Saturday, June 7, 2014
Goodbye Switzerland
I got a window seat on our return flight home and no amount of begging by Adam could convince me to give it up. I got some great last shots of the lakes and mountains. Until next time Switzerland!
The Zurich airport is huge.
City of Zurich
The alps
View toward the bay of Normandy (coincidentally on the 70th anniversary of the WWII landing!)
Group dynamics
This was a rather unusual group of students. Of all the groups that I have traveled with, these people got along better than any other. There was no member of the group who earned the designation as the "annoying one" or the "late one". Everyone was where they needed to be when they needed to be. Everyone helped each other and looked out for each other. The whole group was pretty adventuresome. I would provide unlimited transit passes in each city and before I knew it the group was scattered to go exploring. I actually had a fair amount of 'down time' when I could explore on my own without anyone else tagging along and that was fun.
It was funny to read in the students' travel journals about which cities and sites they liked best. Some clearly loved the energy and night life of the cities, some were much more enthusiastic about the quiet get away places. We seemed to strike a pretty good balance between different types of places.
With things going mostly smoothly, I expect I'll take on the responsibility of leading the trip again in two years.
Our last night on the trip...Zurich picnic dinner.
Planes, trains and automobiles...
We got to ride on a lot of different modes of transportation...however, automobile was not one of them. It always feels strange to come back home and drive again after several weeks without use of a car.
Airplane
[No pic]
Minibus - our first ride out of the Rome airport to our hostel. We went in three different vans and I'm so thankful everyone arrived at the hostel without incident.
Tour bus - Rome - Hop on, Hop off.
[no pic - I was too busy getting robbed in Milan]
Metro - Rome, Milan
Train - Rome, Venice, Milan, Geneva, Zurich
Vaporetto - Venice
Gondola -Venice (Adam but not me)
Single and double bikes - Venice
Tram - Milan, Geneva and Zurich
Cable Car - Geneva
Tour boat - Geneva
Trolley bus - Geneva
[no pic]
Elevator - Venice tower, Zurich hostel (but no where else!)
Escalators and moving sidewalks - all over
By foot - every where!
Meals
We mostly ate well on the trip, but I will be glad to get home to my own kitchen and my own cooking. In Italy we had a choice of pasta or pizza whatever restaurant we were in. That is fine for a few days, but after a week we started actively looking for non-Italian food. We were so excited to arrive in Geneva to discover Japanese, Indian, and other ethnic options. Unfortunately the cost of living is so exorbitant in Geneva, we ended up eating at the local grocery store (Migros) for most of our meals. (I was still delighted to be able to find hummus as a food choice on the shelves, having looked without success in each city in Italy).
We had a variety of breakfasts provided at our different lodgings. The one in Rome was classic continental breakfast with bread, meat, cheese, yogurt, hardboiled eggs, and cornflakes. The most delicious option were the fresh baked croissants. In Venice the spread was less impressive, with bread and cornflakes, but no meat or cheese or yogurt. The croissants were still delicious, especially with jam inside! Milan did not provide breakfast at all. I expected a weak breakfast in Geneva, but it was actually quite good with yogurt and granola (not just cornflakes), several varieties of fresh baked breads, (real) nutella and jams.
I took this picture for fun. Its the breakfast that one of the borders at the Geneva hostel was eating. I found the tea in a bowl and cornflakes in a cup very funny. She did not see me take the picture and I did not ask for an explanation.
Being Swiss?
I've had a love of Switzerland since I first visited 8 years ago and that has not changed. David and I joke about retiring in Geneva, and who knows if that is even in the realm of possible, but it is still appealing. I feel an affinity for the country and the people. I like the orderliness and structure, I love the beauty of the natural environment. I really enjoy the international cross roads with some many languages and cultures coming together.
Adam told me one day as we were walking that I could "be Swiss" if I just dressed a little more formally. (I don't think I could ever be mistaken for anything other than an American in Italy). This thought was reinforced in the airport when the customs official as me if I was resident in the US or Switzerland. I guess with my numerous passport stamps I fit the profile of an ex-pat American living abroad.
"The giant ashtray"
Just had to note David's description of the Zurich train station. It was huge and gray, and filled with people smoking. In the late afternoon the haze hung in the air very clearly as the sun shone in from the windows in the three story high atrium. Not sure if it was a problem (in our view) in Zurich because of different city ordinances or a different smoking culture, but it was kind of unpleasant.
Exterior of the train station, obviously the air is clearer here.
City Trolley- Zurich
I was so determined to get a bus tour of Zurich for the brief afternoon that we were there, I finally succeeded. I tried to email 3 times before the trip to make group reservations, no reply. I had our host in Geneva call and she said the 12:00 and 2:00 tours were full for that day. No luck. I decided to show up anyway and see what we could do. They decided to schedule an extra tour that day, so we chilled for several hours (many of the students went to Starbucks, some went to the waterfront and rented paddle boats, our family went to the park), then got our tour. It was pretty well done. The audio commentary gave a lot of history of the city (and perhaps oversold it a bit), and we got to stop several times to take pictures.
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland with approx 300,000 people (smaller than Wichita!) Its at the mouth of the Limmat river that runs into a large lake (Lake Zurich??) and the waterfront is beautiful. There are several historic churches, one with the largest clockface in the world. The old city is a pedestrian zone with small curvy streets reminescent of Venice. The main shopping street is full of both high end and more moderate shops and lots of cafes where you can people watch. (In fact I was standing in line to buy airport train tickets and overheard a young man tell some visiting young men who were trying to decide what to do for several hours, that they should just people watch, "there's lots of good looking women" he said with a nod toward one lady in the line ahead of us. Funny!)
I would have loved to have spent another day or two in the city. Maybe in the future.
Panoramic of the waterfront
Postcard of the Chagal stainedglass in the church (no photos allowed). Very modern and beautiful
Time in the park
I love the park spaces in Europe. They are always well used and full of interesting people to watch. I guess when you live in big cities and few people have their own yards, the parks are a great get away. In Geneva and Zurich in particular I noticed a ton of people picnicking in the parks (this was clearly not encouraged in Venice with all the "no picnic" signs in nice resting places along the canals - perhaps this is to avoid too much trash in the canals??) There were lots of business people grabbing lunch outdoors.
In Zurich we had some time to kill before our city bus tour, so David, Delaney and I went to a nearby park to eat and play. Delaney naturally made friends with a little girl who was playing on the swings. They had a fun time together. Language barriers do not seem to present much of a problem for her : )
Two of the parks we were in had large chess sets for public use. The one in Geneva was in use often with multiple boards. This one in Zurich was being used by some amatuers when we were there.
One of the strangest things I observed in the park in Zurich was a machine the size of a riding lawnmower being driven over the gravel walkways. It had a device attached in front that had steam flowing out of it. It was not raking the gravel, just steaming it. My best guess is that the steam killed the small weeds that were growing up in the gravel. Talk about a specialized piece of machinery!
Ride to Zurich
We had a little "oops" today with our train ride. We were scheduled for the 8:45 train to Zurich and arrived about 30 mins early at the station. We saw that our train was scheduled to depart from platform 8 and moved to platform 8. A train was on the platform and Zurich was listed as one of its destinations, so we hopped on. We knew we did not have assigned seating, so we grabbed seats quickly in case the train filled up (the train to Geneva was oversold and people were sitting on their luggage in the aisles between cars). When the train pulled out of the station at 8:20, I realized that we were in fact on an earlier train to Zurich. I looked at our tickets and realized that they were 'open tickets' - any seat any time on that day. Sigh of relief **
We moved from the southern-French speaking part of Switzerland into the German speaking part during the train ride. This became most evident in the change of signage on the train that started out by reading "Prochain arret..." (Next stop in French) to "Nachstar halt..." (Next stop in German).
Climbing things in Europe
Although I love to climb the stairs of cathedrals to see the view at the top, I do NOT love to climb the stairs of my hostel with my luggage in tow. I think in all of the places we stayed I was in a room on the top floor. In Zurich it was the highest, on the fifth floor. Thankfully there was a lift/elevator there to help, but it was so small it took 5 rides to get our whole group upstairs with our luggage.
On the 4th floor (which is really the 5th floor if you count the ground floor as 1 like we do in the US, instead of 0 like they do in Europe)
Our room in a classic youth hostel, our last night in Switzerland.
Accommodations to disabilities?
As we transited our final train station, I mentioned to Adam that I was curious about the raised white lines that I have seen in various stations throughout the trip. They are parallel double lines that run kind of like a path, but have no signage associated with them at all. He speculated that maybe they were designed for the visually impaired. We both tracked them more carefully in the last station and at the airport and I think he might be right. They tended to run to the side of the main hallways and had raised hashmarks where they intersected with other paths heading in different directions. I'll have to keep this in mind in the future to see if there is more verification of this observation. My first thought was to dismiss it because there are so few wheelchair accommodations in Europe (and small steps up and down everywhere!), so I assumed that there would be few accommodations for other impairments as well. This is perhaps a less expensive accommodation than putting in ramps everywhere in a stair filled environment.
Public sculptures?
In many of the squares throughout Geneva, we found these strange shaped, astroturf covered sculptures. This one was directly outside our hostel and whenever it was free, members of our group would lounge on it. Delaney loved played a hiding, spying game on it, and the local kids obviously enjoyed them too. I never saw any signage that indicated why they were in the squares.
Telepherique- mountain cable car
We took the cable car (telepherique) to the top of the nearest mountains overlooking Geneva. The cliff face was pretty shear and it was being quarried for stone as well. The actual cable car and mountain were in French territory, so we took our passports with us. We were not stopped as we walked across the border however. The French town that is there is basically indistinguishable from the Geneva suburbs.
Looking up the mountain and at the quarry.
Half way up with the other cable car coming down toward us.
panoramic view of Geneva. We were worried that with the rain we wouldn't be able to see anything, but the view was great.
I decided to hike down with two other members of the group instead of taking the cable car back. It was a great hiking trail, although pretty steep. We crossed the road several times and this is how steep it was!
There were lots of wild flowers.
The woods were beautiful
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