Pre-Travelogue. Midnight in Zurich. 8/27/22

Greetings from Zurich –

Just a reminder… as I say every time I write this blog… feel free to delete or ignore; no hard feelings; everyone is busy.

Anyway, here we are in Switzerland – a very calm and not very exotic trip, so probably shorter notes than usual and less exciting. Bigger travel to come in December. We are here in Switzerland for Michael’s niece’s wedding in Geneva which will take place on Saturday, September 3. Given that we were in Geneva in May en route to Malta, we were originally coming just for the wedding – four days and then back to the US. But as we thought about it and reconsidered. We decided to make a little Switzerland journey out of the trip—visiting cities we have not been to in many years. And so, here we are at the start of our trip – in Zurich. Took non-stop flight from SF and after watching 5 episodes of Yellowstone on the flight—I’m now hooked!—and one little sappy story about Barack meeting Michelle, arrived in the ultra-clean city of Zurich and similarly clean and scrubbed Switzerland. Apparently there are about 2,000 homeless in the entire country of nearly 9 million people. They are pretty invisible, and I have heard that there are very strict laws against sleeping on streets and in parks.

After checking into the tiny Hotel Helmhaus which is on the edge of the Old Town and about one block from the river, we set out for a walk along the river’s edge. The water is incredibly clean and supposedly is safe to drink. The Limmat River runs through the whole city and it is a delightful respite. As we strolled we noticed that there were literally hundreds or more people floating in the river and hundreds more in line to get into the river. Each had a little duck float that they were holding, tied to, or merely playing with. Adults, kids… everyone. And this had been going on for hours. Apparently it’s the end of an art week and this was some kind of celebration. I think it might also have been a bit of a fundraiser, but not sure (hope it was since it could have yielded some good funds for some organization). We watched everyone enter the water and float down river and get replaced by others just entering the river. 

After a brief nap, we headed to Gul, a Turkish restaurant we had read about which turned out to be pretty great. Very casual.. three courses as a “surprise menu”.. but each course consisted of about four small plates. It was about a mile from the hotel so we strolled back at a leisurely pace passing lots of cyclists and pedestrians along the way. Tomorrow, after we pick up our rental car, we head to Lucerne; we will be back in Zurich for three nights at the end of our trip. Our drive will be: Zurich to Lucerne to Thun to Bern to Geneva, and back to Zurich. Hopefully pretty relaxing, although I did bring the final chapters of my book with me to try to move that along to meet my deadlines.

All the best –

Fern