Zurich - 3/23/09

Early Monday morning, we were back at the train station and on our way to Zürich.

Here's an animal rights protest at Zürich Hauptbahnhof (main train station). Check out those massive cowbells!



Ed's classmate Alfonso met us at the train station and took us out for a very tasty lunch. He was an excellent tour guide and walked with us all over Zürich. Here we are at Zürisee (Lake Zürich).





After that we went to the ETH Zürich campus (the MIT of Switzerland). We even saw someone walking around with supplies for the Beer Game, beloved by business students. We took in the beatifully austere Grossmünster. We had some coffee and I learned my favorite German word/phrase, "Superdanke." After Alfonso went back to work, Ed and I kept walking. Here he is outside the Zürich Rathaus (town hall).



We also thorougly enjoyed listening to Pavel Runov, who makes an accordion sound like a church organ. Amazing.

No trip to Zürich is complete without chocolate, which we enoyed at Sprüngli before meeting up with Marc (another Sloan Fellow), Marc's wife Florencia, and Alfonso for dinner at Zeughauskeller. I didn't know it was possible to eat so many different kinds of sausages in one evening.



Then, once again, it was time to get on the next train. Here are our luxurious accomodations on the night train to Vienna:



I feel like I got a taste of what my 6'5" brother-in-law's life was like when he was a nuke on an attack submarine. It was impossible to sit up on either bunk. I don't know how we slept. On top of our train passes, this cost 75€ each! I was excited that I'd learned a few words of German and could help the nice Slovak father and son who needed help reading their tickets to find their compartment (right next to ours). Finding out they were Slovakian involved a sort of "Me Tarzan, you Jane" pantomime. Good times.