I hadn’t really planned what I was going to do after travelling through Italy, and at the last minute I decided to go to Switzerland in search of snow, and to begin my treck towards Paris, where I will be just before Christmas. So the morning after the Cinque Terre adventure, Carmen and I parted ways at the train station, her to Rome and I was heading to Zurich.
Eight train-filled hours later I was there. My first mission was to get to a town about twenty-five minutes out of Zurich called Winterthur where I would meet my host, Lia. Finding the train was the easy part, finding an ATM to withdraw Swiss franks was not so easy. Finally I figured this out and soon I was travelling north to Winterthur where I found Lia waiting for me.
That first night we did not do a lot, we were both tired and had decided to have an earlyish night so she could show me around Zurich thee following day. In the morning we ate and then headed into Zurich, there was much to do! Unfortunately it was raining, but this was not to stop us. First of all we headed out of the train station and down the main street, appropriately named Bahnofstrasse. This was a street filled with expensive clothing and watch stores, intermingled with douzens of different banks promoting private bank accounts. On the way down this street we stopped to check out various churches.
Church clock tower
We ate roasted chestnuts, talked and took numerous photos of Zurich dressed in it’s best Christmas attire.
Christmas pinecones
We then passed the Zurich lake and headed towards a secondhand bookshop which we both wanted to check out. The English section was not so large, but I managed to find Catcher In The Rye and Dracula for 3 franks which is a damned good deal. Lia bought a collection of 13 huge photography books that she would have to collect later as they were much too heavy to carry around.
But before we hit the bookstore, we stopped by:
Google office Zurich
This was pretty cool to see. Apparantly the inside of the building is amazingly well equipped with meditation rooms, aquariums, a gym, and much more. Outside the office was parked this Google bike! I hear that the staff are given them to use.
Google bike
After we left the bookshop, we headed back towards the centre of town, where we crossed the river and checked out another church.
Zurich's riverside
Twin church towers
And now was the exciting part! We decided to head up the local tall mountain of which I forget the name and climb the view tower. We took the train and when we arrived I was thouroughly excited to see a snowy path leading to the top. I could barely contain myself and was running around like an over excited child.
Snowy path
When we got to the top we headed up the tower and found the view of the alps in all directions. It was amazing!
View over Zurich
The sun started to set so we headed back down the the tower and began to construct a small snowman on a park bench which I was actaully able to pick up and carry around with me until I picked him up off of a chair and he lost his balance, his head falling off.
Snowman!
By this time it was getting pretty late and we had a dinner date with 100 other CouchSurfers out in the countryside. This event was run by the Zurich CouchSurfing group and was basically 100+ people in a big cottage in the countryside eating over 20kgs of cheese fondue and drinking too much wine. It was a whole heap of fun! There were heaps of Swiss people and many others from all over the world there too. One guy I talked to had even cycled from Belgium to Serbia in 4 months, crazy!
the CHEESE
This went on ’till the early hours of the morning and when Lia decided that she has drunk far too much, we headed home.
The next day the weather was terrible, it was raining something atrocious, so instead of checking out any more outdoor sights we planned a scenic train trip. This would be from Luzern to Interluken. So we got on the train and headed for Luzern. When we got there we had some time to kill, so went for a short walk in the city, over the famous bridge:
Some old bridge
and past some very cool decorated buildings:
Decorated house
Soon it was time to get on the train, so we headed back to the station, boarded the train and we were off. In no time you could feel the pull of the train heading upwards and soon enough we were engulfed in snowy forest and paddocks. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! We opened the window of the train at one point when it stopped to get some photos and the woman sitting infront of us ended up covered in snow! It was snowing like I’ve never experienced.
Lotsa snow!
In what seemed like no time at all, the night fell and we were headed back to Zurich to meet the CouchSurfers again for their monthly meeting which just ended up being a number of people drinking in a bar. It was good to see some of the people again from last night and meet more new people. I can’t keep track of all the people I’m meeting everywhere, there are too many!
That was my final night in Zurich, it really felt like it had gone much too fast but it was definitely a great time. In the morning I was off to Bern.
Tags: bicycles, bridge, buildings, cheese, Christmas, churches, couchsurfing, fondue, party, snow, train
