February 25th, 2009
For our first weekend in Zurich (it is hard to believe we have only been here 1 week), Emily and I had fondue twice and went skiing in the Swiss Alps. On Saturday night, a group of us went out to dinner at Adler’s Swiss Chuchi, one of the popular fondue restaurants in downtown Zurich. As soon as you step foot in the restaurant, the smell of cheese hits you. Although they have meat and chocolate fondues, the cheese fondue is king in Switzerland; I don’t think I saw anyone in the restaurant get anything else. Our table of 9 ordered 9 of the same dish – Adler’s Special Fondue. It came out in three big, bubbling pots with bread and potatoes for dipping. And that’s the whole meal – bread and cheese (and some beer/wine of course). The food was good and it was a very fun meal.
On Sunday, Emily and I had fondue again with some other friends at Raclette Stube. Yes, that’s right, we had fondue on two back-to-back nights, and it was delicious…again. I actually preferred the fondue here (but both were very good), and I liked the smaller, more intimate setting of Raclette Stube too.
During the day on Sunday, we took a 1:15 train ride to the closest ski resort from Zurich, Flumserberg. There is a gondola that takes you from the train station up to the ski resort which was pretty cool (this was my first time in a gondola). Unfortunately, the conditions were not ideal. It was snowing and hard to see, almost a white-out but not that bad. In the afternoon, the top of the mountain cleared up and it was really beautiful. You could see the cloud still hovering over the lower part of the ski resort. I found the skiing to be rather difficult, probably because I am not used to skiing in fresh powder. It looks pretty, but I prefer the packed snow for skiing. Also, the way the runs were laid out seemed strange to me. They never seemed to just be continuous downhill; each run kept alternating between a short, steep section followed by a flat section. But regardless, we had a great time skiing and are looking forward to going again.
I’ve added pictures from the weekend to Flickr.
February 20th, 2009
Emily and I arrived in our new home, Zurich, on Monday afternoon. We left Sunday afternoon and flew through Frankfurt to get here. The first flight was very long (11 hours) and uncomfortable and neither Emily or I were able to get any sleep. Emily has managed to adjust to the new timezone quite well, but jetlag hit me on Wednesday morning and I was wide awake at 4am. Since then, though, the jetlag hasn’t really affected me.
Our temporary home is the Novotel Hotel next to Emily’s office in Zurich City-West. We will be living there until a furnished, temporary apartment opens up. We will be starting our search for a permanent apartment soon, once we have a better idea of where to look.
We have spent our first few days wandering around getting to know the city. The public transportation is quite good here. The trams are clean and frequent and make it easy to get around. The city is smaller than I expected; it is possible to walk just about everywhere…although it is a little too cold to stay outside all day. The temperature has been just below freezing all week and it was snowing the first two days we were here. It has been awhile since Emily and I have had a “real” winter, so it is a bit of an adjustment for us. I guess those last years in San Fran have made us soft.
My first impression is that Zurich is a nice city and will be a good place to live. It is very clean, has good public transportation, a beautiful lake, and the charm of an old European city. I really like the old town part of the city, which is pedestrian (and tram) only and is made up of cobblestone streets and alleys. From a tourist perspective, there doesn’t seem to be too many “sights”, but I think it will be a good place to live.
The one downside to Zurich, though, has to be how expensive everything is, particularly the restaurants. I was somewhat expecting this, but I still felt the sticker shock when I saw a burger at an average restaurant for $30 CHF (swiss francs) which is about $25 US. The food is quite good and there are plenty of restaurants to choose from, but the only problem is that there don’t seem to be any cheap options. And when you are living in a hotel with no way to cook your own food, eating out for every meal starts to get expensive pretty quickly. But for now, we are just going to enjoy it and treat ourselves.
We have been getting by speaking English everywhere. Neither of us knew a word of German before a few days ago so we are trying to pick up as much as we can. So far that consists mainly of learning all the German words for food so that we can read the menus at the restaurants. We are picking it up as we go and will probably start looking into German classes soon. I’m sure we will be fluent in no time.
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