Zurich

The Limmat River running through Zurich, with the Alps in the distance.

On Monday Aug 13 I traveled from London to Zurich, Switzerland to visit one of my roommates from Argentina. He is German, but he has been living and working in Zurich for the past 5 years.

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My flight from London was delayed over three hours: 1) problem with the plane so they had to fly a new one in from Glasgow, 2) someone got sick on the plane and a medical team had to rush in 3) there was an unidentified piece of luggage onboard so we all had to disembark as they searched/checked the plane. Awesome. So at 9 pm rather than 5 pm I touched down, and as the evening was somewhat shot, we just had some beers on his rooftop terrace, which offered a scintillating view of the city at night, then went to a bar on the river, then ended the night with a few more beers at his place over conversation of global politics, America's and Europe's respective roles in the world, anti-Americanism, and Switzerland. Both great and insightful.

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Zurich.

The next day we toured the city a bit on foot, then rented bikes, for free, and rode around the city for a bit before deciding to ride up Uetliberg Hill to the observatory platform for an overview of the city. The ride up was wonderful, extremely peaceful. We were alone for most of the ride and the scenery was gorgeous. The path was a bit steep at times, but we didn't mind as we had battery powered bikes that augmented our pedalling and made the climb really easy... All good things must come to an end though, and about 3/4 of the way up both his and my battery died. Then it sucked. The bikes were extremely heavy, and with the batteries dead, they wer just dead weight. The path steepened as we approached the summit, to the point where we were unable to ride the bikes and ended up having to drag them along with us as we hiked the rest of the way.

View from Uetliberg observatory platform.

That night we went to a different bar on the river and met up with one of his friends that lives in the same apartment building. He is half American half Swiss, but grew up entirely in Africa. It was really interesting hearing about his experiences in Africa, and also hearing about what he is doing now. He developed some kind of satellite pinpointing system and is using it to send electronic textbooks to schools in Africa. He is working with a computer company that will be selling laptops for $100 to schools in Ethiopia, and he is going to travel there next month to set everything up. Last year he ran a sucessful pilot program in Ghana, where he grew up, and now he has investors backing him and he hopes that it will spread throughout Africa. Interesting. He can't wait to get back there, he said that Africa just gets in your blood, the continent just pulls him back.

Bar alongside the Limmat River.

The next day we went to the Zurich Art Museum, which contains works by Lichtenstein, Dali, Picasso, as well as the largest Munch colection outside of Norway. Nice. We then went to a bar along the river and sunbathed for a bit before walking down to a bridge and jumping in. We were carried by the current and floated back down to our stuff. Rinse and repeat. Refreshing.

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That evening we went to a bar that had an open-air cine night. The film shown was a French movie from the 50s or 60s and titled 'Die Verachtung' (The Contempt) in German, I forget its original French name. It was good, but somewhat depressing. The whole atmosphere was great though, cool bar with an artsy crowd.

Swiss Army pocket knife goes high-tech.

Zurich as a city is beautiful, idyllic, everything seems unreal in its perfection. The city is spotlessly clean, the houses stately and well-maintained, and I was so amazed that people could actually swim in the river. The Spree, the Main, and the Danube weren't putrid, but no one was swimming in them, or was about to. The surrounding scenery is incredible as well.

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The city is also extremely safe, women can walk alone down dark alleys at 4am no problem. Because the city is so safe and absent of real crime, soft drugs are also tolerated, the police nit pick at the little stuff. They'll break out the ruler to measure how many centimeters you are outside the lines of a parking space, or harass you if your bicycle isn't secured properly.

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My friend, and his German friends, also said that the Swiss populus is a bit unfriendly to foreigners. Not unfriendly in a superficial way, they're courteus and all, but a bit closed to outsiders, its hard to build friendships. My friend is German and his live-in girlfriend is Hungarian. They have both lived and worked in Switzerland for five years, but all their friends there are foreigners. They get along fine with their Swiss colleagues at work, but that's where the relationships end, not extendin into private life.

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Before I arrived my friend wrote me and said that the weather was projected to be horrible during the time I was to be there, but I had wonderful luck as the weather was perfect. It had rained for two weeks straight before I arrived, and it was raining the day I left, but whilst I was there God was smiling on Zurich.