We arrived in Zürich early Tuesday morning, slightly the worse for wear. Our first class compartment on the train was nice, but Sarah confiscated my pillow (plus an extra one given to her by the conductor) for use in her bunk, where she needs the support for breastfeeding Eloïse during the night.
That caused me to have quite a restless night, whereas Sarah experienced a similarly restless night, thanks to Wiesje’s incessant feeding antics. Still, it was fun to travel so far by train, watching The Netherlands whizz by, then one major German city after another. By the time the Swiss border was passed, we were all long sound asleep.
Roman met us at the Hauptbahnhof and we headed back together to his place on the number 46 bus, where Carine and Elina were waiting to welcome us.
Since then, we’ve been taking it very easy by our travelling standards. The first day, all we really did was go for a walk around the Rütihof neighbourhood. It’s very quiet around here; we saw only one car driving down the road during our walk.
In the evening, we headed into town for Google Zürich’s Christmas party. There were quite a few familiar faces there, including people I didn’t know had moved from the US, and I observed how nice it felt to be back in the Google fold, if only for a few hours. The food was excellent, none of your funny finger food from the Mountain View parties of years gone by, with the dessert and coffee especially deserving of high praise. The girls were at the end of their rope by that point, however, so we left straight after dessert.
Yesterday, we took the bus into town and visited Google’s Zürich office. It was a very quiet and unassuming affair, compared with the Mountain View premises, but the same is true of any of the remote offices, of course. Nothing compares to the Mountain View office in terms of sheer size, the armosphere of the place and the unbelievable number of facilities available. If I weren’t so happy to be back home in Amsterdam and looking forward to the future there, I might be faced with having to consider Zürich as a possibility. In the end, I don’t think we would decide to live here, but we’re lucky that we don’t even have to consider it. We’ve pondered enough hugely life-altering experiences for one year, I think.
After lunch at a rather good Chinese restaurant, Carine took us on a long walk around the city, including the old area, with its many interwoven Gassen lending the city an air of historic charm. At the end of the day, Carine had to pick up Elina from the crèche, but Wiesje was still sleeping deeply after a mostly sleep-deprived day, so we decided to keep walking around the city on our own until she woke up. After about another hour, however, she still hadn’t woken up, so we boarded the bus and rode home. Even that didn’t wake her, however, and she didn’t awake until we were in the lift up to Roman and Carine’s flat.
Today, we took our time getting out of the flat and then headed into town on the bus, where we caught the train to the top of the Uetliberg, where we had lunch and spent some time walking around, admiring the slightly foggy view.
In the evening, Carine made fondue and Roman came home with a Dutch colleague of his from the office, accompanied by his wife and their two extremely blond children. They moved to Switzerland half a year ago, so it was interesting to talk to them about their experience of living here, sending their children to a Swiss-German crèche, etc.
Tomorrow, we’re taking the train up to Bern, where we’ll spend the day looking around. Then it’s over to Fribourg (or Freiburg, if you’re on the German-speaking side), where we’ll spend a couple of nights before returning to Zürich on Sunday to catch our train back to Amsterdam in the evening. Carine is from Fribourg, so we’re going to see where she grew up and soak up the ambience of a different region.
We’ve only scratched the surface of this country thus far, but I like what I’ve seen up to this point. From the mulled Glühwein to the rather tasteful Christmas markets, this part of the country has a decided German feel. I’m curious to find out how the French-speaking area compares.