zurich – saturday

I got to go on another business trip! I find travelling with some sort of purpose to almost always be better than the aimless variety. It’s doubtful that’s my deep well of self-motivation talking, and more likely my fear of being aimless in foreign lands.

This time my destination was Zurich, a place I had never been before. The flight there was…interesting. Apparently, I really should take Dramamine before every flight, even if I think I don’t need it. You never know when there will be two hours of uninterrupted turbulence. Once finally in the Zurich airport the way into town was a bit mysterious, and I was very tired, so I actually had to ask where I might find a taxi. In my defense, the place was around a couple corners and the signage was not the best. I was reminded of Douglas Adams (as I generally am):

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression ‘as pretty as an airport’.

Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.

Being at one time an architecture student, I try to see the best in all buildings. And, in my opinion, some airports do succeed in being beautiful and well organzied spaces (Schipol in the Netherlands is my favorite, and the singing tunnel in the Detroit airport is, while surreal, very calming). The Zurich airport is not one of these. While, on the surface, it has the requisite trams, signs and waiting areas, it is actually a complete jumble. Although this being Switzerland, and stereotypes being not always wrong, everything outside the airport was quite well organized.

My hotel was right across from the point of land that separates Zurich’s two rivers, quite near to the main train station, and therefore also within walking distance of the main shopping street and the medieval part of town.

I assumed that even the German speaking part of Switzerland would also have street signs and other important information in both French (which I can read) and German (which I am utterly hopeless at remembering even proper names in). This proved not to be the case, and thus I pretty much gave up on navigating by anything that wasn’t a body of water or a giant clock tower. Luckily, there were enough of those to go around.

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I managed to get myself up after only a smallish nap in order to go in search of the various chocolate places the internet had recommended to me. Merkur is the largest and most diverse chocolate shop in Zurich. There I found Ovalmaltine (aka Ovaltine) based chocolate. It is delicious. So delicious, I bought myself five bars. They are not quite all gone yet. Work got one as well, and I may have eaten another in my hotel room.

The area just across from my hotel is a park. On my way there I found a pretty (giant) spider. It was orange! The trees were quite pretty too, and they got a few photos. I think the park has to do with the museum at its base. More on that next time.