Sojourn in Switzerland

Trip Start May 25, 2008
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Trip End Jul 30, 2008


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Monday, July 28, 2008

Last week was my final week of work at Marquardt and homestay with the Minder family. I was pretty sad to have to leave them. They really treated me well. Before leaving, I did one more biking journey around the town to see the springs on the east side and the Alte Berg chapel to the south.

Saturday morning I caught a train to Zürich and then checked in to my hostel there. For the first day, I was alone, so I wandered around town, half just sightseeing and half hunting down record stores. Luckily, I found maybe a dozen, but unluckily, they were also incredibly expensive to the point that I couldn't justify buying more than two CDs. (Used and new records and CDs were about 28-32 francs = 26-28 USD.) I also popped into the Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of dada. They had a dream machine exhibit in the lower level, but the actual cabaret part was closed due to vacation. I ate a falafel (well over twice as expensive as the German and Austrian variety) and then headed back to the hostel to figure out something to do for the evening. I went to my room and found two young Germans there who invited me to go hang around town with them - it was good fun.

The next day I spent most of the morning and afternoon in the Swiss National Museum. It's basically a historical and cultural museum of Switzerland - very interesting stuff. There are some gardens behind it that were also quite nice. All the way to the back is the point where the two rivers of Zürich, the Sihl and Limmat, meet up. I happened to notice a plaque there noting that that location was a favorite of James Joyce's while he was living there and writing Finnigan's Wake. In the afternoon I met up with three friends, two Americans through my program and one Canadian also on an internship through the Berufsakadamie.

Monday we took our rental car out to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. We mostly just walked around all day and enjoyed the beautiful city and landscape. The city sits atop a peninsula formed around a curve in the Aar river. We climbed the tower of the Münster (cathedral) to get a great view. We were going to go wade around in the river, but storm clouds threatened and we decided to head back to Zürich. We waded around a bit in the Zürichsee (Lake Zurich) to make up for it.
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