Tekla and I got up this morning and headed to Zurich. I have to say, driving in Zurich is really insane because the streets do not make any sense at all. I am used to city blocks with one way streets, which are relatively easy to figure out. However, the streets have trams running back and forth, one ways that are not obvious, and weird twists and turns around random buildings and streets throughout the city. We drove around for at least and hour trying to figure out where to park and finally said screw it and did the hourly parking thing, which meant we had to pay attention to the time so we could go back and throw a few more Swiss Franks in the machine.
We grabbed a tourist map from the main Hauptbanhof (train station) and headed out to check out the city. My overall description of Zurich is that it is a European version of New York City with cooler architecture. With that said, not more than a day is necessary to see the town and get a feel for the big city vibe.
The things we checked out were: Grossmünster Church, Neue Börse (Swiss Stock Exchange), Rathaus (Town Hall), Water Church, and the Chinese Gardens. The highlights were the shopping districts that were part of Old Town called Bahnhofstrasse and Rennweg. However, the coolest by far was this awesome park on Lake Zurich called Zürichhorn Park. It had this awesome walking path along the lake with sailboats, people laying out and swimming, and cool little gelato shops along the way. It was such an awesome place to be able to go hang out after work, much like Greenlake is for people in Seattle.
We stayed at the park for a while and then made the journey back to Renate's house in Basel. She was there waiting with a little fire going in the stove. We hung out and chatted about our day while she baked some bread and put out a cheese and meat plate for us to enjoy. The three of us sat around chatting about politics, health care, boys...life stuff. Anyway, it was a great conversation and I am learning a lot about the politics and way of life for those who live in Switzerland and Germany. It's one of those things I always crave to learn when traveling.
It's getting late so I will write tomorrow morning about some of the things I have learned and post them in the morning.
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