Flying Home

My last day in Europe was quite short. L and I got up early Tuesday morning, grabbed some pastries, and headed to the airport. I'm glad he was able to come with me!

My flight to JFK was delayed by about an hour, but it worked out okay. Flying towards America is easier because you don't need to sleep but seems so much longer because you don't sleep. I mostly read my books and watched the in-flight movie, Thor 2.

If you've never been through customs before, it sucks. First you have to go through passport control, then you have to get your checked baggage, then you have to go through customs, then you have to recheck your bags, then you have to go through security again, then you have to find your gate and make your flight. JFK has a program that, in theory, helps you through security if you've got a tight conection. They give you an orange pass that gets you in a seperate line from everyone else. The problem, though, is that as soon as you get your boarding pass checked (only one SUPER SLOW person checking too), they mix your short line in with everyone else so I'm pretty sure it actually took longer in the special line. LAME.

Really, the whole reason I'm writing this post is because when we were landing in Raleigh, we somehow kind followed the belt line in then curved back up through Cary to get to the airport. It didn't really make much sense, but I got to see both Lake Raleigh, where our wedding venue is, and Lake Johnson, where we live. So that was pretty cool.

My mom picked me up at the airport in my car with the intention of taking me home then dad picking her up on his way home from work. Unfortunately, she couldn't catch one of our cats, Nobby, so we had to go back to her house to get her. I ended up eating there then finally got home, with both cats, around 7. I did a couple loads of laundry and forced myself to stay up until 10.

Uetilberg Hike

Since I'd hit all the cities on my Swiss checklist, for my last real day in Switzerland, I wanted to get outside. I took a train almost to the summit of Uetilberg, the "mountain" next to Zurich. From there, I hiked to the summit and then along the ridge line to Felsenegg where I took a cable car down to Adliswil then another train back to Zurich then to Baden. About halfway through my hike, I stopped and ate a sandwich at a bench with a great view! The hike overall was really nice. I'm not sure if the trail was always just a trail or actually a very lightly travelled road. I never saw any cars though. At times, when it was more trail-like, I could have been hiking in the mountains at home. It was just a lovely hike! Also, between Uetliberg and Felsenegg, there was a to-scale model of the solar system where each meter you walk represented a certain distance in the solar system. I took pictures when I happened to notice the planets!

Rain and Dinner in Zurich

Once again, Tuesday was incredibly rainy in Switzerland. I saw a newspaper a few days ago with a cover picture of a small child out in the pouring rain in a yellow raincoat and hat. I loosely translated the headline to "The Abolishment of the Seasons." Apparently all this rain is abnormal. The rivers are all bursting at their banks with brown muddy water flowing incredibly fast. It's a huge change from the crystal clear much slower pace from when I got here. 

Needless to say, I skipped traveling for the day. Luckily, I've really just got Bern left and should be able to do that well on Wednesday and Thursday morning. 

So I spent Tuesday doing laundry, grocery shopping, catching up on blogging, and typing our wedding ceremony. For dinner, though, L and I went into Zurich for deliciouly Swiss Fondue. 

We started out with a beer at Andorra. We've been there before but never inside. The ceiling fan is actually a huge old wooden propellor! So cool!

After drinks we went to the Swiss Chuchi Restaurant at Hotel Adler. We got the fondue with 4 aged cheses and it was amazing! L didn't think we would eat it all but it was gone within half an hour!! The waiter then came by and scraped the slightly burned cheese out of the bottom of the pot telling us it's the best part!! And it was!! Soooo good!!! We're going to have to register for a cast iron, enamel coated fondue pot so we can recreate it in the states! I'm so glad we made time to enjoy this Swiss dish! It was SOOO good!! 

Zurich, Basel, and a Night Train

Friday was another nasty day in Switzerland. I did laundry then headed into Zurich to check out a couple museums and try to upgrade out seats to Berlin. Deutsche Bahn was able to upgrade us from seats to couchettes on the return trip but not on the way to Berlin.

Both we're on ETH campus and not particularly worth the rainy walk from Hauptbahnhof. I did get a sausage though, which is much more challenging than one would expect. I went to focusTerra in the geology dept and a paleontology museum in the paleontology dept. Calling them museums is a bit of a stretch. They're really just fairly large exhibits in the common area of each dept. They we're informative but it was awkward walking around them as a tourist with students hanging out all over the common area.

After Zurich, I headed back to Baden to finish packing for our trip to Berlin. 

Our main train left from Basel because I couldn't figure out how to get tickets from Baden without paying full price. So we headed to Basel around 5 to have dinner before getting on the train. We found a brewery with two restaurants and a Biergarten called Ueli Bier. The beer was tasty and the food was amazing!! I got Weinerschnitzel with Rosti. It was tasty but could have used some kind of sauce. L had the brewmaster's salad and it was the most amazing salad ever!! It was basically a bunch of meat and sausage cooled then put on top of some lettuce with a tasty dressing- so good! I'm going to try to replicate it when I get home! 

After wandering around Basel for a bit, we headed to the train station to board our night train. Here is a view of the Baselr Munster from the opposite side of the river!

The conductor was able to upgrade us to couchettes for the night and we are SOO glad we did!! Not that traveling in a couchette is comfortable by any means, it's just better than a "reclining seat."

So a couchette is a cabin on a train car with three bunk beds on each side wal. The beds were really hard and not even remotely long enough for L. The aisle between the beds is basically big enough for one person at a time so basically you go in and lay down and go to sleep, which is fine since that's what you're there for. I strongly recommend ear plugs as the trains are seriously loud and rattley. I also reccomend either lots of beers or some sleeping pills. 

It certainly wasn't the best night's sleep but it got us to Berlin!

Swiss history Museum - Zurich

Last Thursday was pretty nasty and rainy all over Switzerland. One of the downfalls of travelling in such a small country is that one big rain system can affect the whole place! To keep out of the rain, I headed into Zurich to check out the Swiss History Museum. 

It was a really good museum and I learned a lot about Swiss history. Afterward I just headed home to do laundry and pack for Madrid. Pictures weren't technically allowed but I snapped these of the building with. Y phones. 

Zurich

We had planned to go to Interlaken on Saturday, but the weather was crappy and without my Swiss Pass it's really expensive for me to go much further than Zurich. So that's where we decided to go for the day. First though, we hapeaded to Ikea to get a second pillow. We stopped at the coop (grocery store) for breakfast. L showed me how things work and we got pastrys to eat on the ride to Ikea. It was my first Ikea experience and it was pretty neat! They have EVERYTHING!! 

After we went dropped off the pillow, we headed to Zurich. From Baden there are to InterRegional trains to Zurich so it's only 1-2 stops to get there. When we got there, it was lunch time so we walked down to the river, picked up some pretzel sandwiches and cold beers and picniced by Lake Zurich where the river meets the lake. There was an awesome view of the alps! The swans (tons of them!) really wanted to share our sandwiches!!

After lunch, we walked around old town visiting the three main churches in Zurich. Fraumunster was closed for a wedding but still pretty from the outside.

Grosmunster was amazing! It had some of the coolest stained glass I've ever seen! It was actually made of geodes!! We bought a postcard for Zeke because we though he'd like the rocks in the windows! 

Another wedding had just finished at St. Peter's but we still got to walk in. It was pretty plain on the inside, but the outside boasts the largest clock face in Europe. 

After walking for a while, we bar hopped some then walked down the left side of the lake for a while. From there, we could see the top of another church so we walked back up to the river then down the right side to the church. We stopped at the fountain in the way. 

The church was closed and I'm not sure what church it is, but the outside was really pretty! It would have had a great view of the city if not for the crane! 

From there, we wandered back to old town to find a dinner restaurant. On the way, we found some sheep friends!! 

I don't remember where we had dinner, but it was delicious. It was weird though. We were eating at the edge of the awning but it started raining so we moved to a very large table between two old, possibly homeless guys. One was nice and talked to us. The other was not very nice and his dog was obviously scared of him. :( But, the food was amazing so we didn't worry about it too much. I had spetzle with ham and creamy cheese sauce. L had a lamb bratwurst with home fries. From there, we headed to the train station and back to Baden. Overall, it was a great day! 

Oh! And there are flowers all over Zurich and one of the flowers they use is Lacey Dusty Miller which is one of our wedding flowers!!