Blessed by the Potato

We’ve arrived in Zurich, and aside from the people beside us harrassing the flight attendants and knocking us over with the “snuggle train” it wasn’t too bad — even though we didn’t get our pre-picked seats in the 2-seat part of the 2-4-2 plane setup.

Wayfare’s brand-new Air Canada branded suitcase fell apart. Hopefully it’ll hold together long enough to get it home, where hopefully the Bay will take it back.

Our hotel room is great — probably bad to start with the biggest, nicest room, because it’ll spoil us for Davos and France, where the rooms will undoubtedly be smaller and less luxurious. But for now it’s fantastic, quiet, with our choice of 5 different types of pillows (goose down, duck feather, new wool, spelt chaff, ortho latex, or memory foam). The internet is free, but strangely enough the ice costs $5/tray.

We’re pretty beat from the flight, so we didn’t spend too much time exploring the city, but so far it’s been really good. I’m surprised at how many people speak English — I thought my broken French would have to serve as a lingua franca, but so far it’s been no problem. I don’t know if it’s the pale skin or what, but most people even greet me in English from the get-go. The main shopping strip is really cute with pedestrian and trolley/tram access only — many of the cars seem to have to navigate around.

One thing that’s really struck us about Zurich is that it has a really intricate trolley/bus/regional train system, which is amazing since the city is pretty much the same size as London, Ontario, which has pretty terrible transit (ok, I like the LTC and it’s not bad along Richmond or Oxford, which is surprisingly good for small-town Canada, but this is just a whole other league). Even on Saturdays the trams have been coming every 5 minutes.

The streetlights are suspended from cables strung between the buildings, which looks especially strange in the daylight when the lights are off and you can’t figure out why all the cables are strung all over the place.

Oh, and the river was a fair bit larger than I was expecting — I figured the (Ontario) Thames was a decent-sized river, but this one is a good 10-15′ deep, with fish snapping at bugs in the early morning!