Zurich

Zurich was a gorgeous city. It has the highest standard of living in Europe and you could totally tell. I've never seen such nice cars just parked on the street before. Of course with a high standard of living comes high prices! I had so much fun comparing prices in Zurich to what I usually pay in Freiburg. A pizza margarita that I usually pay 2,50 for in Freiburg cost 18 francs* in Zurich! A trip to McDonalds for the two of us cost almost 25 francs! Totally insane.

My dad and I arrived on Sunday so nothing was open and we spent the day just walking around and taking in the city. I loved the mix between the old city and the new city in Zurich. The people were very friendly and always greeted you with a Gruezi (hello) wherever you went. I was pumped to say Gruezi back to everyone, since it's the only word of Swiss I know after working at a Swiss bakery for 8 months. I could not understand a WORD of anything said after Gruezi though; even native speakers of German don't understand the Swiss dialect. We enjoyed dinner at a nice outdoor cafe (where I think the waitstaff thought we were German because they gave us German menus, all the tourists around us got the English ones! Haha!) and then we had the closest thing I've had to actual Italian gelato since I was in Italy!

Our hotel was really cool and modern and I have not slept in such a comfortable bed in a long, long time. The view outside the window was of real Swiss bankers hard at work. I also enjoyed watching Two and a Half Men on TV in French, and Malcolm in the Middle overdubbed into German.

The next day we woke up to pouring rain. As my birthday present, I got to pick out a Swiss timepiece, so we spent most of the morning window shopping around until I found the perfect watch. Unfortunately all the blingin' diamond encrusted awesome ones had price tags of over 30,000 francs, but that is always the case, isn't it? I really love the one I got though and it's something I'll never forget.

Sadly, we found out that all the museums are closed on Mondays in Zurich and we couldn't walk around anymore in the pouring rain, so we went back to the Hauptbahnhof (my dad's new favorite word) and went our separate ways. I got on my train back to Freiburg and my dad got on a train to the airport to go back to Boston. I had such a fun few days though and it was great to see my dad!!

*1 CHF = $0.88
More Zurich here