May 20: Zurich - love at first sight
5:45 a.m. - Landed at Zurich Flughafen (airport), stiff and creaking.
The first thought that entered my head when we walked out into the airport was how completely deserted the place was. I mean, as a rule airports are always full of jet lagged people snoozing in chairs all over the place, clutching their cabin baggage to their chests. But there were hardly any security guards, even, which in itself was really unusual. And then we noticed it wasn't exactly a very nice airport either. A little dingy, with inexplicably dim lights (maybe they thought it would be flattering for us weary travellers), floors that didn't have much shine left in them and pathetic chairs. Not that I had too much time to ponder over it.. I'd just caught my first glimpse of Zurich outside one of the windows. It was already sunny, and the mountains were ever so green, even through the tinted windows. I fell behind the others, gaping and going "Zurich, baby!" in my head.
We were met just outside baggage claim by a sign directing us to the Symposium reception desk. Thomas Huggler was there, exchanging the invitation certificates (and health declaration forms, in our case) for identification tags. The tags had our name, university and nationality on the front, and for some reason, our tags said "Schindler" on the back, which, surprise surprise, lead to more than a few lame jokes about being on Schindler's list. Turned out that our corporate visit scheduled for that day was to Schindler and Co., manufacturers of elevators and escalators. The bus was to leave from the Flughafen at 12 noon. We could hardly wait. :P
To kill time till 12, we decided to look around Zurich. We dumped our luggage in lockers, where we had our first taste of Swiss prices- 9 francs (S$12) for storing just 3 pieces of luggage. Turned out we weren't really in Zurich, the city was a 10 fr. train ride away; no discount for students. We took it.
We emerged in heaven. The place was so alive (I know, I know, mixed metaphors) it was instantly invigorating. Never mind that we'd just gotten off a 17 hour flight, I could have done the spring dances just then. It was cheerily sunny with a bit of a nippy wind which made it perfect. There were flowers everywhere - in pots around lampposts and under windowsills. The throngs of people were dressed in such snazzy colours and styles I felt like I was in rags! We walked aimlessly for a bit, then decided to get a map and go to the Old City (recommended by my Lonely Planet guide to Switzerland, henceforth referred to as 'the Bible'). Asked a tram tickcket sales booth female "Haben zie plan?" - all thanks to the bible - hopped onto the tram and went to Bahnhofstrasse, which was right at the train station we'd come from.
Bahnhofstrasse (train station street, literally) is beautiful. The buildings there are so pretty, perfectly European, with statues of guys in togas beside fountains everywhere. The best buildings, the ones that look like unreal museum pieces, belong to *banks*.. which kind of make sense as they're the ones who can afford the buildings. Best of all is the feeling of walking on Zurich's gold and silver vaults - all of them are right underneath Bahnhofstrasse.
Bahnhofstrasse - for the lack of a better picture..
We wandered a little, split into smaller groups, and walked along the bank of the Limmat river on perfect little cobblestone streets, saw some of the church spires and planned to go in later. But it started raining quite suddenly so we ran for shelter into the nearest church, and found out we'd wandered into the Fraumunster Kirche, the one with Marc Chagall's famous stained glass windows. They were really quite nice, though I am by no means a stained glass window connoisseur. It was still raining when we came out so we just barged into the stunningly beautiful building next to the church. There was a poster announcing a jazz concert at the entrance, see, so we thought it was a theatre or something. It was the registry of births, deaths and marriages.. we'd walked into the town hall.
By the time we'd finished laughing it out the spell of rain had stopped and we walked the few minutes left to reach Zurich Lake (Zurichsee). Hills fringed the lake and we took a few nice snaps when the sun came out and brought out the green on them. Somebody realised just then that it was 11.20, and we had a 15 minute walk to the train station and a 10 minute train journey to the airport to complete before 12, so we rushed to the tram stop to go back to the Bahnhofplatz, the train station. Only problem was, we didn't know which tram to take and in which direction.
So we asked an old man who was also waiting for a tram, "Bahnhofplatz?" and he goes "Elf!" . We must have looked really clueless, because he started repeating, "Elf! Elf, elf! Elf!" For all we could make of it, he was a rabid LOTR fan. We checked the bible for a translation but for once it failed us. Then the man started being a little more intelligible - "Ein.. Ein.. Zwei. Zwei... Ein Ein Zwei!" - which we knew was "One.. one.. two. two.. one one two!", but it didn't get us much furthur. He wrote something down for us, two litle squiggles that looked like two capital A's without the horizontal bar in the centre, and this had me completely stumped. I hadn't known the Germans had a different way of writing numbers! Thankfully, at that point, a lady came by to solve the mystery of the elves and ones and twos. Elf, apparently, was eleven. We were to take the number eleven tram to Bahnhofplatz.
The Bahnhofplatz
We reached the airport just in time. We were famished by then, and were very grateful for our lunchbags, which had seriously delicious pretzels and out-of-this-world cream cheese, a banana, a bottle of fizzy soda water and really awful fruit juice. The bus ride to Schindler Corp was amazingly scenic. All through the journey there were rolling green pastures spotted with herds of grazing cattle, complete with tinkling cowbells and all. Right out of a storybook.
I refuse to document our meet-the-corporate-executives session at Schindler itself; the odds that you're passionately interested in the world of elevators and escalators ("We move 450 million people a day!") are miniscule. Go search on Google if you need your elevator fix for the day.
The people gave us dinner, though, and that was nice of them. I had potatoes and salad and more fried potatoes. There was this Romanian guy sitting at our table, Bogdan, who had 3 whole meals (he simply charmed the waitresses by telling them how much he liked the veal) plus extra potatoes from me. We teased the hell out of him, poor kid.
The really funny thing was it was 8 p.m. and I was hardly showing signs of jetlag, or even sleeplessness. After all it was 2 a.m. in Singapore and I hadn't slept in 24 hours. But it was sunny outside and the sun just gives you large amounts of energy, I guess. :)
On the bus ride back I was talking politics with a guy who was actually involved in a Spanish libertarian political party. The people we met during the Symposium.. I still can't believe it sometimes.
The bus dropped us off at the University of St Gallen parking lot at about 10 p.m. The sun had finally set and it was getting colder by the minute, and our transportation to our hosts' place had left without a couple of us who'd been busy getting their bags out of the bus. It was Thomas Huggler to the rescue. With his cool new Audi - sponsored for Symposium purposes! - giving directions like "Turn left 50 meters from here!" (in a tone that added "Or else!" to everything), we finally reached my host Caroline's place.
Caroline showed me to my room, and we chatted for a while before I went to take the much-needed shower. My room was on the 3rd floor of the huge house. Caroline shares the place with four other people. It was all wood.. the stairs, the flooring, the walls. Completely cozy. It was freezing cold that night and I was glad to get under four layers of clothes and three layers of blankets and drop off to sleep. My last thought, I think, was a vow to go back to Zurich at least once more in my life, and soak it in. I love the city.
