Later in October, I had a special visitor from England- Andy. Special because it had been 5 years since we had last seen each other! Previously in 2004, we had both volunteered in Costa Rica on a sea turtle conservation program. E-mails are a pretty incredible way for keeping in touch (nudge nudge, wink wink).So, we both were only a little concerned that meeting at the train station might be tricky, since neither of us was covered in mosquito bites, dressed in rugged beach clothes, or glowing from weeks in the Caribbean sun! No problems though and we had a great weekend checking out Zürich.
The first night down in the old town for dinner, there were some lovely reflections on the Limmat river of the Fraumunster church. This was followed by an adventure to a friend’s house party complete with dance floor in the living room, video projections on the ceiling of another room where there was a fierce pac-man competition in progress on the hand-made arcade game and of course a few black lights… rather unique. Not to mention that each room was heated by wood stoves!
The next morning, a bratwurst and bun from a well-known street grill gave us energy to walk around the University of Zürich’s overgrown botanical garden. It has been a beautiful fall, and the trees throughout the garden were at different stages of dropping their leaves.
A little oasis in the middle of Zürich. We heard and spotted quite a few birds that Andy identified as Robins, Great Tits and Blue Tits.
But then a stop at the famous Sprungli bakery which is home to the Zürich specialty “Luxemburgli” got us thinking about chocolate for our train ride up to the mountains.
We were able to grab some chocolate from Merkur (the place of the ‘slabs’ of chocolate seen in a previous post) and hop on our train up to Schluein. We felt that grapes were enough to balance the chocolate covered pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, apples and mangoes even!
Views from the train were beautiful as we went from the lower hills into the mountains. Here we are passing Walen Lake.
A few more photo shoots up in the mountains at my Aunt’s house…
The morning that we were in Schluein was especially foggy in the valley, but the cows didn’t mind.
These are rather condensed tales of the visits but there was more hiking, more eating and more photos throughout this weekend. It was another great visit full of laughter at old stories and from the new ones being created.
Old friends always have a great grounding effect and remind me of where I came from. Even with the huge amount of work that piled up over these two weekends, I was very happy to have had some old faces around.
Devon Abroad 