Zurich visit - October segment

I wound up having two stints in Zurich: October 23-31, and Nov 11-13. 

My first four nights (October 23-26) I stayed with my volunteer hosts (my friends’ friends), then when my friends tested clear of Covid I moved to their place for another four nights (Oct 27-30). It was magical to be so flexible! Then I left a chunk of my luggage with my friends in Zurich, packed a light backpack, and spent 12 days traveling around Italy. I came back to Zurich for three nights (Nov 11-13) before I headed north for my last week in Europe.

Here are some notes from my adventures in Zurich, part one (Oct 23-31). I will break this into a few posts, but I’ve clearly fallen far behind on my documentation! I do want to keep my notes here for my own future reference, so here we go. 

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Zurich - Monday Oct 24th

Rainy day in Zurich = visit to the library (no pics), and to a clock & watch museum. There was a ton and they were pretty neat! The museum offers tablets to visitors so they can read about the clocks in their preferred language, and also see videos of the clocks in action. I was riveted; here are a few of my favorites. 

You carry your pocket watch by day, and set it in this cradle by night. At midnight a device syncs the clock and watch, so your time is in agreement every day. 

At noon the sun shines through the magnifying glass, ignites the cannon, which fires a shot. Everyone in hearing distance knows it’s noon and can sync their watches if they carry them. 

Speaker’s timepiece: from left to right, the glasses are empty at 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes, so speakers know how they’re doing for time. This was from 1700! People have been running over forever! 

The left eyeball points to the hour; the right points to the minute. So wild. 

I spent two happy hours looking at clocks and watches, but had to get home to my hosts. Fittingly for a grey day, it was also the Indian holiday of light, Diwali, and my hosts included me in their family celebration. They even loaned me a dress, jewelry, and showed me some of their rituals, including lighting candles and blessing their altar. 

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Lucerne and Pilatus - Tuesday Oct 25th

I took a day trip to Lucerne, including a trip up-up-UP in the steepest cogwheel train on the world. 

In Lucerne I got to enjoy the weather, farmer’s market,and historic bridge originally built in 1365 (and reconstructed post-fire in the mid 1990s). 

View from Lucerne of Mount Pilatus, my next destination. I was up in the bumpy bits!

Famous bridge.

It was cool to see how sunlight bounced off the river to illuminate the paintings inside. 

The real excitement was up on Mount Pilatus, a mountain at 6900 feet of elevation. Although the destination was amazing, the trip itself was jaw-dropping: the cogwheel train was commissioned in 1889, runs at about a 45-degree angle for much of the climb, and takes a half hour to haul its load of tourists up to the tippy top, with stunning views the whole way. (Worth noting is that tickets were about $60 round-trip, so it was breathtaking that way too! Bringing a family on a trip to Switzerland would be painfully expensive.)

There were two men playing alpenhorns, enormous views over mountain ranges, and hiking paths and stairs to climb. I got the impression that the Swiss people see a mountain as a challenge - how can they use engineering to build access to the highest peaks?? 

I was not thrilled to see they were doing construction on the tracks! It was fine, of course.

There are at least 2 hotels and restaurants at the top (the round building in the foreground is one of the hotels, along with the more-obvious rectangular one in the center of the photo). 

Picnic acquired down in Lucerne. YUM.

In case you wondered how to carry Alpenhorns!

The view was epic. 

What was especially interesting that this was amazing to me, but I think on the scale of Things to See in Switzerland, it’s probably a 6 - super neat, but not off-the-charts unusual for that country and region. 

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More Zurich - October segment - later!