The Rest of Züri

So my lovelies,

I promised to finish my review of Zürich when I got back to Berlin.

Here's the rest of the story.

I was another few days in the city and I feel like it was enough to get a picture of the place. I know that to really know a city, you need to live there. And I don't live in Zürich, obviously. So all of what I'm going to let loose here is pretty much my subjective, prejudiced, reactionary ramblings.

In other words, business as usual.

I deliberately tried to do as little as possible while I was there. I work a helluva lot and this was kind of supposed to be something like a vacation. So I slept a lot and spent a lot of time people watching by the Zürich Lake. And staring at the Alps. You've got to hand it to the city--it's clean, the air is fresh and the scenery surrounding it is breathtaking. There are lush parks and the promenade along the lake is dotted with the perfect amount of benches. Pretty much the way you would imagine something created by the Swiss. They're thorough.

They're also filthy rich. I've never, in all my travels seen as many jags, ferarris and lambos registered to the same city. Mercedes and BMWs were, like...middle-class cars. The main street was full of your rank and file designer stores and the fun of course doesn't stop there. The whole city is full of lovely narrow alleyways that remind one of falling down a rabbit's burrow. There are neat little indie stores and even more ridiculously posh stores. The Swiss seem to like to buy their ladies lots of expensive jewelery and the women seem to take their interior decoration verrrry seriously. 2 Bedroom apartments cost around 2,500 chf (the frank is about on par with the dollar) wherever you want to rent in the city. The pimp cars you see are usually cleaned--for those of you who aren't filthy rich enough to know, this means that the only thing

you see on the back of the car is the audi emblem (or the ferarri, jag, etc.) --no information about the dealer, the engine, etc. It's cool to be discrete, apparently.

The city as I said is nice. The people are friendly if a bit reserved, and very polite. The city proper has a population of around 400,000--including all surrounding suburbs it's mayyyybe a million. This of course can't hold a candle to Berlin's 4 million inhabitants--not counting the surrounding bedroom communities. (You guys know I don't really do numbers, so these are not figures I've in any way researched, they're just things I've been told. If you really want to know, wiki it.)

I'm going to let you in on something.

I am not so much the outdoorsy type.

Zürich is full of people who ski, hike, climb and just generally love nature. I like nature, but I don't love it. I grew up in lots and lots and lots of nature. It refreshes me to visit it. I do not,

however, need to climb a mountain every weekend to get my kicks. Most people in Zürich do.

I'm going to tell you something else.

I currently live in a city that is the love of my life (Don't fret y'all, Stephan knows this. He's not thrilled, but he understands). If you can love a place more than anything, that's how I love this city. Travelling is great, but there always comes a point where I say, "ok, the party's over, it's time for me to get back to MY city". If I'm going to be enthralled by a new place, it's got to beat out Berlin in several different categories, a few of which are:

Funk/Flair

Character

Culture

Creativity

Action

...

I'm sure after I post this, I'll think of more, but these are the first few that come to mind. As you can see, beauty is missing from this list. I do not ask for beauty in a city. That's what makes it nice, but that's not what makes me love it. I can love ugly things. Not everyone can. Funk is important, character is important, things like art and music and theater are important (even if I don't go nearly often enough), and you've got to have bars, restaurants and clubs to go to, depending on what your thing is.

Zürich is a great place to spend time. It's probably also a great place to raise a family. A wonderful place to spend an outdoorsy vacation.

However, it's not necessarily anyplace I'd want to live, despite businesses throwing lovely flowers into historic fountains just because it's Easter.

Hope you're all well and that Spring has sprung in your respective areas.

love and swiss cheese,

Berliner Halbmarathon & de Schwiiz

So. To all those of you who were wondering...

I did run that half marathon on March 28th. Although I felt prepared and although I had trained since mid January for this event, including 2 full-length training runs, it still kicked my sorry arse. Despite years and years of race experience, I still managed to go out wayyyy too fast over the first 5k. Silly of me, really...but running with 27,000 other people through my city just made my heart go so pitapat that I couldn't really control myself. On the whole, it was much more beautiful and amazing than I had imagined and much more terrible and painful. The organizers, SCC running said after the fact that ca 170000 Berliners came out to cheer for the racers. I believe them. There was no part of the route where there weren't spectators lining the course, cheering and holding signs. Bands came and set up shop and played and sang along the course, drumming groups drummed...it was like a festival. It kind of restored my faith in humanity to see all those people come out, you know? The weather was not the greatest. It was cloudy and blustery and approximately 10 °C, if that says anything to you. Above freezing, but a tad on the chilly side. Then it rained. Then the sun came out and it was glorious...except that I kind of wanted to stop and die at that point. People taking off their jackets and repinning their start numbers were faster than I was at this point.

Be all that as it may, my years of training paid off in that I was still able to sprint the finish (although some guy in a wheelchair cut me off directly at the finish...@$%&!) and I got all 21.5K done in less than two hours, which was my goal.

Now I'm on vacation in Zürich for a week and a half. Stephan's got an internship here for the next six months and I decided to stop by on the front end to bring him some stuff and check the place out. I've been here since Thursday night and it's quite nice. The people are very friendly, their dialect is a bit on the wonky side, but the city is impeccably clean (especially in comparison to Berlin), the houses are old and charming, and the view of the Alps from Stephan's place is rather breathtaking. The only catch so far are the prices...it's comparable to New York. I just find it silly in this picturesque little city to pay world-class metropolis-prices--we're talking $8 for a kebap, between $4 and $6 for a coffee...I'm used to being able to eat my way around the world for like, $10 for an entree. I know, I'm spoiled, Berlin is a gastrointestinal paradise...I'm working on getting used to the fact that other places have other prices. Oh well, I'm on vacation. I'm hoping the weather gets nice and I can spend some time down at the Züri See (Zürich Lake) next week while Stephan's working. I've been taking a few pictures and I hope to get them posted once I get home--I left all the proper cables in Berlin. : /

Hope you all had a great Easter. I'll finish my review of Zürich when I get back to the Fatherland.