Zurich, 1978

Zurich

21st December
4.45 p.m.

Our flight left half an hour late, but was otherwise uneventful. We arrived at the airport and used the free hotel reservations service to phone Hotel Limmathof. Ann gave our name and the receptionist said she already had a double room booked for us for four nights! Obviously our travel agent had booked the room, but the message telling us she had done so never reached us. What a coincidence that, of all the hundreds of hotels in Zurich, we should pick this one to stay at. Last night I went for a walk in the main shopping area, all beautifully lit up for Christmas. They have fascinating 'automatic shops' in which you stand at a window, select the item you want by pushing its code number on a panel, insert sufficient money and a gadget goes along, picks up what you want and sends it to you through a little hole. These sell mainly supermarket-type goods, and operate around the clock.

This morning we went on a guided tour of Zurich. It was not very good, but at least gave us our bearings. This afternoon we went to the Kunstmuseum where we saw painting and sculpture dating from 500 B.C. to the present, all very interesting and most enjoyable. We walked back along the Limmat River which is very pretty and full of birds. Snow is still lying all over the place, although I think it hasn't snowed here for about ten days, and temperatures are rather warmer than Munich.

Grossmünster Church, Zurich.

View over Zurich.

The Limmat near Zurichsee.

Birds terrorising Ann ... or Ann feeding the birds?.

Limmat River, Zurich.

22nd December
8.30 a.m.

Last night we went to another concert. I went down to the Frauenmünster Church to get tickets and found I didn't have enough money on me! The cheapest tickets were R$4.80, going all the way to R$24.00. Needless to say when we finally did get tickets we sat in the R$4.30 seats, from which we could see nothing, but the acoustics were excellent. We paid R$1.20 for a programme only to find it was all in German! Anyway, the concert was beautiful and worth every cent we paid. It was the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, which was up to the standard of any I've heard, including the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. They played a programme of Tartini, early Mozart, Scarlatti and Vivaldi, with two modern composers (Ives and Müller) thrown in for good measure. All were thoroughly enjoyed, except the Ives, which was an insignificant piece of about three minutes' duration.

It's still jolly cold but not as painfully so as Munich was. The Limmat River at night was lovely. They float candles which, with the reflections of all the other lights, make the whole scene quite spectacular. We walked back along Bahnhofstrasse which is looking very pretty, all lit up for Christmas.

Above and the next two photographs, the Limmat River at night.

Bahnhof Strasse.

Grossmünster Church.

The weather seems to be doing something strange and I think it might snow. This morning we're off to find a bank and then we're going to get one-day bus and tram go-as-you-please tickets.

5.10 p.m.

We've just got back from a very busy day using our go-as-you-please tickets. We also made enquiries about going to Lucerne, Zug or Schwyz tomorrow, but we are going to see what the weather does. If it's like today (foggy) it won't be worth going as we won't see anything. We caught various trams and got to see quite a bit of Zurich. For lunch we splurged and had a cheese fondue in rather a nice restaurant called teh Züri Kantorei. For pudding Ray had chocolate mousse and I had a flaming snowball which was ice cream coated in chocolate with nuts and crystallised peel and then flambéed with Grand Marnier. Delicious!

Next were the Zurich Botanical Gardens which weren't worth looking at, having no hothouses. And so gradually back to the hotel via the local supermarket for bread, cheese and pears for supper, accompanied by soup made in our room. I seem to remember having language trouble in Switzerland before; certainly not everyone speaks English and my German is not up to Schweitzer-Deutsch, and they don't understand my French. (That's their fault, no mine!!) However, French did get us our train tickets today.

23rd December
5.30 p.m.

We had a very interesting and fairly hectic day. It was overcast and the temperature was -1^oC, so we decided not to do our proposed outing. Instead we went first to the University Botanical Gardens which were much prettier than those we saw yesterday, even in the freezing snow. They also had hothouses which were adequate, but nothing we hadn't seen before. Then on to the Bellerive Museum to see an exhibition of glasses, fifteenth century to the present day. Very interesting, and followed by tea in E.P.A. Department Store where we also bought lunch and went back to the hotel. After a brief rest (during which we both fell fast asleep) we went to the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum and spent the remainder of the day there. It was a huge place and we didn't manage to see all of it. They had a beautiful collection of international, civil and military costumes dating from Roman times. They also had stained glass windows and panels as well as many whole rooms transported to the museum from famous houses around the country, all quite exquisite. There was also a large collection of religious painting and statuary going right back to early Christianity.