I was just looking over my blavel and realised that I didn't write about some of the fantastic places we went to on our big trip- or rather, I did, but managed to close windows/delete text boxes/freeze computer before uploading!
Anyway, Zurich:
Zurich, the largest city of Switzerland, is a beautiful, picturesque place. Built surrounding the rather massive Lake Zurich, I've read that Zurich is one of the richest cities per capita in the world- and it certainly shows. Not only is everything thing remarkably clean and perfect looking, but the people themselves appear to be a little too close to perfection for comfort; everyone is meticulously groomed, dressed and spoken. This is perhaps why some friends we met in Germany referred to Zurich as a 'plastic city'. That said, the pretentiousness of Zurich that is spoken about by other Europeans was missed by us... perhaps due to our Australian background and differing stereotype of pretentious behaviour, or perhaps because other europeans make up stories of pretentiousness in Zurich to cover their jealousy of this beautiful city, haha.
Either way, the people were friendly and helpful. We stayed at the Arlette Am Hauptbahnhof Hotel, which was well priced as far as Zurich comes (bearing in mind that it is a rather expensive place to stay), with friendly hotel staff and clean, big rooms. It was a short stroll from our hotel down to alleyways scattered with restaurants, although admittedly given it was towards the begining of our journey, we were hesitant to dine at these gorgeous looking places too frequently, for fear of having to go hungry by the time we reached Hong Kong. We had two nights in Zurich, arriving in the afternoon, which was spent locating our hotel, searching out dinner and then sleeping off our jet lag.
Speaking of jet-lag, I am going to interrupt myself here to talk a little about the airlines we flew with. The first half of our trip over, from Brisbane to Tokyo (via Cairns thanks to our hopeless travel agent!) was with Qantas... and I have to say, Qantas was by far the worst air experience we had. Thankfully there were no gas bottles shooting through our plane, nor did we suffer inexplicable loss of altitude, but the plane we flew in was really old (and when I say really old, I mean it had a couple of CRT TVs in the plane and that was it as far as entertainment went), the food was crummy, and to top it all off I got rather motion sick, and then dealt with ears hurting (I can totally understand why poor children scream about their ears upon landing- it was terrible) and being unable to hear upon landing- not that the latter was qantas' fault per se, but just to add to the story, haha. The only somewhat redeeming quality on the plane was one staff member, a nice guy who didn't have his knickers in a knot as it seemed that some of the other staff did, who brought us extra chocolate and macadamias just because. From Tokyo, we flew out with Swiss air, and my gosh- night and day difference. The plane was newer (although not that difficult really!) and came with funky entertainment system, somewhat essential for 12 hour flights, and my gosh, the food was AMAZING compared to qantas. Seriously. They had all sorts of swiss cheese and crackers, swiss chocolate and oh, an Australian red wine (cleanskin) that completely blew what qantas was serving out of the water. It sort of made me a little sad, that rather than showcasing the fantastic food and wine that Australia has to offer, the entry for many tourists into our country is complete with burnt corn frittata and wine that tastes like vinegar. Anyway, Swiss Air was fanastic and I would certainly recommend them, especially for long trips. Ok, airline rant over, back to Zurich story:
Whilst we were staying, it so happened that they had the Zurcher Theaterspektakel on, so we made a (rather long) walk around to the other side of the lake to check this out on the first day. Basically, theaterspektakel is an indoor/outdoor event where there are many different performances on different stages, as well as free street performances. It is a little like a fair there, and there's lots of food outlets (selling ridiculously overpriced goods) as well. There were a lot of people there, and we ended up not being able to see a show because they were all starting much later than our jet-lagged selves could stay awake- but we did watch some of the street performers, which was fun, and have some food and drink whilst sitting in the midst of the event. Speaking of all the people there, as we were walking out we were overwhelmed by how many bikes were parked outside- there must have been thousands. Because Zurich is such a beautiful town, it seems everyone cycles everywhere... maybe that is why they're all so toned and perfect-looking! In retrospect, we should have hired bikes ourselves, as it would have been much easier than walking hours to get from one side of the lake to the other! As we walked back towards our hotel, we went through a big park on the lake. It was about 7pm, but still rather light, and everyone seemed to have come straight from work with their bikinis and board shorts in tow; people were swimming in the lake, playing with their frisbees and generally enjoying the beautiful summer weather.
On the second morning- our last day in Zurich- we headed out on a walk we'd done initially the day before. We walked down the side of the river we were staying, following the river along until we made it to the Chinagarten, a beautiful chinese styled park. We ended up walking just beyond this, where we found a jetty that seemed rather deserted, with fantastic views over the lake, across to the other side and down towards the snow-topped alps- absolutely perfect. It was here, on the second day, that Ankonick was brave enough to propose- although we were somewhat rudely interrupted (/somewhat amusingly interrupted) by a jogger who ran onto the jetty, stripped off and jumped in to cool down at that exact moment, haha. Despite that, it was gorgeous and just the perfect place to ask- the water is so calm, and at that time of the morning there really wasn't anyone around. Seriously, at the time we were in Zurich, it was the most beautiful place I'd ever been.
So all in all, to end this novel, we had a fantastic time in Zurich. The weather was beautiful whilst we were there, the food was good (did I mention the food? We had some great lunches and dinners around our hotel, all rather German- We did however attempt a Mass Bier each for the sake of a photo, and oh dear, what a waste of beer it was- there was no way we were making it through those things! We also got laughed at for our pronounciation of German, but I think I would have laughed at us too). Zurich was beautiful, and we will certainly return there again. From Zurich, we flew out to Paris.
