5 posts tagged “switzerland”

The Uni in Zurich is on a hill, as you might guess, and provides quite of view.  Zurich is one of those rare cities that you can actually witness the size of.  It's big.


The Zoological museum was also quite interesting, though not as novel, I must admit.   It had the same animals-I'd-never-seen-before as at the Zoo.  Just dead.  That took a little wind out of my sails, but I knew there was at least one more zoo in my near future, so I survived.  As you may be able to tell from that photo, they had a special exhibit about the Steinbock aka mountain goat.  They only had one or two mounted ones, but they had lots of photos and information about current research, and VIDEOS OF GOATS CLIMBING! YESSSS!  This is the second of the bock tie-ins, the first being that it's the town seal of Schaffhausen.  They also had a stuffed bird called (literal translation) a Parrot Owl.  It looked kinda like an owl, but it had these beautiful green/mottled feathers.  I'd never even heard of such a thing.  Crazy.

Because it was windy and cold and I'd only brought my sweatshirt, I figured it might be time to head to the hostel and check in and take a break.  5pm is too late to "take a break".  I got a crepe in the train station on my way to the baggage lockers, and it was SO good.  Drool.  They were having a big market inside the terminal (which randomly has a HUGE open space?) with lots of stands set up.  I wish I'd spent more time in it.  The tram to the hostel was fairly long, and then it was another 5 minute walk, so I realized I didn't quite have it in me to go back into Zurich and then back out for dinner.  There was a grocery store-slash-cafeteria by the tram stop, so I bought some goodies for the train (apricots and mini stroopwaffeln) and had bizzare, European jalapeno poppers and a piece of quiche for dinner.  When I got back I had roommates, two American girls from Maine and Pennsylvania who were traveling together on a Eurail pass during THEIR study abroad (England) spring break.  They were quite nice and we talked for a while.  We'd had very different days in Zurich, as I'd just gone to museums and they'd just walked and walked.  They were doing two nights in each city, so they'd spend half a day on the train, then half the day in the city, the next FULL day in the city, and then get up at the crack of dawn to get their next train.  They were coming from Paris, and heading to Munich, and will be in Berlin tomorrow, just like me!  I wrote them a note about things to do in Munich, and they wrote me a note with their cell phone number if I wanted to meet up in Berlin.   I'm not so sure that'll happen, but I'll definitely message them on Facebook to inquire about their trip!

Day 4

The next day I caught a not-so-crack-of-dawn 9:14 train to Stuttgart.  I was VERY ready to go home by Thursday, but I had unlimited rail travel for the day, and more animals to see!  From Zurich to Schaffhausen, I sat across from a young man on the train who was reading a book about organic chemistry, which seemed like it might've been in English.  As I guessed, he got off at Schaffhausen, which I thought was a hoot, because my Dad is an organic chemist, and that's why HE was in Schaffhausen a few years ago.  I guess you had to be there.

Though I saw almost nothing of Stuttgart, the city impressed me.  The train station was nice, and in a nice area, and the U-bahn that I took to Wilhelma (which was entirely painless to get to) passed a stop called Mineral-Bäder, which means "mineral baths".  Beyond the platform I saw a large, open, green space spotted with pools of water, as well as a spa-type mineral bath facility.  At the Wilhelma stop, I was greeted with this:

And that's not tromp l'oeil on that wall, either!

There was some jaw-dragging involved in this particular venture.  I was really excited that this place had a walking tour so that I didn't have to wander aimlessly and miss the elephants, but was then crushed to hear that the maps were not free!  If nothing else, speaking German is good for being a tourist.  I assumed (foolishly) that the trail might be marked, and set off through the greenhouses.  The path was not marked, but I was beyond the point of no return (stubbornnesswise).  Luckily there were maps every here and there and arrows to certain animals, and I don't think I missed anything.

The gardens, the grounds and the buildings were spectacular!  Unfortunately, the animals were not really integrated, but rather kept in areas on the periphery and on the hill above the park.  There were fewer animals than in the Zurich zoo, and though one could get MUCH closer to them (good for me, bad for them?) they didn't seem as happy.  On a couple of occaisions, there were animals sharing enclosures that didn't seem to make sense, and the emperor penguins looked MISERABLE.  The polar bears where gorgeous, though, and seemed to be on parade, back and forth on their rocks.  They looked a little agitated, but majestic.

As you can see, the Alpensteinbock reenters the story for a third time here!  In the fourth photo you can see him skillfully negotiating some steep rocks in the enclosure in Wilhelma.  They're really a wonder to watch.  They can climb practically vertical surfaces!  You never want to leave!  They just climb up and down so effortlessly without slipping or anything.  I want one!

After a few hours in Wilhelma, feeling like I'd seen everything, I headed back to the train station, grabbed my bags, called my folks, and dragged myself onto one last train.  It was a great trip.

Thoughts on Switzerland

I liked it a lot, and didn't find it to be particularly expensive, except for the food.  I was bowled over by how different Swiss German was.  I'd only hear a few words out of a sentence, and the rest sounded like Hebrew to me - Swiss German has more of the gutteral sounds that people joke about German having.  Especially quirky about Swiss German, is that they all (seem to) speak regular High German, too.  I was locking my bags up in Zurich when a guy came up to me and said something I didn't understand at all, so I said "I'm sorry, I don't understand Swiss German" (in German), and he said "Oh, do you know how much a locker costs?", clear as day.  There was a lot of that.

Another thing that I liked about Switzerland, was that it made me feel German!  In Switzerland, or at least this part, you deal in either Swiss German, German, French or Italian.  So when I walked into a particular place and spoke in German, to them, I was German.  When I thought about "going home", I meant Regensburg.  (College is a confusing time in that way, how many "homes" do I have now?  Three?).  It was also nice that when I addressed someone in German, they answered in German.  In Regensburg it happens fairly frequently that they hear your accent, and either ask if you're British, start speaking English, or even ask IF you speak German.  That was not a problem at all in Switzerland.  It would seem that as far as the rest of Europe is concerned I'm German.  Cool!

The 5 franc piece in Switzerland is a coin.  It is an enormous, heavy coin.  That was weird.

Thoughs on Traveling Alone

I didn't get murdered!  My first thought when deciding to embark on this trip alone, was that I'd be constantly feeling threatened and looking over my shoulder.  That was not the case at all, even wearing a sweatshirt with English on it, and even in Zurich.  As a safety precaution, however, I didn't go out after dark, which I realize impacted my experience, but to a degree that I felt was acceptable.

I did get lonely, starting on the evening of the second day, I would say.  It was hard to see and experience all these, wild, new things and have nobody to talk to about them!  It was boring to eat alone.  People on trains and in hostels did not try to befriend me because I was alone, as was predicted by Jason's mom.  That was okay with me, I tend to freak out in situations like that anyway.

A clear benefit of being alone was that I could do what I wanted with my time, and there were no debates.  It was great, and arguably made the loneliness worth it.  I changed my itinerary twenty times a day.  I spent half an hour on the floor of a used book store.  I don't think I would've had near the same experience with a travel buddy.  And yeah, it worried my parents a little, but I made it, and nothing even got stolen.  I am the king of the world.

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The fourth occurrence of the bock, is, of course, in Regensburg, at the Kneitinger Brewery.  The perfect conclusion, don't you think?  That's why I bought one:

I meant Johann like Johann Kneitinger, but it occurs to me that his full name could be Johann Sebastian Bock, so I guess it works.

(and if you're wondering, the new title banner is the view of the Rhine from where I ate my pizza in Schaffhausen)

Other favorite animals included: capybaras (not dissimilar to ROUSes), viscachas (like giant kangaroo rats), and emperor tamarins (the German word for tamarin is translated literally as "diminutive lion monkey").  You saw capybaras in my post yesterday.


Apparently the zoo is making waves by having a faux rainforest.  It is actually a cool idea - they have a giant greenhouse with a mock Madagascar national park in it.  The only problem is that there are no visible non-bird animals, and it's kinda smelly and boring.  But the presentation is cool, and they also have informational kiosks about the people of the area and sell handmade crafts to raise money for non-profits.  The counterintuitiveness of signage came into play again at the zoo, when I followed signs to the elephant and ended up in a parking lot, having to re-enter through the front gate.  Oh well.  Great zoo, though.  I highly recommend it.  The zoo restaurant, rather unfortunately named "Siesta!" (hmm...I wonder why...?) was expensive and kind of awkwardly devoid of appealing food.  I was willing to be scammed out of a few francs in the spirit of zoo-osity, though.

It was really wonderful to be able to lock my suitcase in a locker at the trainstation, so I didn't have to drag it around everywhere with me. I did the same thing again in Stuttgart.  That's a good tip for travel in Europe.  I was about to say I'll miss that in the states, but the rail system in the US is completely useless to begin with, so it's a moot point.

My arrival in Schaffhausen was uneventful until I tried to buy a bus ticket but could not, because there was a handful of teenagers standing around the ticket machine yelling "sieg heil!".  Great welcome, right?  My guess is that they were doing it for the schock value, because most Nazis are big on the uniform, but it still scared the hell out of me.  I ended up buying a ticket on the bus, and in retrospect, judging by the look of the bus ticket, I couldn't have bought one from that machine anyway.  Needless to say the bus ride to the youth hostel was spent deciding whether or not to take the bus right back to the station and go back to Regensburg.  The hostel was in a nice location just outside of the town center, about a 15 minute walk, though extremely uphill.  Europe is seriously lacking in topo maps.  The building was clearly quite old - the staircase was a spiral stone one up a tower.  The first night I was the only one in a room for eight with an adjacent turret room.

The first day, I decided to walk down to the center of town to see how bad the walk was, and to get dinner.  Let me tell you, the walk down is nothing.  The last leg is through a beautiful park, which contained this lovely sign:


I soon discovered that a) almost half of everything is closed on Mondays, and b) Swiss food is quite expensive.  Finding that most entrees were around $20 American, I began a Foos-style stake out.  I tried following this friendly stray cat that I met, but he/she/ze didn't lead me anywhere good.  I eventually found an Italian restaurant that had a 10-franc pizza special.  As that was about $8.25, I sprung and got a pesto-chicken pizza.  I carried it down to the end of the street and ate it while sitting on a bench on the banks of the Rhine.

I had no map, and thus could not find the nearest bus station, so had no choice for getting home but to retrace my steps.  It's really a lot rougher going up, but I'm not THAT lazy, and I didn't give up once the bus stops appeared.  Okay, I am that lazy, I'm also that cheap.  I fell asleep as soon as I got back to the room.

Day 2:

Tuesday was my official day in Schaffhausen.  Breakfast in the hostel was at 8am, so I got up at 8 and had breakfast in my [matching!] Wesleyan Ultimate sweatpants and sweatshirt before taking a shower and heading off.  As I waited next to the hostel for my bus, it began to POUR, which was not a good start to my day.  Especially since there was no bus shelter on my side.  I bought a day pass for the bus (yay!), and went straight to the visitor information center, which I had been told opened at 9.  Nope.  I was one of three people waiting when it opened at 9:30.  Luckily the rain had...lessened...by then.  It ended up burning off completely and giving way to a blue sky within the hour.  I bought a postcard to send to my Dad, who bought be Schaffhausen postcards when I was little, and they gave me two free postcards with my purchase.  It worked out well for me.  I also picked up a free map and found out how to get to the town of Stein am Rhein, which I'd heard very impressive things about (turns out you go to the train station and buy a ticket.  Duh.)  Genetics, of course, kicked in and I started poring over the map before I'd left the building.  Though my plan was to go straight to the Rheinfall, I discovered that there was a "sehenswürdigkeit" (thing to see) just around the corner called the "Knight's House", and figured I could do one little thing before getting back on schedule.  So, having no idea what the Knight's House WAS, I set off to go see it.

The original painting was done in 1485, but is now in a museum.  The current work is from just before WWII.  It was pretty freakin' cool.  Oh and get this, guess what's housed on the ground floor?  A pharmacy!

Further down the street there was an open air market, and though I didn't need vegetables, eggs, honey or flowers, I did get caught staring at the pastries.  I bought this:

Because they speak Swiss German rather than German in Switzerland, I have no idea what it was.  I will admit to having crammed it in my mouth a little more than I should've, because I saw a yarn store.  I also saw a home gift store! and a used bookstore!  Believe it or not, I dropped the most money on books.  As previously related, I am in the process of finding a literary work worth translating for my thesis, and I've been asking around to the German kids I've been hanging out with.  They both said "Nietzsche weinte" (english title "When Nietzsche wept") was their favorite book, but then both conceided that it'd probably already been translated.  Manu tried to think of books she liked that probably weren't in English, but when I later looked into it, all the ones she's mentioned already were.  Back to Schaffhausen.  I found a book in the bookstore that Manu liked called "Ansichten eines Clowns" (english title: "The Clown") by Heinrich Böll, so I bought that.  I also found a book called "Irgenwo anderswo: Kolumnen 1980-1985" (translation: Somewhere, Elsewhere: Columns 1980-1985) by Peter Bichsel, who is actually a noted author.  I am still trying to find out whether it's in English, and of course I need to read it first!  But who knows?  Maybe it will be something.

Of course after I finished buying things, I looked at the map again, and once again decided to delay my Rheinfall trip to visit the Festung Munot, the stairs to which were only a block away.  I'm not sure what the Munot is/was, and it was impossible to get a picture of it that showed the whole structure.  It's from the 1500s, my Dad things it was a refuge for the people in case of an attack, the internet says Albrecht Dürer might have designed it, and there is absolutely no information in the structure itself.  So I'm going to offer you what I have:
The building is a ring with a tower in the front, and the ring is more like a cake than a ring.  It looks like a ring at first, but there is a floor in the middle that is lower than the exterior walls, but higher than the ground.  The second photo is the belly of the cake, if that makes sense.  And those are deer in the third photo.  There's apparently a tradition of having deer in the depression around the Munot, so they still have them.  That was a little bit of a time warp moment, seeing the deer hanging out.

In the lower set of photos, you can see the view down the hill from the Munot, and the view of the tower from the top of the "cake".  The houses you can see at the bottom of the hill are SO cool.  The back yard faces a FORTRESS, and they look like little fairy houses.  It was at about this point in the trip when I started thinking - hey, I could live in one of those little houses and work at the pharmacy in the Knight's House.  Perfect.

After leaving the Munot, I went back to the hostel to drop off my new books, and put my towel in my little locked cubby.  I have now slept in three youth hostels and have not had anything stolen yet.  Yay!  From there, I finally boarded the bus for Neuhausen to see the Rhinefall!

Despite all of my disparaging of Swiss signage, I love this one (complete with Siemens sign in the background!).  On the right, you see the international sign for "stroller accessible".  On the left, of course, is the international sign for "Big waterfall with two rocky islands in it overlooked by a castle".  To prove my original point, however, you can see that immediately above this sign, on the same pole, is another sign, also pointing to the Rheinfall, in the opposite direction.  To their credit, the Rheinfall was in pretty much every direction but behind me.  There are paths to the left and right that lead around the banks and across the river, and of course, straight forward will only get you wet.


And then I was there.  The largest waterfall in Europe, and the subject of many a postcard.  The reason I set out on the trek to Switzerland.  It was beautiful, the roar of the water was deafening, and there were snails everywhere.  Here is a video:



A lot of the trip to Switzerland made me wish my father was there with me.  He was the one who gave me the postcards, who told me tidbits about the area for my trip, and who brought me a stuffed St. Bernard from his trip.  I sure felt it at the Rheinfall.  And later at the museums in Zurich, and at the toy train exhibit in Winterthur.  Thanks for sending me here, Pops!

It was still early by this point, so I went back once again to the train station and got a ticket for Stein am Rhein for 7.40 CHF.  The strassenbahn car was ADORABLE.  It was white with multicolored polkadots above the windows.  Then, inside, the seats were all black-and-white speckled, all with different colored headrests - it was very "Sizzler".



The ride to Stein am Rhein was an event itself - through really green, rolling countryside.  It's bordering on spring there, and it was fabulous.  I could live there too, and commute to the Apotheke im Ritterhaus.

Well, let me tell you.  NEVER has my mind been blown like it was in Stein am Rhein.

The train station is in a weird location.  When you get out of the station (more like off the platform), you're just faced with a street going left and right when you can tell that that center is straight ahead.  But there was a set of stairs in the little hill in front of me, and though I was about 70% sure that they just lead to someone's front door, I took them, and lo and behold, they lead to a path!  It just wound around past some back yards and then ended in a parking lot behind a restaurant (and by parking lot, I mean place for three cars).  I emerged from the parking lot to see a bridge leading toward the church towers that I had seen before, and then I was there!

So yeah.  There was basically one main street, starting with that building in the third photo.  It had a lot of closed stores on it, but that was okay, since I was there to see the painting on them!  It was unbelieveable, the photos do not begin to do it justice.  And they way I approached it, I walked down a little alley and was able to see a little peak of one building (the 4th photo) and was like "Wow!" before taking about five more steps and about fainting dead away.  And to top it all off, they have KNIGHT MANHOLE COVERS?! WHAT?!  Beat that, Neenah, WI!!!

The picture of the manhole cover is partly here to represent a story.  As I was making a loop though one of the streets running paralell to the main street, I walked past three little boys playing knights at this fountain.  When they saw me, one of them ran over to me and said something in swiss German.  It took me a second to realize that he had said something along the lines of "I'm a knight...somethingsomething...You can't pass unless you know the secret password!"  Now, despite my inability to deal with children on any reasonable level, I felt I understood the situation, which was a good thing, seeing as I was in Switzerland and not looking to rumble.  So I stopped, and tried to think of the wierdest German word I knew.  The only thing that came into my mind was "Schmetterling", which means butterfly, which I knew from a play at German camp.  It turns out that Schmetterling was INDEED the password, and I was allowed to continue on my way.  I noted it immediately as "the kind of thing that never happens to me".  Children do not approach me on the street, and I am not usually graced with such adorable travel anecdotes.  Maybe I'm changing in that way that I was promised I'd change if I went abroad?  Eh, whatchagonnado?

Edit from Yesterday begins approximately here

There was a chocolate store in Stein am Rhein.  Not a candy store, a CHOCOLATE store.  They had a Toblerone the size of my leg, and absinthe-filled chocolate.  I have always assumed that "weak in the knees" was a figure of speech.  It is not.  I was literally weak in the knees in this chocolate store.  I ended up buying a bar of sheep's milk chocolate, because I am a knitter and we do that sort of thing.  It was a pretty tough call, though.  I almost bought some chili cocoa, but that craze is sweeping multiple nations at this point, and I figured I could get some elsewhere if I had a craving.  Funny thing, though, the only place I've found chocolate + chili + a third flavor (which I prefer to just chocolate and chili) was at Mainely Gourmet chocolates in, ironically, Portsmouth, NH.  There should be more of that.  The gelateria on Haidplatz has suggested that they might one day have chocolate & pink peppercorn gelato, but that has yet to happen.


There is also a 1000-year-old cloister in Stein am Rhein!  Now it's a museum, so I went in, as it was the only thing in Stein am Rhein that my guidebook recommended.  There is a self-guided (in German) tour that leads around the cloister in a series of steps.  I never found number 11.  But I digress.  There was only one room that was heated in the winter, and so they built the dining room next to it so the excess heat would keep them warm while eating.  There was a whole series of rooms for...um, mostly studying the Bible.  You could also check out the monks' dormitory, which had been renovated in the middle ages, but still had one of the original rooms.  The courtyard had stone arches in it that all had different motifs, I thought it was quite a clever idea.  It took me a second to realize it at first.  Quite a few rooms had unbelievable views of the Rhine, as well.  There was a lot of painting on walls and many beautifully carved wooden furniture items, but the most impressive accoutrement were the glazed ceramic ovens like the one in Salzburg, though they were not quite AS imposing as that one.  But what blew EVERYTHING else away was the Festsaal, or Party room.  The floor was tiled with yellow, green and brown-glazed tiles, and the walls were all painted.  The room was off-limits to visitors, and thus my photos do not do it justice.



  Notes on the above photos:  The first one is a geocentric universe.  The second-to-last is an extremely faded wall painting that the restorers are trying to trace the lines of so the scene can be identified.  The last one is one of the "new" cells.

It was one of those museums that's totally cool, but sounds boring, so I was the only one there at the time.  I ended up having a conversation with the older gentleman who was selling tickets.  We talked a little bit about the museum and about America and country music.  He was the first person I'd had a conversation with in two days.  Such is the nature of traveling alone.

After the closter museum I wandered a little more, made a mental note to check out the bookstore, forgot to check out the bookstore, and then headed back for my last night in Schaffhausen, as I had secured a bed in the Zurich youth hostel.  In my continuing search for cheap food, I had a döner (apologies to the detractors of the cliche).  It was tasty, and I will admit to having chased it with a piece of baklava.  Then I went back to the room and took a nap and read a little Periodische System before four German girls arrived, in two pairs, and were fairly standoffish, but robust enough to stay up really late talking with the lights on.  Yep.  Then, as is my luck, I couldn't fall asleep once the lights WERE off, and THEY fell asleep first, and SNORED!!!  Gah.

The computer is being weird again, so I'm going to continue with days 3 and 4 in another entry.

 

So, this morning I went over to the train station and got my Eurail pass validated and made a reservation for my seat on the train.  So now all I have to do tomorrow morning is be there a little ahead of time.  Instead of taking the 4:43 am train via Munich, I'm going to be taking the 6:22 through Stuttgart.  I think this is a better idea because now I can take a bus to the Regensburg train station, I will get to see a different landscape than the one to Munich, and I'll only get there an hour later, because I'll avoid an hour-long layover in Munich.  It should be good.

ETA:  I think maybe instead of going straight home from Schaffhausen, or via Lichtenstein or Innsbruck, I'm going to go back via Stuttgart (about half the Schaffhausen->Regensburg trains go through Stuttgart anyway) and stop in Stuttgart for 3-4 hours to go to a ZOO/Botanical garden.  Guess which I'm more excited about.

Also, I almost forgot, Manu and Hanno have TWO CATS!