Zurich - A City of Events

Sihlwald Buffet Area and Hut for Cinema

I’d forgotten that quite a few events are usually still on in September in Zurich. The first weekend I was back, there was the Theaterspektakel (I’ve blogged about this before) and the Long Night of the Museums (I’ve also blogged about this before). There were lots of adverts around for the Zurich Food Festival and this year everyone seems to be posting about it on facebook. Here, I feel I was ahead of the crowd, because I blogged on that already last year.

However, there was one thing on that I hadn’t done before and that was the open-air cinema at Sihlwald. Most of the open-air cinema has ended for the season (and I’ve blogged about my favorite two before), but I just squeezed in the last weekend at Sihlwald. The film was Eddie the Eagle, so a very good film for Brits to watch and I went along with Lena.

It wasn’t really quite what I was expecting. I imagined that we’d be sitting in the middle of a wood, with a makeshift screen hanging across the trees; we’d be huddled on rickety seats wrapped in blankets and shivering as we watched.

However, it actually took place in a large wooden hut. There wasn’t any heating, and we had plastic chairs in rows. So we weren’t outside at all. I guess this makes it more functional as you aren’t hindered by rain, but on the evening we went, it was clear and not too cold.

The website talked excitedly about their bistro, but again, it wasn’t really very extensive. One dish was cheesy (maybe raclette, I can’t remember), so for me that was out. The other was a dish of polenta with a mushroom sauce, so rather stodgy but at least it didn’t have cheese; truth be told, I’m not so fond of polenta either.

We’d forgotten to check whether the film was in English; as the adverts all came up in Swiss German and a guy came in to introduce the film in Swiss German, our fears were confirmed. The film had been dubbed. It was OK – I was a bit shell-shocked for the first ten minutes, but then got my ear back in to German and then actually it wasn’t too much of a big deal.

The event was also very typically Swiss in that it was so perfectly organized. They’d laid on an extra train to ensure that you could get back into town afterwards (in the UK, you’d just be left to sort out a taxi or be stranded!). I was surprised to see how busy the city was when I got back, but then I realized it was the long night of the museums and people were still busily dashing off from one museum to the next.

The Zurich Film Festival is on at the end of this month, so I’m looking forward to that. I won’t say much just now in case I decide to blog on it when it happens.

I’ve just made it to Switzerland in time for the last few weeks of the “Badi” season – where you can swim in the lake and the various open air pools in Zurich. And I was lucky enough to arrive during a late heatwave, so the air temperatures have been in the early 30s and the lake water has heated up quite nicely. I’ve blogged on swimming in the lake before, but it’s strange how different things strike you when you return on different occasions.

This time, maybe because I had a cold and wasn’t really fit enough to swim, I was much more aware of how much less buoyant I was in the freshwater lake than in the salty Red Sea. I do prefer going into the lake by the steps / ladder rather than the gradually increasing depth of water that I have when on the beach in Sahl Hasheesh. It’s OK to go in bit by bit in the summer when the water is warm, but in the winter months, having to stride in slowly makes it much more difficult to enter the water!

Although the lake water is really clean (it’s got the quality of drinking water), I was fascinated this time at how green it was and wondering how it gets to look that colour. I stick my hand below me in the water and, true enough, I can see my hand as clear as daylight, but the only other thing I can see is a murky green all around. I thought I would be able to see the lake bottom.

But even Badi Enge had changed. Unless I’m mistaken, it now has a new, additional entrance. I almost missed it with all the bicycles parked alongside it, which makes me wonder if I’d just completely overlooked it before, but I’m pretty sure it’s a new way in. Life just doesn’t stand still!