I met Amanda at the main train station in Zurich to begin our adventures in the German portion of Switzerland. The spoken language is Swiss German which is very different from German but the written language is German. Just when I was getting use to French... There is a free bike loan program similar to that in Geneva so we took the bikes out for the day quickly scooting from here to there but we didn't really know where here or there actually was. Usually we would bike for 5-10 minutes stop and try and figure out our position. Eventually we did find our way to some cool places.
The main building for ETH Zurich. ETH stands for Swiss Federal Institute in German. Our hosts were doing their masters here.
View of part of Zurich across the lake.
We spent a lot of time in the starbucks to use the free wifi trying to figure out what to do and how to get there. A lot of attractions were located on Bahnofstrasse which has lots of shops and cafes on it. We ended up eating at Manora for lunch which is a buffet type restaurant on top of one of the only department stores in the city. It was sort of reasonably priced depending on what you put on your plate and pretty tasty.
When it was time to go the quest to find our hosts' apartment it was raining. I was able to make use of the rain cover for backpack during the 10-15 minute walk. I thought that was cool. Our hosts made for an exciting time during our two night stay. They were all ETH students working towards their masters. When we arrived there were six or seven other people all gathered around to watch Game of Thrones. Everyone stayed well into night for some good conversation. A lot of guys from the neuroinformatics department were there so it was fun to talk some neuroscience.
The next day we were off to Küssnacht to climb some random mountain we found on the internet.
Küssnacht surrounds a lake just like Geneva and Zurich. The fountain is at the center of town.
The Eiger is off in the distance. Watch "North Face" for a good film about an early attempt to climb the Eiger.
View of Küssnacht from above midway through the hike.
We ended up stopping and not climbing up the entire mountain since it was getting late and the hike was already totaling 13-14 km.
Peter and Jan, two of our hosts didn't get back till 9pm or so. We went bar for a couple of drinks but we only bought the first round and smuggled in our own drinks from the apartments. Cheap students for the win. Speaking of cheapness, most of our meals now consist of find the closest Coop (small local grocery store) and buying pre-made sandwiches and pastries.
We spent our last few hours in Zurich kayaking on the rivers. Peter offered to let us borrow a couple of his kayaks. It was difficult to find them since he just marked our map with a pen and said they were in some garage. We also got some looks as we carried them down the sidewalk and past a cafe to the river. We quickly discovered paddling upstream is not fun so our kayaking venture was short lived. It was fun while it lasted though.
After kayaking we jumped on a train to Zermatt. We are staying in a hostel for the night. It's really nice and practically empty. Half-board is included and we are making sure we get our money's worth. We walked around the town this evening and will ski on the glacier in the morning. No cars are allowed in the town.
View of the Matterhorn
A gorge we found randomly.
We don't have a place to sleep tomorrow as of yet so that's exciting. We are trying to be in Munich by Saturday though.
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