The Day in Zürich

Yesterday, I went to Zürich for the day, met up with a couple people, and did a bit of sightseeing. It was my first time in Zürich outside of the train station where I didn't have something else to do and actually had free time. I had been there once before for an interview, and once before to visit Credit Suisse with one of the clubs here on campus.

I met up with Gutschti, a fellow counselor from Waldsee a few years back, around noon for lunch. We went to an Italian place, spent some time catching up, and he gave me some tips for Switzerland and for things to do in Zürich. After lunch, he had to go back to work, so I followed his suggestion and took the Polybahn the hill to go to a big terrace at the ETH Zürich, which is sort of like the Swiss MIT. From the terrace, I got a decent view of the city. It was somewhat overcast, so my pictures didn't turn out to be spectacular, but here's a sample.


This is one of the ETHZ's buildings. I didn't explore the campus, or the campus of the neighboring University of Zürich, much, but did get a quick glance.




After wandering back down the hill, I walked along the Limmat River, and eventually made it to the Grossmünster, which is a super old church-type building that was initially built between 1100 and 1220, or so. I look around inside a bit, and then paid 2 franks to climb up tiny spiral staircase and go up in one of the towers. I took some pictures from up here, but again, the weather wasn't all that great for the pictures. While I was climbing up, the Swiss "national alarm system" was being tested, pretty much the same as our tornado / storm sirens, except that it sounded really weird. Gustchi gave me a call to give me a heads up, so I didn't get too worried.





After coming down, I, again following Guschti's suggestions, got all set up for a short boat-tour of Lake Zürich. At 4 franks for an hour and a half or so, it wasn't bad. Got some nice views of the area, and got some glimpses of the Alps when the clouds subsided. There was a Chinese tour group that made up most of the people on the boat (sidenote: it's awesome to hear a Chinese person speak decent German, and then Chinese a few seconds later), and I met a Korean couple vacationing. I got to practice a bit of my Korean, and they got to practice their English a bit.











After the boat ride, I wandered up the Bahnhofstrasse, which seemed to be one of the most expensive places I've ever seen. There were stores with suits marked down 50% to 4,000 CHF (~$3800) and 18,000 CHF (~$17,250) watches in their display windows. Once I got further down, prices seem to become a bit more reasonable, and I even saw the "biggest English language bookstore on the European continent", which was sort of neat. If I ever need a book in English and can't find it on amazon.co.uk, I guess this is my next best bet. I spent a few minutes in the Apple store to warm up and take advantage of their free internet, and then headed on my way.

I met up with my other friend, Christian, for dinner, and then headed back to St. Gallen. I was going to meet up with Christof, who my parents knew back 15 or 20 years ago, but he is apparently booked for another few weeks. I'll probably head back over to Zürich in the next couple weeks to meet up with him.

This upcoming weekend, I'm planning on going to Munich to visit Brian. Next week, I have my test-start-day for my part time job, and have my verbal German test (which is really just a presentation) next week. Here are a few stray pictures from my day in Zürich.



This is a bird drinking from a water fountain.