Saturday, May 2, 2009
Zurich
Today I FINALLY went to Zurich! I got there and went first to the Swiss National Museum, which is a huge museum in a castle. It was so interesting; it started with prehistoric times and went all the way to the current day. There was this temporary exhibit about Swiss humor which was faaantastic. Although a lot of the comics were in German and therefore incomprehensible, some of them were funny without words. Also, there was this clip of a Swiss comedian playing (in French, luckily) and it was hysterical! I took his name and found a YouTube clip of it; he plays a character (a woman) and just basically makes fun of Switzerland but it's amazing.
Anyway, after the museum I strolled through the city, GORGEOUS, by the way! The main street is a beautiful, bustling, tree-lined, tram- and pedestrian-only straBe. The smaller streets branching off are windy, cobblestone streets with colorful buildings and a plethora of Swiss flags. I went to the two most famous churches in the city and climbed up the tower of one of them. The view was fantastic! Then, I explored some more in the perfect weather and discovered two more viewpoints, and some secret pathways. Finally, I decided to go back to the train station for the quick ride to Rapperswil, a lakeside town not far from Zurich. As I'm finding my way through the huge station, I see these signs with a picture of a silhouette serving a volleyball. I follow them and find a sand COURT in the middle of the train station!!! That's right. A beach volleyball competition with free entrance. Dream come true? I think so. So I watched for about an hour and then forced myself to take the train to Rapperswil, promising to come back to watch more. Unfortunately (or fortunately, you could argue), it started raining when I got to Rapperswil. The town was an adorable peninsula-like place with great overlooks of the lake, so I walked around and tried to take some pictures when the rain slowed but ultimately headed back to Zurich to watch more volleyball. Sweet.
Anyway, after the museum I strolled through the city, GORGEOUS, by the way! The main street is a beautiful, bustling, tree-lined, tram- and pedestrian-only straBe. The smaller streets branching off are windy, cobblestone streets with colorful buildings and a plethora of Swiss flags. I went to the two most famous churches in the city and climbed up the tower of one of them. The view was fantastic! Then, I explored some more in the perfect weather and discovered two more viewpoints, and some secret pathways. Finally, I decided to go back to the train station for the quick ride to Rapperswil, a lakeside town not far from Zurich. As I'm finding my way through the huge station, I see these signs with a picture of a silhouette serving a volleyball. I follow them and find a sand COURT in the middle of the train station!!! That's right. A beach volleyball competition with free entrance. Dream come true? I think so. So I watched for about an hour and then forced myself to take the train to Rapperswil, promising to come back to watch more. Unfortunately (or fortunately, you could argue), it started raining when I got to Rapperswil. The town was an adorable peninsula-like place with great overlooks of the lake, so I walked around and tried to take some pictures when the rain slowed but ultimately headed back to Zurich to watch more volleyball. Sweet.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Appenzell
I'll start with yesterday. I spent the day in St. Gallen, a small city about an hour east of Zurich. The weather wasn't great but the city was adorable! I visited two beautiful churches in the Abbey, as well as the Stiftsbibliothek. Going in, I thought it was just going to be a library and I didn't understand why Frommer's had given it three (of three) stars. Once I walked in, I knew. It was the most beautiful, picturesque, Disney-like library I've ever seen. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it. It was two floors of dark, ornately engraved wooden bookshelves that held books from when the Abbey was first built, circa the eighth century! The ceiling was frescoed and the second floor reachable only by oranate wooden ladders. I need a library just like it, I decided. Afterward, I went to Rorschach, a small town on Lake Constance only ten minutes away. I must say, I was a little disappointed. Frommer's made it sound like a bustling lakeside resort with a beautiful promenade. It was a dead town with a path along the lake. Not very exciting. So I headed back to St. Gallen to walk around the gorgeous Old Town a little bit and did some shopping.
Today I took the train into Zurich for a tour I'd booked online. In a chartered bus, we went to a cheese factory about an hour outside the city. It was in the canton of Appenzell, the most famous cheese-making canton in the country, and therefore made Appenzeller cheese. It was so cool to learn how it was made and see the machinery. However, we couldn't actually see it being done, which was kind of disappointing. After, we drove to the village of Appenzell, the capital of the canton. It's also the village with the best-preserved Swiss culture and tradition in the country. The drive was through the countryside and simply wonderful. The rolling hills weren't completely green; they were covered in dandelions, giving the countryside a beautiful bright yellow look. In Appenzell we had a couple hours to explore on our own. I went to the Appenzell Museum, which explained the culture and traditions of the region including typical dress, handmade wood carvings, embroideries, etc. It was awesome! Then, I strolled the small streets, lined with houses that had brightly-colored designs painted on their facades. These beautiful paintings are also traditional and are what set Appenzell apart from other small villages. When we left Appenzell we stopped at Maestrani, a famous chocolate factory. Apparently the guy, Maestrani (from Italian Switzerland) was friends with Nestle! What a small world. It was crazy to learn that Switzerland gets its cacao beans from Ghana or South America (woot!) and it's sugar elsewhere as well, which means that milk is the only ingredient of chocolate that's actually FROM Switzerland and yet Switzerland is the leading country in chocolate production. Interesting! The factory was SO COOL! It was called "Schoggi Land" because "schoggi" means "chocolate" in Swiss German. SCHOGGI!! Although we weren't allowed to take pictures, I did anyway because, well, I've been known to do that. Most of the work was done by machines, machines that dropped nuts into the chocolate, machines that sliced huge sheets of chocolate into squares, etc. But there was this one part where the chocolate, after being wrapped by a machine, had to be put into boxes. There were these two women doing it and it was amazing to watch them; they worked faster than the machine! They were like machines themselves. They'd grab a flat box, pop it open, grab a stack of bars, just enough to fit perfectly into the box, shove them in and methodically close the box and push it down a conveyor belt. So fast!!
Anyway, on the way back to Zurich the tour guide was telling us about Switzerland. He said the only king the country has ever had was Roger Federer, haha. But interestingly, the Swiss political system is like no other. There are seven ministers, each from a different domain (i.e. finance) that work together. On a yearly rotating basis, one of them becomes president, which just means they preside over the meetings and meets other heads-of-state, nothing else. So if you ask a Swiss who their president is, they'll probably have no idea. Also, the country has four official languages and although German is one of them, the Swiss German actually spoken in Switzerland had 30 different dialects and is so different from German German that the Swiss Germans have to learn German German in order to communicate with the Germans! The breakdown is like this: Swiss German spoken by 60%, French 30%, Italian 9%, Romansch 1%.
WHY IS SWITZERLAND SO FREAKING COOL?!?!
Today I took the train into Zurich for a tour I'd booked online. In a chartered bus, we went to a cheese factory about an hour outside the city. It was in the canton of Appenzell, the most famous cheese-making canton in the country, and therefore made Appenzeller cheese. It was so cool to learn how it was made and see the machinery. However, we couldn't actually see it being done, which was kind of disappointing. After, we drove to the village of Appenzell, the capital of the canton. It's also the village with the best-preserved Swiss culture and tradition in the country. The drive was through the countryside and simply wonderful. The rolling hills weren't completely green; they were covered in dandelions, giving the countryside a beautiful bright yellow look. In Appenzell we had a couple hours to explore on our own. I went to the Appenzell Museum, which explained the culture and traditions of the region including typical dress, handmade wood carvings, embroideries, etc. It was awesome! Then, I strolled the small streets, lined with houses that had brightly-colored designs painted on their facades. These beautiful paintings are also traditional and are what set Appenzell apart from other small villages. When we left Appenzell we stopped at Maestrani, a famous chocolate factory. Apparently the guy, Maestrani (from Italian Switzerland) was friends with Nestle! What a small world. It was crazy to learn that Switzerland gets its cacao beans from Ghana or South America (woot!) and it's sugar elsewhere as well, which means that milk is the only ingredient of chocolate that's actually FROM Switzerland and yet Switzerland is the leading country in chocolate production. Interesting! The factory was SO COOL! It was called "Schoggi Land" because "schoggi" means "chocolate" in Swiss German. SCHOGGI!! Although we weren't allowed to take pictures, I did anyway because, well, I've been known to do that. Most of the work was done by machines, machines that dropped nuts into the chocolate, machines that sliced huge sheets of chocolate into squares, etc. But there was this one part where the chocolate, after being wrapped by a machine, had to be put into boxes. There were these two women doing it and it was amazing to watch them; they worked faster than the machine! They were like machines themselves. They'd grab a flat box, pop it open, grab a stack of bars, just enough to fit perfectly into the box, shove them in and methodically close the box and push it down a conveyor belt. So fast!!
Anyway, on the way back to Zurich the tour guide was telling us about Switzerland. He said the only king the country has ever had was Roger Federer, haha. But interestingly, the Swiss political system is like no other. There are seven ministers, each from a different domain (i.e. finance) that work together. On a yearly rotating basis, one of them becomes president, which just means they preside over the meetings and meets other heads-of-state, nothing else. So if you ask a Swiss who their president is, they'll probably have no idea. Also, the country has four official languages and although German is one of them, the Swiss German actually spoken in Switzerland had 30 different dialects and is so different from German German that the Swiss Germans have to learn German German in order to communicate with the Germans! The breakdown is like this: Swiss German spoken by 60%, French 30%, Italian 9%, Romansch 1%.
WHY IS SWITZERLAND SO FREAKING COOL?!?!
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