Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Zurich, Switzerland: Above a Winter Wonderland


After a full night sleep, I woke to find a big spread of breads, cured meats, and cheese waiting for me on the kitchen table. So I may have completely pigged out on that. Did I mention how amazing my Zurich hosts were?

Andrea then even offered to do some laundry for me, which if you’ve been paying close attention will notice I never did laundry this trip until now, the very last day). Upon learning of my lack of gloves and hat (sorry Doug), Andrea insist we go up to her dad’s house (also her childhood home) to get some warmer stuff for me. It was cool to be in a true suburb of a European city. Definitely felt like a US suburb, except for the perfectly white snow covering everything, which I’m not used to in the Bay Area.

The swimming pool (or was it a pond?) in the backyard had frozen over to the point where I could walk around on it! How fun! Then, we drove back to the flat and then prepared to visit the city. Andrea’s flat is in a suburb about 15 minutes from the city itself, so it was a short train ride into town.
After arriving, we surveyed downtown for a Swiss-style lunch place. I have to have one crazy-expensive-regular-meal in Switzerland, right?

We decided on one and it was crazy busy for the lunch hour. We did, however, find a place to sit. After debating between lots of meat dishes, I ended up deciding on a meat-free dish – pasta with cheese, potatoes and grilled onions. Needed more onions, but it was a carbo-loading sure to keep me full for awhile. I also had another Swiss beer, although the name escapes me at the moment. I probably have a picture of it somewhere.


We next went to [chocolate place]. We’re talking the real deal fancy schamncy chocolate. Andrea’s advice was to go for the macaroons, and that’s exactly what we did. Champagne, caramel, raspberry, oh the list goes on. Here’s our catch:


We decided to save the macaroons for the mountain.

We had one more stop: Uetliberg. Uetliberg isn’t really much of a village, but rather just a mini-mountain near the city limits – in fact, it’s only accessible by the metro, as one of the line termini.
A quick note that the subway stations in Zurich are amazingly colorful!

Once arriving at the top of the hill, I saw easily my best view of the trip. A snow covered paradise, with small villages spread out below. The Alps stood proud in the background many miles beyond. I could’ve sat and stared for hours, but then I found out we weren’t actually at the top of the hill!

So we kept going up, and then the view got seriously panoramic. Now I could see the same view as before, plus the entire city of Zurich spread out before me, and miles of lakeside villages. I had access to what I’d estimate was a 225 degree view.



It brought me back to visiting the mountain in Hong Kong the year before, on the final day of my fall 2011 trip to SE Asia. Both experiences took place from small mountains near the city, yet both views completely different. One, a futuristic metropolis – the other, a winter wonderland. Maybe this whole “nice view on the last day” thing will become a tradition. Always gives me time to reflect.

Turned out we were a bit late for our dinner plans, but we just barely missed the train, so we had 30 minutes to kill. Enter: MACAROONS!

These were little bites of heaven. The flavors were all clear, and nothing was overpowering.
We took the train back into town, and met with Andrea’s mom for dinner. What’s for dinner? Well, actually, we were cooking dinner for the less fortunate! The menu…two types of risotto? Andrea are you crazy, or just an insanely badass chef to make two risottos from scratch? (I’ll give you a hint – she is a badass cook).

So I in fact got to learn how to make real risotto while in Zurich. You never really know what experiences you’re going to have when you CouchSurf in other countries. You really don’t.
One of the guys in for a meal helped cut onions. Dude could cut onions like a pro.

The old lady who helps with the coffee and tea, a crazy old well-meaning Swiss lady was as quirky as Andrea made her out to be, but was very complimentary of my pronunciation when I said thanks in German. Hey, I’ll take what I can get.

We served a good 40 portions of risotto each, and by the end of the evening I was feeling very good and very accomplished. Everyone who wanted seconds received seconds, and it was nothing short of a healthy, cooked-from-scratch delightful duo of risottos. Which reminds me, I need to practice making it again before I completely forget what to do – my dad likes risotto, and it’d be awesome to make him the real stuff, rather than the instant stuff he has!

Shockingly, I was still full from lunch (OK, I had a few tastes of the risotto, and a couple random dessert things), so Andrea and her mom took me to see some nice city views before heading home for the evening. There was not much of an opportunity for me to do much that evening due to my extremely early flight. I wanted to have some kind of rest…

The anticipation of heading home kept me up late, but I snuck in a few hours of sleep before waking up at 5AM to head to the airport. Andrea was so kind to bring me at this crack-of-dawn hour, and it really made all the difference for a smooth flight home. One stop (again in Duesseldorf), and to my luck, an older lady had sat in my aisle seat. But she was on the far left, with a lady sitting next to her, and her seat was in a completely empty row. Wanting the free space, and observing that she seemed nice and settled in (and seemed hesitant to move when I noticed she was in my seat), I offered to take the seat in the free row, and ended up having three seats to myself. Score!

All in all, an uneventful flight home. Except now I had 15 bars of chocolate with me!

OK, I’ll write a summary entry, in case anyone is actually reading these entries.

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