Baden - Rest Day

After all the walking we did in Berlin, I really needed a day to rest my feet. I did lots of laundry and spend the afternoon reading my book in the park. For dinner, L and I made salads and ate them by the river. All the rain of late has the river seriously full!!! After we ate, we went and put our feet in the thermal water! Baden means bath in German and at one point this town was a Spa Destination. There are still one or two hotel spas down by the thermal spring, but most are closed up and abandoned. The thermal water was nice, but not as hot as we expected!

Mostly Rigi Klum and Zug

So this morning I decided to go to Luzern. The train took about an hour-- I've decided I love travelling by train! So easy! It was a really pretty day so I decided to actually go up one of the mountains around the city instead of doing just the city. I saw two gorgous churches before realizing I needed to catch a boat if I was going to make it back to Baden at a reasonable time. First was Jesuitenkirche, then Franziskanerkirche. I will do a much more expensive post on Luzern after I got back tomorrow!!

I grabbed some takeaway lunch and got on the boat. The views from the boat were amazing!! 

I took the boat to Vitznau then immediately hopped on a cogwheel train to Rigi Thun. 

On the way up:

It's only 1798m (5899 ft, only 700ft higher than the bridge at Grandfather) but the terrain basically goes from 436m in Luzern with 1000m hills then into the 4000m+ peaks very quickly so it seems so much bigger than Grandfather. Here are some pics from the top: 

Looking towards Luzern and Pilatus:

Looking towards Zurich:

Looking towards Arth-Goldau. Remember these bad boys for later! 

Alps, obviously:

At the top, there is a crazy looking cell/tv/everything tower that you could climb a little bit AND the peak of Rigi is used trignaglate the locations and heights of all the other peaks in Switzerland! Geography rocks!! 

I took a different train down Rigi and after a few minute of questionable mechanics, and the diver switching to the rear controls, we headed down the mountain to Arth-Gouldau. I would definitely reccomend going up Rigi from Vitznau over Arth-Goldau just because the views are better. There was a pretty church in Gouldau and from the train station I had a great view of two of the peaks visible from Rigi. 

I decided to stop in Zug on the way home because I knew I wanted to visit, but didn't think it would require a whole day.  I basically walked around the whole town in an (very fast) hour. If I have time another day, I might stop back in to check out the Brug Zug museum! Here are the highlights:

Lake Zug with Rigi on the left and Pliatus (background) on the right:

Huwiler Tower, probably used to store gunpowder back in the day:

Burg Zug, a Swiss style Castle complete with multiple walls and a running moat!!

When I got back to Baden, the Swiss were playing Argentinia in the World Cup so L and I walked around town with some beers watching on TVs in outdoor bars (and a big screen set up in ine of the squares!) until Swiss unfortunately lost the game! 

Basel and Baden

I didn't sleep very well last night because I was worried about getting my Swiss Pass from FedEx but it worked out fine! My pass got here about ten and I hopped on the 10:52 train to Basel for my first solo travel!!! L didn't think Basel needed a full day so I figured it was an alright place to go with a shorter day. 

When I got to Basel, it was about lunch time, so I headed done to the river looking for food. It rained pretty good between my walk down to the river then back up to Rathausplatz to actually find food. I got a bratwurst and half a pretzel and it was delicious!!!! From ther, I went through the Rathaus, which is the city hall. It was beautiful! 

From there, I headed back down to the river to visit the Baselr Munster. It was really cool from the outside and beautiful on the inside. The Swiss seem to be a lot less picky about pictures in their churches than the French or Italians, which is nice. I didn't go up in the tower because it was so nasty out but I did check out the back patio/park. From there you can see Germany across the river and France down steam to the left. 

After that, I tried to go to a couple of the museums but the first one was just poorly labelled and at the second, I realized that most museums in Switzerland are closed on Mondays. I ended up walking around old town for a while. It's very terraced almost with all the parallel streets above each other and not a whole lot of cross streets because they have to be where it's not too steep. 

I ended up by the Tinguely Brunnen Fountain which is a really cool mechanical fountain. Pretty much all of the metal parts in the picture were moving! 

At that point, I took some time to look at the map and realized without the museums I only needed to visit the city gate to have hit all the main attractions. So, I walked back across town to the gate.

On the way back to the train station I stopped by the Offene Kirche Elisabrthen but it too was closed on Mondays. 

Overall, I had a really good day. I may go back to Basel some time to get in the museums, but we'll see! I did really good travelling alone, too. Which I'm not surprised about, but I was nervous in the morning. 

After I got back to Baden, I started planning for tomorrow until L came home. It was such a nice afternoon that we decided to walk up to the Ruined Stein on the hill behind Old Town Baden. I snapped a picture of the clock tower in old town on the way. The castle was built sometime before 1000 and changed hands several times before it was besieged in 1415. They were eventually rebuilt in 1658 but semi-demolished in 1712. Pretty sweet, also pretty high without much in the way of a guard rail! The views were amazing though! Definitely worth the climb! Our apartment is behind the four rounded brick buildings. 

From there, we came home and grabbed dinner and went to eat by the river. Overall, an excellent day! I hope we have a lot more like it! 

Meet some ABB people

After my nap on Friday, I went for another walk around Baden. This time I went down to the river Limmat and walked along it for a while. It was gorgous! You can definitely tell that socializing is a much more typical part of Swiss life than it is back home. Taking driving out of the equation really makes meeting up with friends a much easier prospect-- no open container laws help too! Baden is situated above the river so after climbing up a lot of stairs, I made it back to the city center. From there, I was actually able to make it back to L's apartment without looking at google maps! 

When L got home, we went out to meet his work team for a drink. We went to Mr. Pickwick's, the speaking watering hole of Baden. His work people were all nice and seem like a great group to work with. I talked a lot with Jonathan who L works most closely with on a day to day based. He's from New Zaeland and seems like a pretty cool guy! We went to his massive apartment in Dietikon. Seriously, it was huge, like bigger than our apartment back home! He fixed steaks, pasta, and cabbage with peppers for supper and it was delicious!! We hung out for a while then headed for the train home. We actually missed the train by about 5 minutes so we walked around for a while. While we were walking, we found the tunnel where then dementors tried to get Harry and Dudley in the Order of the Phoenix movie! When we got home, I crashed hard. It was a great first day in Switzerland!

Made it to Switzerland!!

I've made it to Switzerland!!!! After about 12 rather up eventful hours of traveling I got to Zurich around 8am, local time. Leaving Raleigh, I can usually tell what I'm flying over, but today I actually found my parents house for the first time (that I can recall)-- picture below, the big field area is Bayleaf Farms, across the road from their house. The TVs on flight from JFK to Zurich were broken which was probably a blessing because they couldn't distract me from trying to sleep. I probably slept 4-5 hours but it was not quality sleep by any means. I did get to the alps which was awesome!

The plan was for me to make my way to Baden alone using Landon's very thorough directions but his presentation today was moved to 11 so he surprised me at the airport! That was such a relief! I hadn't been scared at all leading up to the trip but when I was actually faced with traveling and interacting on my own I was pretty nervous. We got my SIM card for my phone then were about to hit the trains when I realized- OH NO! -I left my Swiss train pass in our scanner at home. Luckily, it doesn't actually cover the entire time I'm here anyways. There was always going to be a few days where I had to pay for the trains. Those can just be at the beginning of the trip instead of the end like I'd planned. My parents have the pass and are figuring out the best way to get it to me. Also, the protection plan I bought really only covers strikes and it getting stolen-- there has to be a police report and everything-- so no help there. I'm not worried though, I'll get it when I get it. 

After Landon dropped me off at his studio, he headed in to work for the day. I tried to nap unsuccessfully to nap the unpacked. This studio is tiny. I've cleaned bigger horse stalls than this! No, really, the double, foaling stalls at Falcon Park were definitely bigger than this room by a pretty good amount! It does have a pretty cool view of a green court yard, though!

I wandered around for a while after unpacking, trying to get my bearings and realized that 80* feels a lot hotter than you expect when you're walking around in jeans for an hour!! Baden is a really cute town! It's not very touristy though, so I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. I went in Coop City, kind of like a department store but with food, too. I was looking for a pillow since L's extra one is shopping real feathers but the were all over 100CHF!!! We'll have to make a trip to ikea to get one cheaper! The difference in prices here is definitely going to take some getting used too. 

I think I'm going to go wander around some more before L gets off work! More later! 

Also. I totally googled "travelling" before I made this blog, but apparently I still spelled it wrong! I just re-googled it and apparently 2 L's is the British spelling, so let's just pretend I was being worldly! Whoops!