Nate Arrives

Nate arrived on Friday and we had our first weekend together in Zurich. Saturday we strolled down Bahnhofstrasse, which is almost like 5th Avenue. It’s a street filled with lots of stores, both high end and discount type stores. One in particular is Coop City which is basically like a Target with 7 levels. It’s perfect because it’s on the cheaper end and is ideal for getting any of those incidental type items you may need. Zurich is definitely an expensive city so I can’t see myself doing much actual shopping here. I will need to plan accordingly during my trips outside of Switzerland.

We walked to the end of Bahnhofstrasse where it runs into the northern tip of Lake Zurich. It was such a warm, sunny day and the lake was just beautiful. We spent some time just sitting by it taking in the view and soaking in the sun. Lots of boats out on the lake!!! We continued our walking and exploration through the Seefeld neighborhood and then back up towards Old Town. We found a German style restaurant where we enjoyed our first real German meal here. We enjoyed some sausage, pork shank and rosti! Rosti is basically like a potato pancake and a typical Swiss food. Delicious!

Sunday was quite the opposite as we woke up to steady rain and clouds, which lasted all day. We took the morning to get our place in order and get more settled. Then it was off to a bar to watch the British Open and enjoy a few beers (Nate’s idea). Sundays I’m learning are quiet around here as stores are closed all day. In addition to no stores being open, there are also restrictions within the apartment building regarding when you’re able to use the washing machine. So Sundays are not allowed for laundry either. It gives you the perfect excuse to be lazy on a Sunday, that’s for sure. But I must say, it’s quite strange walking around the city as it’s so quiet and empty. You can find a few bars and restaurants that are open though so I think it’s all about knowing where to go.

Then Monday it was back to that thing called work….you know, the reason why we’re here. Nate’s starting to get more settled and will be traveling to London this week for a few days to meet his new boss. It looks like his new territory will be the German part of Switzerland as well as the Nordics. I definitely see some weekends in our future where I meet him in Oslo, Stockholm or Copenhagen.

Tonight we explored a bit more starting in the Enge neighborhood which isn’t too far from my office and going further south until we found a German restaurant. We’re noticing that while there are definitely German restaurants around there are actually a ton of Italian restaurants as well. This is a very good thing because I can only eat so much German food and can eat way more Italian food! In any case though, we found a cute little neighborhood German restaurant tonight and had a cordon bleu version of schnitzel and pomme frites. It was quite tasty! However for our two meals and a couple of beers it came to about 80 USD. As I mentioned, Zurich is an expensive city! This will take some getting used to….

Our home for the month of July

Bahnhofstrasse

Lake Zurich

Lake Zurich