Zurich - Trip to Stein am Rhein

Painted Buildings in Stein am Rhein

Our first day trip when Geraldine was here was to Stein am Rhein. I wasn’t even sure whether this was in Switzerland, but it was. The last time I went there was when I was working in Freiburg im Breisgau back in the year 2000, and Emil very kindly spent a day with me and Julie taking us round some beautiful places nearby. That’s almost 20 years ago now - time flies!

When I went to Schaffhausen to look at the house to buy, I noticed that one of the banks was offering people free trips on the boat for a year to Stein am Rhein from Schaffhausen if they became customers with them, so that’s what reminded me. Having said that, it was also an itinerary item from last time that Geraldine was over that we hadn’t yet done.

For some weird reason, we both thought we wouldn’t need our coats. Our plan was to go to Stein am Rhein, sail along the Rhine for 2 hours and then explore the town afterwards. I’d bought the train tickets the day before so that we didn’t have to worry about it in the morning.

We got there just fine and after a little confusion about which boat it was, we bought our tickets just in time. There was a Japanese couple in front of us who had lots of questions and didn’t seem at all worried that the boat was leaving in 5 minutes. Maybe they didn’t understand Swiss punctuality? Having said that, the person serving also seemed very relaxed, so perhaps it’s just me that gets in a tizzy about getting to places on time.

Everyone else on the boat was wearing a coat, and although the day was fine, it was definitely autumnal, and the extra breeze from floating along the river made it quite chilly. It was the first day of the winter timetable. Fortunately, the boat had some blankets, so we were fine to sit outside

The Japanese couple asked us to take a photograph of them and they seemed to be having a whale of a time. They got off half-way to explore, whereas we changed boats (as you had to do) and went back. I hadn’t noticed that there were several boats as the times were (to me at least) quite confusing on the internet. The Japanese couple had asked several times at the counter whether they could stop off and come back later (with an affirmative answer).

The second boat didn’t have any blankets, which was strange as it was the same company, as far as I know. Anyway, we still sat outside to get the best view and were just about OK! We didn’t come down with colds afterwards, at any rate.

Stein am Rhein is famous for its painted houses; it’s an old town and is well worth a visit. We dithered a while about where to eat and ended up at a waffle place. It turned out that a lot of places were closed on Monday (eg, the cloister, and quite a few shops), so bear that in mind if you are planning a visit.

There were quite a few quirky shops, including one selling items (eg, handbags, rucksacks, flipflops, etc) made out of cork. If I hadn’t been moving and need to reduce the amount of things I have rather than increase them, I would have been very tempted to buy something. They also had a barrier with a carved wooden hand holding it, which was another unusual touch to an everyday thing.

On the way back, we stopped off at Winterthur to have dinner. It was maybe not such a good idea since after Stein am Rhein, Winterthur looked less impressive, even though the Old Town is quite pretty. Many people commute from Winterthur to Zurich as it’s only 15 minutes away by train and is itself a big town with lots of facilities (like Zurich city, Winterthur counts as two zones for the rail fares, since it’s so large and has so many transportation options). We ended up in a packed Italian restaurant and then made our way home. All in all, a great day.

Zurich - Bruno Weber Park

Into the Dragon's Mouth!

My life continues to be busy (which is always the case as I’m about to leave!), and this last week has been taken up with a visit from Geraldine, since we share the same birthday. Astonishingly, I managed to find quite a few things for us to do that I had either never done before or done only many years ago. I believed I’d been everywhere by now!

I thought I’d start off by talking about the trip we did to the Bruno Weber Park, even if it's not the first thing we did, since it’s open only between April and October. Thus, if in the next few weeks you are in Zurich and are looking for somewhere to go, you still have a chance to give this a try!

I’d never heard of this park before, even though I’ve been in and out of Switzerland for the last 14 years or so; I found out about it through a leaflet on a tram. The Park is in Dietikon, which is also somewhere I’ve never been, although I don’t think it has a reputation for being a hot spot for tourists. Dietikon is still in Kanton Zurich, so I regard it as local (we also have a place called Dietlikon, with an L in the middle, which is very confusing). 

I originally planned for us to go here on Wednesday. However, we were invited round to a friend’s for dinner on Thursday and it seemed sensible to go on Thursday instead, so that we wouldn’t have too much stress about getting back to Zurich in time.

This turned out to be a mistake. We managed to get to Dietikon without a problem; once there, the bus stops indicated which buses went to the Bruno Weber Park, but they did not include the bus I’d planned to use (from the Park’s leaflet). Nevertheless, we got on the bus I'd planned and hoped for the best.

The Park was signposted when we got off the bus. In fact, we could see it in the distance. It was a very hot day, we were in the middle of the countryside, and it was very quiet given that a public park was in sight. As we went up to the entrance, there were only a few cars in the car park. At the gates, a notice proclaimed that it’s open only on Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays. Doh! I’d forgotten that this was why I’d originally planned the trip for Wednesday. I had no Plan B.

A group of people arrived and stood there while I poked my nose through the gate to look at what I was missing, wondering what on earth we could do. I made a point of looking at the notice again and mentioning to the group that it was closed and that Geraldine and I had come on the wrong day. I probably also made a few sounds of anguished frustration and I noticed the group talking among themselves as I made a bit of a fuss. Somehow, we found out that they had a booked private tour of the park, so I asked if there was any chance we could join them. There was more discussion and they said we could (as long as we paid our share, of course)! What a stroke of luck. If we’d arrived any earlier or later we would have missed them.

It turned out to be a work trip. They’d arrived at work that morning to find that a surprise outing had been organized for them and this was it! There were only around ten of them, and they were all Swiss, so everything was in Swiss German. But we got to see round the park and also got a little information on various parts of the park (not all of which I could understand) from the tour guide.

The park was the work of an artist and is itself supposed to be a work of art. It’s a fantasy world with dragons and Alpine spirits; it has a water section, a forest section, and I think maybe the third was a love section, but wasn’t available? It is still a work in progress as the artist has died, but they don’t have the monies to further it (so do go and help support them!). I believe it closed down entirely at one point, but there was public outcry, and so they re-opened.

It is really pretty amazing. You can walk along a dragon’s back and into its mouth; you can blow life into an Alpine spirit; you can sit on thrones. There’s a dining hall where they serve brunch on the last Sunday of every month (which I think includes entrance into the Park); the toilets were adorned with a peacock. The grand finale was the house (or should I say palace) of residence; so much detail you cannot take it all in.

We were lucky also to be part of such a small group and to have the park relatively to ourselves. The group was very friendly (one woman kept on stressing to Geraldine how hard you have to work in Switzerland!), and we tried to be as accommodating as possible given that we’d just tagged on to their event.

Anyway, I’d recommend it as a place to go. I even fantasized about getting a job where I could market the place for them, because it seems to be so neglected and unknown. The Swiss people were also saying that they had no idea it was there and they were born and bred in Zurich!

Zurich - Trip to Cinque Terre

Corniglia

Although I knew I wanted to visit Cinque Terre before I left Switzerland, I somehow ended up booking it in a bit of a rush. I couldn’t buy the ticket online because it was an international trip. So, I went to the main station with all my times planned out. However, the man serving me didn’t think the route I’d chosen would give me enough time to make the connection (even though it was a recommended route online), so I had to get an earlier ticket. Ugh.

As it turned out, his recommendation was golden. Every single train I entered was jam-packed. I was a bit tired as I sat down in my reserved seat, but I was opposite a very chatty (and pleasant) Swiss couple, so sleep or reading my book wasn’t going to happen. I mentioned to them that first class had already been fully booked when I reserved (as a Brit, I find this astonishing, since I’m sure in the UK first-class would not be fully booked before second class), but the couple’s reaction was to say that they had also wanted to travel first class but had been unable (but I hadn’t wanted first class, I had just thought it was extraordinary!). I pretended that I too was the sort of person who travels first class, but my pretence fell flat since they kindly said that second class had actually been better due to superior company.

After discovering I was English, the Australian guy opposite me also started talking. He didn’t speak any German, but I think he understood more than he was letting on. He communicated by gesticulating, which, weirdly, I needed the Swiss people to translate to me in German. At one point, the Australian asked me about Brexit (it’s what everyone wants to talk about but I’d really rather not; it’s such an emotional topic and I can’t be doing with the stress). The Swiss guy turned to me with surprise, commenting that he didn’t know that I spoke the same language as they do in Australia. His wife (I assume that’s what she was) asked him if he hadn’t grasped that I was English, and he said no, but still seemed extremely surprised that the Australian and I could converse.

After that, we (the Swiss couple and I) had the obligatory conversation about me living in Egypt, and then they started to complain about how stressful it was that in Italy, you never know which platform your train is going to leave from and you have to look on the boards. They couldn’t understand how it couldn’t be as organized as it is in Switzerland. I agreed, but found it amusing, since in the UK, at least when I was living there, you also never knew in advance which platforms trains would come in on (indeed, if they would even arrive at all). In Switzerland, the platforms for arrival are planned for the entire season or maybe even year(s), so you always know which platform to go to even if you book months ahead. To me, it’s this organization that is more astonishing.

Anyway, I arrived safely. My initial aim was to go on a sunset tour by boat, so I tried to rush to wherever the boats might be, but I was unable to see any. Online, it said the tours started at 1730 and it was now about 1720. I asked at the Tourist Information and they told me just to look by the harbor if there was a tour. That wasn’t very helpful, but I decided the lack of boats meant that no trips were available. I later saw that the boats can leave at 5pm later in the season, so maybe that was it.

My hotel was further from the station than I thought, so I felt a bit grumpy when I arrived. Then I found that my room was three floors up and there was no lift, which made me more grumpy. Steps became a general feature of my trip but I’d got used to it by the end. And they had no water or fridge in the room and no air conditioning, just a fan. However, it turned out that the fan was fine, so I became less grumpy the longer I stayed.

I did immediately feel like I was in another country, though. It was hotter than in Zurich and the air somehow felt different. Since I couldn’t do a boat trip, I went for a swim. The sea was beautiful and warm and underfoot it was a bit like fine pebbles and rather dark in colour, which made your feet look dirty!

Finding somewhere to eat turned out to be more difficult than I expected. My first problem was that although there were hundreds of restaurants, almost all of them served only fish or cheese dishes; I don’t eat cheese and I don’t eat a lot of fish. My second problem was that they were all heavily over-booked, so although some would offer a single meat option (always steak) or a pasta non-main dish without cheese, I would feel hesitant to go in and take up their only remaining table for four. In the end, I realized I had to eat even if I was just one person and so at 9pm hunger overtook my sense of morality.

For the next day, I’d planned to follow the itinerary suggested in someone else’s blog. I purchased my Cinque Terre day pass, which included all transport and access to the hiking paths in the region (I hadn’t realized that you had to pay to use the hiking paths) and set upon the hike. In the blog, it says that she did it with her children without any problem. It sounded great!

In reality, it turned out that the blogger and her family were a lot fitter than I am. It was extremely hot (around 28 degrees) and I hadn't fully taken on board that the first bit was all uphill on stony ground with lots of steps. I guess, since Cinque Terre is basically 5 mountain villages, I should have taken it for granted, but it just hadn’t dawned on me that you had to climb up and down mountains to get there. The paths were narrow, so sometimes you had to wait for people coming down (or vice versa). I took plenty of rests as I climbed up for what seemed like forever. I sweat very easily and a couple of people asked me if I was OK when I stopped! The views were beautiful.

Anyway, I was exhausted by the time I got to Vernazza (but did feel a sense of achievement), and the walk had taken me 30 minutes longer than the suggested two hours. The original plan was to do another 90 minute walk to the next village, but now there was no way I was going to do this. I had a milk shake and wandered round the village (beautiful!) and decided to take the train to Riomaggiore, which was the village that was the furthest away and so would allow me more time to sit on the train.

Waiting for the train was an experience. The stations at midday were full of tourists (trains were easier after 5pm) and much of the station was a tunnel. Most people were standing in the open air, but they continually announced that you should wait further down (in addition to announcing delays of 10-20 minutes). About half the breadth of the platform under the tunnel was was taken up by the area past the yellow line, where you weren’t allowed to stand. I went as far down the tunnel as I thought wise, hoping to get an emptier carriage when the train eventually came. A passing train was like the coming of the holocaust. Long before the train arrived, a wind whipped up in the tunnel; suddenly I felt cold instead of hot, my dress flapped around my legs and I didn’t feel particularly stable. There was a handrail, which I grabbed with both hands. And then the train charged through. It was quite scary!

After looking round Riomaggiore (and another milk shake and an iced coffee; I was on a liquid lunch, but a non-alcoholic one!), I took the train to Corniglia, planning on visiting Manarola last for sunset as suggested in the blog. By this time, I’d forgotten that the blog had mentioned impossibly many steps from the station at Corniglia. I remembered once I started climbing, though. However, my initial climb from Monterosso on the way to Vernazza was worse, I think. Or maybe I’d just loosened up by that point. Someone coming down the steps grunted when he suddenly realized how many there were – and I was going UP them! If I’d thought more about it, I would have got the bus (which does exist, as I got it going back down), but, alas, I simply didn't think on this vacation.

This activity earned me a crepe with chocolate gelato on arrival. Corniglia was the village situated most in the countryside. I walked down a bit of the path that I decided against walking from Vernazza and the town looked beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. As in all the towns, the narrow cobbled roads gave an atmosphere of times gone by (if you ignore the tourists). Finally, I took the train to get to Manarola by sunset.

On getting off at Manarola, I dashed up the hill, not really knowing where the best view would be, but thinking maybe up was a good idea (see how much I’d changed from the beginning of my stay where I was cursing the word “up”!). The church looked beautiful against the backdrop of the golden countryside in the setting sun; on the other side, the town of manarola perched by the sea glowed pink. I took some photos, feeling happy.

I made my way to the harbor and then realized that actually this was the place to take my photographs. Doh! There were lots of people on the path on the other side of the harbor armed with their cameras. I made my way to join them. Sunset lasts quite a long time and the camera doesn’t really pick up on it until it’s quite dark; in fact, those photographs look more like daylight ones than the ones I took from the church, so it must depend on the direction of the light.

My original plan was to visit Porto Venere the next day before I left, but I was too tired. If you go to Cinque Terre, I recommend doing it over two days (then I would have done both walks, one on each day, and a boat trip), a  third day at Porto Venere, and then a fourth day at Pisa. But, of course, it all depends on how much time you have available. I would also have brought a change of dress for my second day as I was drenched in sweat after the first day and possibly getting a bit smelly!

I was too late to book a boat trip for my final morning (which I quite fancied), so went swimming instead on the longer beach closer to the station (so no hardship there!). The sea was wonderful, but I got stung twice by jellyfish before I’d swum 500m, so had to give up. Looking out onto the sea from the beach, it seemed that no-one else was getting stung at all. Children and families were playing happily in the sea, another swimmer was going back and forth, people were standing and chatting or just drifting in the water.

I searched the internet afterwards to determine whether some people attract jellyfish. Apparently, you can buy jellyfish repellent which makes you smell safe to the jellyfish so that they don’t sting. So maybe I sweat more than most people also when I swim and thus seem more like a danger to the jellyfish?

At 3pm I had equally busy trains home as on my journey there, but arrived back safely, albeit tired. It was a busy, but great trip, and I would fully recommend it. The area is stunning.

Zurich - Trip to Edinburgh

A Few Days at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Since I’ve now stopped working, you’d think I’d have more time to write my blog, but instead I’ve been so busy that I completely forgot to write it last week, sorry about that. One of the things I was busy with was a trip to Edinburgh.

It took a lot of organizing and even then I didn’t really do it very well. I’d picked dates when a swim wasn’t coming up and when the flights were at their cheapest (relatively). It was otherwise fairly random as my main aim was to meet up with friends, but then it turned out to be August and when the Festival was on. This immediately made it more difficult to see friends, partly because most of my Edinburgh friends were already booked with visitors and partly because seeing stuff at the Fringe/Festival suddenly takes priority.

I’d booked all my Fringe tickets before I arrived, whilst liaising with Alastair and Rachel about when we’d all be free to meet up for dinner (deciding which shows to prioritise took me a LOT of time!!). I knew I could pick my tickets up at the airport and I was expecting a manned service point but it turned out that it was just a small yellow machine. You put in your credit card which you used to order the tickets, and out all the tickets come! I walked right past it the first time because it didn’t look how I was expecting it to look, but really it was an efficient way of doing it.

I managed to book a very cheap box room via Airbnb as somewhere to stay. By some complete miracle, I found the flat without a problem and that’s even with having to take the local bus and get off at a stop that wasn’t announced in an area I didn’t know. I still don’t know how I managed to do it. The buses in Edinburgh are now like the underground in London – you just use your contactless payment card as you enter the bus and it charges you automatically each time up to the maximum of a day ticket, so you don’t have to worry about finding change or which ticket to get. I hope Switzerland catches up at some point!

My hostess probably thought I was a bit of an idiot because there was this entry system to get in, which apparently opened a box so that you could get the key, but I thought it opened the door, which happened to be open when it shouldn’t have been, so I just went in. My hostess had to hurry out and make sure nobody else took the keys! The room was fine and there were two friendly cats, even the one that was supposedly shy and I would likely not see. However, the flat did smell a bit because of them and my bed was just a camp bed. Nevertheless, I slept really well, and the room was a good price, so I’m not complaining.

She pointed me to the nearest supermarket which was just round the corner, but somehow I walked right past it and got grumpier and grumpier as I couldn’t locate it. It was only when I turned round to go back that I realized I’d walked way too far. I also realized I was having problems in remembering to look in the right direction for the traffic, I’ve got so used to being in Switzerland now. I had a few close calls during my stay!

As always seems to be the case at the Fringe, it can be a bit of a rush to get from place to place in time. I’d booked something for the night I arrived, but it was further away than I thought. Next to the venue, there was a food market, so I ordered some fish and chips, but I had only 10 minutes to eat them. And it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was fried fish but not in batter and a huge chunk of it and the chips were made out of sweet potato. So, actually, it was very healthy, but I couldn’t finish it in 10 minutes and since I don’t normally eat fish, I felt a bit sick when I tried to eat it so fast. I could tell it was tasty though!

The first thing I saw was Pianodrome which is original music (string, percussion, drum, accordion, piano, I think) played in a setting made from upcycled pianos. As is often the case when I hear musicians, it made me feel how wonderful it must be to be so creative and to really dedicate yourself to something you love so much. As happened at several performances, they made a plea for donations so that they could keep going and also a plea for a permanent venue.

I must have seen 10-11 things altogether (a mixture of plays, exhibitions, music, dance, immersive experience). I didn’t have one dud, although the thing I least enjoyed was the photographic exhibition – there just weren’t many that appealed to me, with quite a few fantasy photographs and what seemed to me to be self-indulgent female nudes (did that photograph really require nudity?), which aren’t really my thing.

The last thing I saw was The Fragility of Man, which had been fully booked and then had an extra performance, so I was able to get a ticket. I think it was the guy’s father doing a survey as you queued to get in, which was a nice touch; he was warning about the strong content! It turned out that this was his son’s 52nd performance (how can he manage to keep it so fresh on each performance?). The room was sweltering (and full); I was sweating just sitting there, so how the actor wasn’t silently dying as he put his all into the performance is beyond me. What amazed me at the end was that he’d written and acted it; I have no aspirations to act, so to be able to do both so well is stunning.

I saw one thing with Alastair which has a title that is a palindrome “Are we not drawn onward to new erA” and the first half was basically played backwards and spoken backwards and the second half was the recording of that played backwards so that the language and the actions then made sense, even if the voices sounded a little odd (the backward language sounded like Russian to my ears! However, they kindly included subtitles on the forward recording in case of ambiguity due to strange tonality when the backward speech became “normal” speech); there was an underlying ecological message.

With Rachel I saw a beatbox version of Frankenstein which brought home to me how much I don’t know about how today’s youth speak, act, and think and makes me wonder if I really should be having teenagers as my main characters in my novels due to my ignorance!

I was two minutes too late for one of my plays and wasn’t allowed in; I was also two minutes too late for the one-man Korean MacBeth (with subtitles), but was able to get into that one; I‘d been charging along the street trying to get there!

There’s too much to talk about really. Alastair, Rachel, Jessie and I met up for dinner and it was so good to catch up. On my non-Fringe day, I met up with Caroline for lunch, who I haven’t seen for a long time. And I also went for a swim in the Commonwealth pool which had been refurbished five years ago and was very different from when I used to do my early morning swims before work when I lived in Edinburgh. It’s heated by solar panels (in Edinburgh!), the toilets used waste water for flushing, and they had little spin dryers for your wet costume – all fantastic!

It all went too fast, but next year, I intend to stay for 2-3 months. That’s when I’ll really be able to catch up with everyone.