixed in with a Globus and a few local brands. It’s gray and cool and windy, and the locals are out en masse, greasy-haired and swaddled in black leather, spitting that unpleasant-sounding, stark Deutsch they speak here. There’s a market that’s folding up its awnings at the end of the street by the lake. There are swans galore, and pigeons, on the shore, and tour boats chugging in and out, and elderly folks sitting on benches staring out over the water and a canteen or two selling Brats and sweets. I walk over the bridge that spans the mouth of the Limmat and into the Altstadt, a warren of antique book stores and high-end boutiques. It’s interesting to me that there are so many Spanish restaurants – bodegas, tapas bars, etc., amid the Bierhalle and Vinstübe and kebab stalls. Clothing stores everywhere are promoting huge sales, but everything is wildly expensive by my standards. I was hoping to find a scarf here, as I collect and love them, but I see nothing affordable or even desirable, which is funny – I think of Europe as scarf heaven and have a large collection of scarves from my travels here. In Paris or Rome it’s hard to go more than a block or two without seeing a collection of pretty scarves, but here, where it’s cold and grey and you’d think everyone would need a nice scarf, there are few to be found. But I digress….
I visit the Fraumuster and next the Grossmunster, both austere Romanesque churches from the 8th century, the former graced with a rose window by Chagall. I zig-zag around the hilly cobblestone streets taking pictures of cutesy houses with window boxes and murals of mountains and sheep. The people on the streets here are such a curious mix of standard Europeans with the added element of Amazonian hiker freaks…..large, tall, blonde folks with bulging muscles, fervent strides, and big blotches of bright pink in their cheeks. The stores attest to the hiker element. Patagonia and other local establishments featuring a world of clunky boots and chains and ropes abound amid the usual antiquaries and clothing boutiques.
Lunch is a Bratwurst at an unprepossessing place alive with bikers and bankers. The proprietor drills a hole in a chunk of baguette-like bread on a machine, lubes it well with mustard, and pokes the Brat into it and hands it to me in a napkin. 6.80 SF. It’s juicy and filling and feels right in this setting in the Altstadt.
As I wander past USB I notice a gathering crowd and a posse of newscasters with cameras. Something is up, and it appears to be related to the market. Folks are swarming around the posted market tallies, and they are angry. I hear muttered references to Wall Street and walk on. Later on the TV news I hear that the Swiss are unfavorably reacting to the latest plunge in the stock market.
I go back to the guesthouse mid-afternoon and take a long bath and recoup for awhile. It’s nippy and bleak outside and I have no real yen to be here anyway, so I just indulge myself. I’ve gathered a ton of stuff from the Tourist Office at the train station and I want to look it over to see what I might do tomorrow to get out of this town and enjoy the countryside. I am leaning toward a boat ride to Rapperswil. The train station is a bit of a marvel, actually. One could spend an entire visit to Zürich here, as every store is represented in its vast underground shopping area, and it abounds with cafés and grocery stores and restaurants. It’s like a little Zürich. You could just stay here and save yourself the trouble of the larger metropolis.
At dusk I head to a local café, the Balthazar, where I sip on a wheat beer. Then I go to the Coop and buy bread and ham and cheese and juice and milk and yogurt and fruit for my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. And then it’s time to hook up to the internet and work, for these days I am never really on vacation. Zürich is what it is, not my cup of tea, but of interest nonetheless, and I’m glad to be here.
October 10, 2008
I booked a trip to India to meet my daughter, using FF miles. It takes me through Zürich, I have no choice about it, and I have the option to do a stopover enroute. I decide to do it. I’m traveling alone, and I don’t want to go straight from the USA through Zürich and Vienna and on to Mumbai and land there at 1 am on my own. I’m an intrepid traveler, but I know my limits. I’ll stop for two days in Europe, Zürich to be precise, and recuperate before the long haul to a new continent.
The flight is full, jam packed. But wait, the blonde Swiss wraithe seated next to me in 35A nabs the stewardess the minute the cabin doors are closed and asks if she can move to those two last empty seats at the back of the plane. No problem, says the stewardess, as long as you leave your bags in the bins above this seat. No problem with that, either. So the thin young blonde gets two seats to herself….and so do I. Miracle! It’s a smooth flight. I pick at my dinner, drink two of those now $6.00 tiny bottles of wine, pop a half a Donormyl, pile up two pillows, a blanket, my fleece jacket under my head, screw in my earplugs, cover myself with one of United’s finest scratchy blankets, and roll myself up into a ball for almost 5 solid hours of sleep, awakening just in time to be thrown a cup of stale yogurt and a “banana-nut loaf” that is about the size of my thumb and boasts a whopping 23 carbs. Whoa! Coffee, a good wash-up, and I feel like a new woman as we land in the soupy air of Zürich.
I don’t have a good relationship with this city. I’ve had unpleasant times here in the past, encountering parks full of drug addicts and loony creatures bent on scaring passersby, a general sense of uppity gloominess, a surfeit of dour bankers, a strained amicability, and overpriced mediocre food. I’ve returned prepared to rasa the tabula. It’s not that easy. Some suggested I get out of town to another more appealing place, and I think I will do that tomorrow, but today I just need to reconnect with Zürich and see what happens.
It’s a woolly gray morning, damp and bleak. We descend through thickets of clouds into a fleece of fog that seems to soften even the landing. We puff into the gate and are into the sleek Zürich airport, which seems to embody that cutting-edge coolness combined with Heidi-like weirdness the country so prides itself on. Every thing is sharp and metallic and gleaming, but you get on the dashing little train that takes you to the baggage area and are regaled with Ricola-like horn tunes and the deep lowing of cows and the sprightly tinkle of cow bells. You can tell the tourists from the regulars at a glance – who wouldn’t be startled by the moo of a cow on a train? I certainly was. And I remember this from visits past – the whole gosh-darn hills-are-alive saccharineness meshed with metal piercings and tattoos and studded boots and jackets and a pornish undercurrent that hints at, but doesn’t quite reach, the real raw zaftig sexiness you find in more pure Germanic culture. Swiss is a blending, Swiss has holes in it like the cheese, Swiss is wanting to be many things and achieving only some of them, Swiss is not quite anything.
I find my way to the Bahnhof and buy a ticket to Zürich Hauptbahnhof, my eight years of German somehow surfacing in my jetlagged brain amazingly well. It was, when I was young and studying four languages at a time, the hardest of them, but I always had good pronounciation, so even if I maul the grammar I think they get what I’m saying. But what they speak here in Zürich is a bit of a mystery to me. They say Hallo. They say Merci. They say Vielen Dank, Merci, even. And there are French speakers everywhere, though I am loath to speak French because I am thinking this might be a place, like Bruges, where if you speak French, they don’t like you so much. So I muddle on in German, which is actually fun, as so many phrases just come back to me – Die Rechnung, Es tut mir leid, Entschuldigung Sie, Bitte, Ich habe Deutsch in der Schule gelernt, vierzig Jahre seit, und jetz ist mein Deutsch ganz schrecklich! And so I manage to get to the train station in Zürich, which is blocks from my Gasthaus, with ease and feeling pretty cool, I should add, that I can talk in German after all these years. And every sign I see on the streets, and every notation on every item for sale in every shop, is a Zing! Into the language brain that has been dormant. It’s amazing how much information the brain can hold, and with respect to languages especially. In about two hours’ time I think I have revived my German vocabulary to almost where it was when I left off studying in college 30 years ago. I’m not equipped for intelligent conversations, but I’m darn-well equipped to buy the 4GB Memory Card for my digital camera I left sitting on my desk at home.
I get to the iPR Guesthouse at 10 am after having a coffee at the café opposite. It’s clean, it’s cool, it’s spacious, it’s got every high-tech convenience, it’s good. Apart from the lady overseeing the welcome desk whose native language is Spanish and who has a harder time in German than I do. We settle on bad English and she scans my passport and tells me the rules of the house, which are that after 10 pm I must use a key to get in the front door. I go to my room and clean up and pack a small bag for traveling round.
I hit the streets and walk. The length of the Bahnhofstrasse to the lake. It’s a Champs Elysées, a 5th Avenue, a stretch of international brand-name stores, mixed in with a Globus and a few local brands. It’s gray and cool and windy, and the locals are out en masse, greasy-haired and swaddled in black leather, spitting that unpleasant-sounding, stark Deutsch they speak here. There’s a market that’s folding up its awnings at the end of the street by the lake. There are swans galore, and pigeons, on the shore, and tour boats chugging in and out, and elderly folks sitting on benches staring out over the water and a canteen or two selling Brats and sweets. I walk over the bridge that spans the mouth of the Limmat and into the Altstadt, a warren of antique book stores and high-end boutiques. It’s interesting to me that there are so many Spanish restaurants – bodegas, tapas bars, etc., amid the Bierhalle and Vinstübe and kebab stalls. Clothing stores everywhere are promoting huge sales, but everything is wildly expensive by my standards. I was hoping to find a scarf here, as I collect and love them, but I see nothing affordable or even desirable, which is funny – I think of Europe as scarf heaven and have a large collection of scarves from my travels here. In Paris or Rome it’s hard to go more than a block or two without seeing a collection of pretty scarves, but here, where it’s cold and grey and you’d think everyone would need a nice scarf, there are few to be found. But I digress….
I visit the Fraumuster and next the Grossmunster, both austere Romanesque churches from the 8th century, the former graced with a rose window by Chagall. I zig-zag around the hilly cobblestone streets taking pictures of cutesy houses with window boxes and murals of mountains and sheep. The people on the streets here are such a curious mix of standard Europeans with the added element of Amazonian hiker freaks…..large, tall, blonde folks with bulging muscles, fervent strides, and big blotches of bright pink in their cheeks. The stores attest to the hiker element. Patagonia and other local establishments featuring a world of clunky boots and chains and ropes abound amid the usual antiquaries and clothing boutiques.
Lunch is a Bratwurst at an unprepossessing place alive with bikers and bankers. The proprietor drills a hole in a chunk of baguette-like bread on a machine, lubes it well with mustard, and pokes the Brat into it and hands it to me in a napkin. 6.80 SF. It’s juicy and filling and feels right in this setting in the Altstadt.
As I wander past USB I notice a gathering crowd and a posse of newscasters with cameras. Something is up, and it appears to be related to the market. Folks are swarming around the posted market tallies, and they are angry. I hear muttered references to Wall Street and walk on. Later on the TV news I hear that the Swiss are unfavorably reacting to the latest plunge in the stock market.
I go back to the guesthouse mid-afternoon and take a long bath and recoup for awhile. It’s nippy and bleak outside and I have no real yen to be here anyway, so I just indulge myself. I’ve gathered a ton of stuff from the Tourist Office at the train station and I want to look it over to see what I might do tomorrow to get out of this town and enjoy the countryside. I am leaning toward a boat ride to Rapperswil. The train station is a bit of a marvel, actually. One could spend an entire visit to Zürich here, as every store is represented in its vast underground shopping area, and it abounds with cafés and grocery stores and restaurants. It’s like a little Zürich. You could just stay here and save yourself the trouble of the larger metropolis.
At dusk I head to a local café, the Balthazar, where I sip on a wheat beer. Then I go to the Coop and buy bread and ham and cheese and juice and milk and yogurt and fruit for my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. And then it’s time to hook up to the internet and work, for these days I am never really on vacation. Zürich is what it is, not my cup of tea, but of interest nonetheless, and I’m glad to be here.
Oct 11th, 2008, 03:31 AM
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I always read your posts StCirq because they are very well written, humorous, and interesting. Guess I'll have to wait for the White Bean and Sage recipe until you get back to Das Capital! Enjoy your trip.
Oct 11th, 2008, 03:50 AM
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Using some of that stuff from the train station you might spot a place called Regensburg, only about 15 km. or so from city centre by memory and a train gets you there - old living village, timber homes about 700-800 years old and another place locally worth doing a walk about id the hills that from memory are to the east of Zurichsee, there being a little train that chugs along up there and also a gondola car that can take you back down to a station on the Zurich/Rappersvil line.
Also great Museum opposite the bahnhauff, to the NE, towards that druggy park but a lot of those visitors were sent packing last I heard.
Also great Museum opposite the bahnhauff, to the NE, towards that druggy park but a lot of those visitors were sent packing last I heard.
Oct 11th, 2008, 03:59 AM
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Much as you love the Dordogne, I think you may write better and even more insightfully about Zurich. This is so good. Faintly praising with loud damnation. I love it. Perhaps that's because you seem to have captured and conveyed some of my own feelings about Switzerland. I just can't get into it. Too standoffish.
Bushranger, interesting to have you suggest Regensberg. That's exactly the place I was thinking of and couldn't remember the name. Have never been but still remember pix from an ancient article in Gourmet that I clipped and saved. Looks delightful and much more homey and friendly than Zurich.
Can't wait for more of this report. Will you post about India here or break your post up and put it on the other forum?
Bushranger, interesting to have you suggest Regensberg. That's exactly the place I was thinking of and couldn't remember the name. Have never been but still remember pix from an ancient article in Gourmet that I clipped and saved. Looks delightful and much more homey and friendly than Zurich.
Can't wait for more of this report. Will you post about India here or break your post up and put it on the other forum?
Oct 11th, 2008, 07:09 AM
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Hello StCirq, I am glad you got the tech problem straightened out!
I love your style of writing and your descriptions. And from my small experience in Switzerland although the scenery was breathtaking beautiful we did not feel as relaxed and as "at home" as in Italy.
I hope you have had a wonderful day today while venturing outside of Zurich. Best regards.
I love your style of writing and your descriptions. And from my small experience in Switzerland although the scenery was breathtaking beautiful we did not feel as relaxed and as "at home" as in Italy.
I hope you have had a wonderful day today while venturing outside of Zurich. Best regards.
Oct 11th, 2008, 08:15 AM
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Bookmarking so I can see when you are going to have time to finish your Provence, and Caribbean trip reports.
In the meantiime, I'm enjoying this one very much. I haven't been to Switzerland for a number of years, but you express very well why it never warmed my heart.
In the meantiime, I'm enjoying this one very much. I haven't been to Switzerland for a number of years, but you express very well why it never warmed my heart.
Oct 11th, 2008, 08:47 AM
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Love your descriptions and I can't wait to read more! Zurich is pretty much the way you cleverly describe it, it had me chuckling. "that cutting-edge coolness combined with Heidi-like weirdness" indeed makes interesting traveling. I do love the rest of Switzerland though.
Oct 11th, 2008, 10:49 AM
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Your description of Zurich is so right. I can see it all in my head just as you write. I was solo in Zurich in September. I walked and saw the same things as you, even though I've been to Zurich dozens of times.
I never like to walk on the side of the river where all the weird people are sitting on the ground. This past September there were two boys walking back and forth yelling something in German. The only words I understood were Berlin and Hamburg.
I never like to walk on the side of the river where all the weird people are sitting on the ground. This past September there were two boys walking back and forth yelling something in German. The only words I understood were Berlin and Hamburg.
Oct 11th, 2008, 11:06 AM
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" Perhaps that's because you seem to have captured and conveyed some of my own feelings about Switzerland. I just can't get into it. Too standoffish. "
That cracked me up. I live in Switzerland now and when I first moved here all the Swiss people I met asked me if I found the Swiss standoffish. And I said no, I'm from New England! And I still feel that - it's really normal to me here.
That cracked me up. I live in Switzerland now and when I first moved here all the Swiss people I met asked me if I found the Swiss standoffish. And I said no, I'm from New England! And I still feel that - it's really normal to me here.
Oct 11th, 2008, 01:02 PM
#20
The weather in Switzerland is incredible right now. The fall colours, the blue skies, the mountains....
I'd go crazy too if I had to stay in Zürich the whole time without a visit to the countryside.
I'd go crazy too if I had to stay in Zürich the whole time without a visit to the countryside.
