short day trip to Zurich

Date: 27/Feb/2010


Olten(on-board train to Zurich) 11:25am

Nice bright and sunny day in Olten. Had planned to leave for Zurich at 9:00am but ended up leaving only at 11:15am (slept last night at 03:45am).
Would reach Zurich in about 30 mins, looking forward to such nice weather in Zurich too.


Zurich 12:25am 

What an awesome weather!
B'full city of Zurich, quickly collected the tourist maps from the tourist center at the train station. Decided to see ETH first, then walk through the old town and finally be at Lake Zurich.
Heading to ETH now.
 
Lake Zurich 2:00 pm

Walked upto ETH, its quite a walk(as ETH is located at a considerable height) but is worth it. The view of the city from the view-point at ETH is just spectacular.

 

After that thought of taking a tram to the lake, but got into the wrong tram(it was going towards the Zoo instead). Got back and instead stuck to the original plan of walking through the old city upto the lake.

I have seen most of the churches, gardens and buildings during my previous trips to the city, so didn't go there again. However if you are in the city for the first time, it makes sense to see all of them, they are fabulous.

The weather is b'full today (I know I am saying it for the third time now :P ). There is quite a crowd at the lake. so now I would have my sandwich and relax for sometime here.



Train(on the way back to Olten) 4:00pm

Sat near the Zurich lake for close to one hour. Its a really relaxing place to sit. Its quite crowded during a sunny weekend afternoon but the crowd doesn't feels like a crowd. It appears everyone is just looking at the lake and the b'full ice-caped mountains and beyond. Quite a get-away from daily work life.

 My camera ran out of battery so I decided to head back may be an hour earlier than what I had originally planned. Afterall what is the use of sight-seeing, if you can't capture the moments to share them later with your friends and yourself, right? And anyways I have one month pass so would visit Zurich again soon.

 Zurich HB(the main train station) is one of the busiest railway station I have seen. the whole complex has close to 70 platforms apart from connection with city tram and buses.

 At Zurich station you are most certain to come accross a lot of strangely dressed rebel teenages. Like this gentleman and his g/f who are sitting opposite me in the train. He is dressed like a devil, with long black leather jacket, black hood, and lost of metal all over. The scariest are his metal nails... :P. His g/f is also dressed similarly, black dress, umpteen number of peircings and metal all over the body. And what are they doing now?
 Drinking beer in their special raw ivory cups, which seems they have travelled on a time machine and have got from stone age :D

Oops I think the lady figured out I am talking about her, she just came across and is now sitting right opposite me. Those metal nails look really nasty, I better shut-up now....


 How to Reach Zurich?
By Air: Connections from most of the countries across the world.
By Train: Zurich is centrally located in Europe and has connections from most of the major cities in Germany, France, Austria and Italy.

Places to visit:

ETH
The three famous churches in downtown
Downtown
Opera house
Bahnhofstrasse (paradise for shoppers)
Lake
Zurich Zoo
Chinese Garden
Botanical Garden

Olten in Winters

Though I have been to OL10 twice previously, however on both of those occasions it was in summers. Being in Olten during winters is a completely different experience. And surprisingly for me its better that what I had expected. This was first time I was going to experience sub-zero temperatures and my bags were packed with a lot of warms clothes!

However you don't feel "substantial" chill and it feels almost the same as you would feel in New Delhi during winters. My hypothesis is that absence of strong winds are a reason for this. Seeing the whole town covered under sheet of pure and white snow is such a relaxing sight.



The university has evolved a lot in these last four years. Now they have many more students, more institutes and are also in the phase of constructing a new building to sustain future expansion plan. I am sure great things are in store for this establishment.

So from Switzerland with love....

-Uttam

Fondue...

On Feb 5th 2010 I was invited to a Fondue dinner by the leader of our research group along with research colleagues who were visiting from an Italian University. This was my first experience of Fondue and saying I loved it would be an under-statement. I loved it a lot :-) . For those who don't know, Fondue is a Swiss communal dish where you dip pieces of bread in a pot of melting cheese and eat it (wiki link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fondue ). Its a great dish and since its a communal dish in the sense you eat from the same pot it gets the conversations going and social interactions are even more fun!


After the fab Fondue dinner I even tried Fondue at my home here and trust me it wasn't that tough. Recipe for fondue is really simple, and the taste is far out-weighs the little effort you need to put :-)

However one word of caution (though on the lighter side :P), if while having Fondue you drop your bread piece in the pot you are supposed to get a punishment. Since Switzerland is a highly democratic country, the punishment is decided democratically by the members present on the table. In our case the punishment was to choose between singing a song or having a shot of Kirsch. I went for the latter option :-)

So those of you, who have not tasted Fondue before, try it out its uber fun. Below is the link describing the recipe :

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cheese-Fondue-105489

Happy Feasting!
 
-Uttam

A Trip to Lugano

Switzerland is know more widely for the ice covered Alps running across the country and the various establishments promoting United Nation's principles of Universal harmony and peace. This is the primary reason that foreign tourists are attracted towards two major centers in the country viz Geneva (also know as Genève, Genf) and Zürich. You can find people (mostly of Asian origin) wondering over the streets of Zurich in groups of 20+ capturing in their handy and technologically sophisticated digital cameras what ever they find worth capturing(and trust me they are quite liberal in this).
Although their are these two major tourist centers but can you believe you can imagine Mediterranean weather in Switzerland?, streets laned up with palm trees and architecture borrowing heavily from Italian way of building? People speaking Italian as their first language and streets full of pizza lovers? In short can you experience Italy in Switzerland and the answer is YES, I found the answer to this question when Lugano located in south-east corner of Switzerland, part which few call as Italian part of Switzerland!

Reaching Lugano is not a problem at all as it has frequent connections from both Lucerne and Zurich, since I was based in Olten so I took a train to Lucerne and then took another train to Lugano total journey lasting for around 2.5 hours, on return we took a train which took us to Zurich (again around 2 hours). As always you can find a train which suits you at http://www.rail.ch and yes for all the students and Glies-7 travelers, there are trains after 7 which can take you to Lugano (at least from Northern parts of the country).
I visited Lugano in May 2006, and would frankly say I was simply mesmerized by the superb weather and also carefree and passionate residents of the city. Most of the important places in terms of tourist interests are located around the famous Lake Lugano who's water was deep blue!

It would be termed as a sin if you are a foreign tourist and don't try out the local and favorite disk "Pizza" once you are in Lugano, you simply have to check it out. Apart from that places which are work visiting include Monte Bre, St. Lawrence Cathedral, St. Mary of the Angels Church, Piazza Riforma, the Town Hall, and outdoor chess on giant boards apart from several other things. My personal favourite was Monte Bre because the view from it was simply breathtaking (as you can notice in the image). Churches can also be of interest to people who have inclination towards history and religion, and yes "The Grand Lugano Casino" should be on the list of someone who wants to give her luck a chance while in this beautiful city. I have listed several products alongside available with Amazon.com which are quite relevant for people planning to visit Lugano and therefore can be very helpful and for bikers there is a special attraction out there :-)