Uetliberg Hike

Yesterday we took the S10 train from Zürich to Uetliberg. The S10 is Europe's steepest normal-gauge adhesion railway. I actually thought it would be impressively steep but it didn't seem like anything spectacular to me.

Once at Uetliberg, we hiked along the ridge of one of the hills that runs along Zürich and the Zürichsee (the lake). It was cloudy and foggy out so the pictures aren't spectacular but I figured I'd post some pictures anyway. It was different to be hiking on the Western side of the lake as prior to yesterday I had only been North or East of the lake when hiking/wandering around.

As soon as you start hiking, there is the Sun. The hike along the ridge has models of the planets along it on a scale of 1:1 billion. Neat. So here's the sun:



The Sun is obviously the largest modeled object. We continued to walk on up to a hotel and viewing tower with 360-degree views of Zürich and the lake and the surrounding mountains/hills:



As you can see, the weather was spectacular. But at least it remained dry for our walk.





Further along the hike we found some cows. They had cow bells on so you could hear them from pretty far away:



We continued to walk on trails through the woods and through open fields. You got nice views over the lake and also out to the West over the green hills.



We found Saturn. The other planets were pretty tiny, just little specks really for Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, but Saturn was large enough to take a picture of. And, it's easily recognizable with its rings:





At our halfway point there was a cafe (of course) where we stopped and had a big beer and enjoyed a nice view:





This is looking back towards Sürich:



And then we turned around and walked back to the beginning and got back onto the S10 to go home.

Flowers!

There are so many gorgeous flowers around Zürich. I see different flowers every time I go for a run and I finally took my camera out one day to get pictures of some of them.







Annoyingly, there was some sort of speck of dust on the camera lens for all of these pictures. It's not noticeable in most of the pictures, but it annoys me in this one in particular:







These are a close-up of some purple flowers on a bush.



The bush is actually covered with these little flowers:







You can't really tell here but these flowers are fairly large and they really stand out with their yellow centers:





I think it's my new favorite flower.





That's my Zürich flower show for today.

Swiss Perfection

Just a few of the extremely well-kept yards I've seen on my runs over the past week. Either all these people can afford to hire somebody to trim their hedges every single week, or they have time to do it themselves. Either way, I quite enjoy looking at people's yards here.

Now *this* is a hedge:







This lion is right at the turnaround point to make my run from home a 5K.





Some more immaculately shaped bushes:

Luzern

Yesterday we took a 45-minute train ride south to the city of Luzern. Luzern, like Zürich, also sits on a big lake surrounded by hills and snow-capped mountains.

Here is the famous covered bridge of Luzern from a few different angles. It's called Chapel Bridge and was initially built in 1333 but it burned down and was rebuilt in the 1990's. There was also a big open-air market going on which is what all the tents are for. The large water tower in the pictures was not only a water tower back in the day but also the prison, torture chamber, and watch tower for Luzern.





There were lots of murals on the sides of buildings:



Jeff, we've been looking for a really big beer stein for you. We finally found one. I was not brave enough to a) inquire about its price because I'd probably pass out when I heard it, or b) take a picture from inside the shop as that is probably pretty rude. But, this picture gives you a good idea of its size. And I think it came out neat with the beer stein fitting into Martin's reflection.



Next we wandered over to the Lion Monument. I found this quite impressive and moving. The Lion signifies the Swiss soldiers who were killed during the French Revolution in Paris in 1792. Please read about it here.

In the warmer months, the pond in front of the Lion is drained and concerts are held there - an orchestra sits in the pond area as it is several feet deep.







Next we went for a walk along the lake. In my opinion, Lake Luzern is nicer than Lake Zürich. The surrounding mountains are closer and more visible and the path along the lake goes on for much longer and it follows immediately along the lake and it's easy to follow. In Zürich you have to keep wandering away from the lake and sometimes walk along the street nowhere near the lake which is kind of annoying. There isn't really a well-definited path along the lake in a lot of places.

Jeff I found a spot for your boat:



A picture looking towards Luzern:



I got my feet wet and it was quite refreshing. It was pretty warm wandering around in the sun all day so this felt great. The water was a brisk 15C (59F).



Then we went back into Luzern and climbed one of the towers in the old wall in the city. We were kind of disappointed by the wire mesh covering all the windows at the top of the tower but I think this picture gives a great view of the lake nonetheless:



Look at all those sailboats! I would have given anything to be out on that lake yesterday. Climbing that tower was *hot*.

As always, we took many more pictures than I've posted here and I will post them in their entirety on Facebook and Kodak.

The German Class and the Polybahn

Today after class a group of us (all of us that can speak English) took the Polybahn (a small tram that goes up a steep but very short hill) up to the ETH for lunch. None of us had ever been on the Polybahn before so we just took it for the experience. It's kind of a joke because it's really nothing special. We actually ate lunch at the cafeteria at the main ETH building that also contains the gym that I go to. So it wasn't really any place new to me. But it has a really great view of Zürich and the mountains (when you can see them, and today you actually could a bit).

Our teacher was unable to accompany us as her 65-year-old mother broke her back while line dancing last night! There's a story you don't hear every day.

Here comes the polybahn:



And here is Erlend (we call him Alan) being excited about being on the Polybahn:



And here's the view out the back of the Polybahn as we go up:



And here we are at the top. Can you pick out who is the Brit, the Aussie, the American/Norwegian, and the Brazilian? I actually think it's pretty easy to do.



The view from the terrace of the main ETH building:





Here we are being serious tourists:



Mmmm ... lunch. One pitcher of many. :) But it's hard to leave and go home when it's a gorgeous sunny day and you haven't seen the sun in a week!

McDonald's in Switzerland

Introducing the McTicino and the Beef Italia. Ticino is the region in southern Switzerland where Italian is spoken and where many Italians live. So the burger that was named after that region contains mozzarella, tomato, fresh basil, and, of course, beef. Um ... ew. I shouldn't knock it until I've tried it as the McDonald's burger in Australia with beets and pineapple and egg on it that also looked gross was actually quite tasty.

The McTicino gets a special fun roll:





Looks like there's also some special sauce on these burgers ... the description of the beef italia says it has olive oil on it but then what's that white sauce? Some night when Martin comes home I will be serving up McTicino's for dinner so he can find out what it's all about. :) I avoid beef otherwise I'm sure I'd dig right in. Ha.

There are billboards up around Zürich showing these burgers and I was going to take a picture of one but it won't stop raining outside so I found pictures on the internet instead.

There are also burgers here named after other areas of Switzerland with Swiss cheese on them(gruyere and emmentaler of course) instead of American or whatever cheese they usually put on their burgers in the U.S.