Lindenhof

There is a small hill near the middle of the really old old-town in Zurich, called Lindenof hill, which has a nice view over the main northern exit to the lake, but also has an amazingly impressive history - ranging from BC bronze-age settlements, and including substantial Roman, Celtic and Middle-age ruins. Recently, Federbär decided to take us there to see the sites, and explore the slightly more northern section of town.

This is also the site for the vines-on-a-bridge, vines-on-a-lamp and headless trio from the previous post - and as you can see from the skies, it was a wonderful day to explore. What is more, as seen below, Federbär managed to find some locals playing chess (including, I kid you not, an older gruff looking man with a suit and pipe).

Federbär's analysis: win to black?

After Lindenhof, we headed east across the water to the old town area where Katie had stayed on her first visit, and then up the hill to the university ETH Zurich - one of the top ranked Unis in the world, and which counts Einstein and John Von Neumann among its Alumni! Students certainly seemed to have some great views out the front of the main building, and I'm sure the classes inside are equally as impressive. I decided to take this opportunity to test making videos with the miniature setting of mine phone too, resulting in:

One of the university buildings

At the end, after a day of walking up and down two hills that was enough for all three of us (even the one being carried by others...), more photos are available in this album, but this restaurant in particular caught our eye as one to come back and try at some point. Make sure to click to zoom in to get a good view of the meal names!

Random photos from around Zürich

Here's a bunch of photos I've taken around Zürich which didn't seem to fit into any cohesive story or statement. Also, a lot of them the most interesting thing in the photo is some kind of vine, what can I say? I like vines. :)

You wouldn't guess this is practically in the city, and it's 3min walk from our new  place!

The same building a little closer, it's apparently an art museum, but we haven't been inside yet.

Vines....

More (and prettier) vines.

Two headless women and one headless man, it's also one the many drinking water fountains around Zürich. 

Vines on a bridge!

Vines on a street lamp!

Swan 

A clock made of plants, and it actually tells the correct time (how could it not?)

Found this out the back of a local church, no idea what these stairs are meant to be for... or why they go nowhere...

Uetliberg 2 - photos

We had a few hours to spare on Saturday, and it was a really nice day, so I decided to test my new camera out and follow Federbaer up Uetliberg, the mountain that had been staring over us all week long. Most of this was covered last post, but I thought I'd give it from another view, and with the fruits of my new camera :)
I'd made the mistake last trip of trying to walk up it on a Sunny day, so this time instead we took the train to the top, enjoying the views over Zurich along the way. Even getting of the train, our journey was not yet over however, and after about another 10 minutes of walking up hill we reached the peak, with Katie and Federbear enjoying the view:

It was a great view from up the top, both giving a sense of the size of the city (not actually all that big, compared to e.g. Sydney, but very flat) but also they lay of the land - from the top, you still couldn't see the end of the lake, but you could see plenty of Alps (including Snow! very far away...) plus lots of small towns in the middle of forrested hills when facing the other side of the mountain.

Meanwhile, as it happened there was a big shooting festival going on just at the bottom of the slope where it turns back into civilisation - which meant from where we stood, you could here the contestants firing, and also admire the views of the tiny people riding the tiny rollercoasters and ferris wheel. It seemed the perfect opportunity to test out the 'miniature' setting on my camera:

The latter photo is from the top of a radio tower at the peak which you can walk up, and get an even higher view of town. It was at the bottom of that where Federbaer enjoyed his iced coffee mentioned in the previous post, and after which we headed down a hiking slope to reach the bottom, surrounded by greenery and flowing water (and odd numbered light posts) all the way down, some of us taking a rest part way:

Finally, the entire album is available to browser here. I leave you today though with the best shot of them all - one of the outtakes from the trip was when I was trying to take another Zurich panorama and Federbaer managed to photobomb his way into the shot:

Uetliberg and Knabenschiessen!

On Saturday we finally tried out the bakery near where we're staying and then spent the morning at some fairly uneventful apartment inspections around Wiedikon. We've now got a list of more places we would like to check out, and will probably be spending a lot of time next week visiting and applying for places. After the inspections we stopped at an italian place for lunch, where the waiter tried to teach me to say "Es schmeckt gut!" (it tastes good!) in a more swiss way, which I don't remember now... :/

 

Since it was a clear and sunny day, we decided to head up Uetliberg, the local mountain, which is near Zürich. Because it was very hot and we're lazy, we took the train up almost to the top and then walked down. Here are some pictures from the top. I didn't take many because Pat has a much fancier camera and took much better shots. (coming soon)

Federbär and the lake

The west side of Zürich

Zürich and the lake

At the top we stopped at a restaurant, and had some food, Pat ordered an iced coffee and I had a hot chocolate. The iced coffee, strangely enough, had the viscosity of pudding, I mean it was delicious, just unexpected. Here is Federbär having a taste...

When you come visit us here in Zürich, I highly recommend the trip up to the top of Uetliberg, it's a great view and the walk through the forest is great! Everything is so green! The path down is very steep, but since you're going down it's not so bad (or there is still the train). 

From up there we could hear gun shots from the Knabenschiessen, a shooting competition for high school kids. We get a half-day public holiday on Monday for the purpose of this event, there is also a Fair. It turns out that the fair ground is just at the bottom on Uetliberg on our way home. So we walked straight through it.

Not a great picture, but the only one I took of the fair

I bought some Biberli which is a kind of packet made of Lebkuchen (same texture as soft gingerbread but not ginger flavour) and filled with a sweet paste made from nuts, in this case Hazelnuts (Haselnuss). It was awesome, definitely will look out for that one again.

We also had some Raclette which is a delicious mixture of melted cheese on either Bread or Potatoes, and Pat bought some beef on a stick, which came with some bread on the end too, which we don't recall the name of. 

Raclette mit Kartoffeln (Raclette cheese with potatoes)

Pat with beef on a stick

At the end of the day, our feet were sore but we'd had a great time. Pat has much better photos from Uetliberg, which he'll post here sometime next week. 

Day 3: On coffee and dinosaurs

Pat and Federbär looking at the view

So far we've been walking pretty much everywhere, so we've been getting a good look around the area which we're staying in and the surrounds, on a whim we walked up a hill and found a nice park with a view over the city and grass which would be described in australia as 'impossibly green'.

 

We still haven't found anywhere with good coffee yet and Pat is looking forward to Monday so he can make his own coffee at work. Above is what a cappuccino looks like and Pat pretending to be enjoying his coffee.

 

On the other hand, the food in general has been really good. And ordering a hot chocolates brings you a mug of steamed milk and a packet, it works pretty well - you can make it to whatever strength you like, only I spilled the powder everywhere. oops...

There's this pretty river/canal that runs through part of the town, where the water is extremely clear (it comes straight from the lake) and you can see fish swimming around in it. It has a path that runs alongside it until it joins a much larger muddier river, and further upstream there's walls built around parts of it for a Flussbad (river bath).

In the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) we heard a band playing so we went to investigate and next to the band was a very large box labelled "Lebende Tiere" (live animals) with a chain wrapped around it. So we waited around for a bit as the crowd grew and then with much fanfare and smoke and green light, the box opened and out came this dinosaur!

We still have no idea what this event was for, perhaps there's a dinosaur exhibit on at a local museum, there wasn't any sign or announcement that we saw.

And lastly, we had to go back to the Sprüngli store to get some more Luxemburgli, here is Federbär enjoying them back at the apartment.

Day 2: Buying an umbrella and other essentials

The first task for Friday morning was to find breakfast. 

After finding a likely place online, we went on a nice walk through our nearby area, past some pretty houses and a school with (apparently) some unhappy students...

Schools are prisons!

So many of the buildings here are old and pretty, some have flowers on all the balconies and most of them have shutters on the windows so they look like cottages! I've decided that window shutters are a fantastic idea, you can block out the sun before it even hits the window, why do we not do this in Australia??

We had an amazing breakfast of pancakes (Pfannkuchen) and I ordered an ice tea (Eistee) and didn't understand what was said when asked what flavour I wanted, so I ended up picking one which I didn't know what it was, called "Ingwer" which turned out to be ginger. :) According to Pat, we have yet to find 'good' coffee apart from at work, the search will continue tomorrow.

Since it was raining, we hid inside for most of the day and ventured out in the afternoon to explore the town and pick up a few essential goods. Namely, I needed a swiss power cord for my laptop (I didn't like our chances of finding another australian-swiss adapter) and Pat needed a new umbrella because his was hopelessly broken. Federbär wanted to see the lake, so we did:

Federbär in front of lake Zürich

Swans and very cold looking ducks!

Pat eventually found an umbrella, this was more difficult than we thought because the newsagents here don't capitalize on the bad weather by setting umbrellas, we found one in a clothing store. I went to the mac store only to discover that they don't sell just the power adapter cord, and I asked one of the guys there because I didn't want to be yet another whole power adapter. He was exceedingly friendly and when I explained that we'd just moved here from Australia, he said he'd check out the back so we waited for him, and he brought out just a power cord for free! :)

Next was the Sprüngli cafe where the hot chocolate is delicious and the desserts fantastic! (I didn't get any luxembergli this time, but there'll be another time...raspberry, rhubarb and icecream/cream pictured above.)

We had dinner on the way home at a place Pat had wanted to visit (after failing badly at ordering on his last visit due to language barriers), and I managed to stay awake until 8pm this time! Hopefully I'll be mostly over jet lag by Monday.