Schnee!

It's been rather cold of late around here (some days not even reaching zero!) which for us Aussies (and bear) this means a lot of being amazed by this weird white stuff falling from the sky. In addition to walking through (/around/under?) it every day to and from work, this also gives a few other options for getting ourselves around.

Transport method #1: Ice skating

There are two rinks that are a few tram stops away, and open until late on Wednesdays, so a group of us headed there one night to try a slightly more blade'd way of moving around. Federbaer did join in, but unfortunately there were no boots his size, so he found the slightly warmer way of getting around, as shown above. A few things made this rink feel very much unlike Australia:

(1) Outdoors! You could look up, and see sky. If you can do that at a rink in Aus, you're probably now actually standing in a puddle of water. (2) Only about 10 people on the entire rink, and they're not all just going in clockwise circles. (3) No cheesy 80s/90s music! and (4) Next door is another rink with ice hockey teams training; pretty fun to watch whilst resting sore skating ankles.

Transport method #2: Hiking

Not too far from where we live is a river that you can walk along, then up through sporting fields and around the foot of Uetliberg. 

At this time of year, when it's all white but the sun is also out, this leads to pretty impressive views and photo opportunities, see here for more pics.

Transport method #3: Snowboarding! (and skiing...)

Federbear missed this part of the journey, but Katie & I took the opportunity to visit the Laax/Flims ski resorts - just a few hours train east of Zurich, then a bus to the bottom of the mountain means this is another resort we can reach as a day trip. Plus, we stopped at Chur which ticks off another station to visit from the Ticket-to-ride Switzerland map :)

Overall the day was so nice (sunny, clear, good snow, ...) that the lifts were packed, but there's a lot of good choices for runs that it didn't feel too pressed for space, and lots of wide open pistes meant it was good for both my level of boarding and Katie's skiing, so we're keen to head back!

I also should say a big hello and thanks to all the aussies who added Zurich to their european travels and recently visited - Federbear had been missing the Australian accents, and hopefully you enjoyed your time in der Schweiz :)


That's all from now - apologies for the delay, there were a few posts scheduled to be added over January but for some reason they weren't...there might be a problem with Blogger, (who writes this stuff anyway? :p...) but those will be posted over the next few weeks.

Copenhagen, Lund and Stuttgart

If you were wondering where all the awesome posts about Katie and Pat's travels are, they're not here because Pat decided to post them on his own blog.

He's posts about other random stuff too, so I'll just link to the relevant articles from here.

Visiting Emma in Lund (and seeing Copenhagen too)
Weihnachtsmarkt in Stuttgart

Paris

Photos from Paris! Unfortunately no Pat or Federbär for this trip, I (Katie) went on a trip with my oldest friend, Eleanor! We took the train up on a Saturday and I came back on the Monday, and El stayed a bit longer before rejoining her family. About 80% of the photos I took are of the Palace of Versailles so I might put them in a separate post. Here are the other photos: 

Us on a train! It's about 4 hours from Zürich to Paris.

We approached Notre Dame from behind, this is me standing in front of the back.

Notre Dame from the front

This photo doesn't do it justice, but this is the impressive organ in Notre Dame for the enjoyment of my dad.

It was my first time in Paris, I can't not visit the Eiffel Tower, didn't bother going up though. 

The Seine

The missing Berlin Bears! When I was in Berlin last November, we'd heard about these bears and went to see them but couldn't find them anywhere, despite asking about 5 people for directions near where they were supposed to be. Turns out, they'd been moved to Paris! 

If you look closely this Creme Brûlée is still on fire (I was too slow taking my camera out) 

Sacré-Cœur Basilica, this was on the hill just above our hotel, very pretty at night, and an awesome view over Paris form the top of the hill.

A cheese dish with snails in it. Yes, I ate snails.

We happened to walk past the Moulin Rouge, so I thought I'd grab a picture.

All in all,  a really fun weekend! Plenty of good food and good company and Paris is definitely a very busy and lively city (maybe I'm just getting used to quiet Zürich) it reminded me a lot of New York, it's at least as dirty. :P The highlight was definitely Versailles (we spent a whole day there), so I'll have to post some more pictures.

Snow!

While Katie is away this weekend in Paris, I was keeping Federbaer company back in Zurich (comforting him after the lost final in Basel) when I found out on the Friday what the forecast was...0 degrees and snow!

I had already lined up some cold-weather clothes shopping for Saturday and a walk for Sunday, and lo and behold, while walking around on the Saturday some flakes started to appear. I wouldn't have called it snow at that stage though; nothing was staying on the ground, and it fell more like...light rain. As the sun set however, the flakes got slightly bigger. You can see on the left, the roof is still brown, but the fall itself was definitely visible.

So I fell asleep that night, with a Christmas-like hope that I'd get a picturesque present out the window the next morning (Oh, and an extra hour sleep. Although I think I have an increased hatred for DST now that I work on a calendaring system...). Thankfully, Zurich delivered, as overnight the snow had continued, and now it covered the ground and was still coating everything with white. The same view out the window was now:

I didn't bring my proper camera on the day's trip later (not sure how well it'd survive being snowed on. Federbaer stayed at home citing the same reason...), but managed to take this collection on my phone:

People often say, when hearing that I came from Australia, that Sydney has great weather. In reality, I'm a huge fan of cold weather, where you can explore with a coat, beanie, scarf, gloves, boots, ... so I look forwards to sharing more of these shots over the winter!
In other less exciting-weather news, we also managed to stretch out for a tame hike down the side of Lake Zurich last weekend to the Au Halbinsel*, which should be covered soon, stay tuned.
(*German word for the day: Halbinsel = 'half-island', quite close to paene insula = peninsula. Latin actually coming in useful...)

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: