Swiss Family Abraham

If you are a single American girl in the ten-year old age bracket, might I suggest any of Zurich’s many swimming areas as a great place to meet friends.

After a leisurely trip from the river out onto the lake in a howlowcanyougo river boat (that’s not a drawbridge ahead of us), we spent yet another day at the Swimmbad. What was meant to be a quick dip turned into an all day affair after Maya befriended two lovely Dutch sisters, age 10 and 6. The girls were visiting their Spanish cousin who lives here (he’s a banker, as you had assumed, no doubt). 

The girls swam for hours, played volleyball, and ate slushies to their heart’s content. As a bonus, I got to play ping pong as well!

We ended the day with a BBQ before taking the tram back into town…we had long since missed the last boat of the day.

Joe: What’s a buttermondsichelfettmacher? Why it is both Ali’s first newly coined German word and what we’ve been eating for breakfast every morning, of course. Much more descriptive than croissant, wouldn’t you say?

Don’t worry, we are also eating a lot of fruit. On the table this morning were blackberries, fresh currents, and a 20 Swiss Frank bunch of delicious cherries from the farmers market. I almost fainted when the fruit seller told us how much the cherries cost. Ali rolled her eyes at me and said “when in Zürich…”, which I translated roughly as “you cheapskate!”

Ali – The subject of the schwimmbad was touched on in an earlier post but I don’t think we have quite done it justice. Bad means bathroom and so schwimmbad would seem to translate to ‘peeing while swimming’ but actually is what southerners would call a ‘swimming hole’ and what Baltimoreans would call ‘the place where I got hepititis’. The Swiss, being a culture that evolved living on lakes, are very attached to their swimming holes, which come in a number of flavors: the regular lakeside schwimmbad, the flussbad (or schwimmbad on a river) and even the sportbad, which sounds like some kind of competitive bathing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During my trip to Zurich last October, some Swiss dinner companions suggested we go to the nude schwimmbad, and then debated among themselves whether Americans could handle the nude schwimmbad given our strange cultural nudity aversion. I’m still not sure if they were pulling my leg as the only nude Swiss I have seen thus far was the 3 year old boy with his swim trunks  around his ankles at the water park after a particularly toilet flush-like water slide ride.

So far our favorite is the flussbad for both its free entry (the sum total count of free things in Zurich so far is 2: flussbad and bike rentals) and water park ride-like quality. The thing that’s truly amazing for a city-dwelling American is the pristine and potable quality of the lakes and rivers that sit smack dab in the middle of a bustling city. I attribute this mostly to the fact that the Swiss are rule following sticklers. Where Americans feel it is our God-given right to throw our trash in the water and wouldn’t dream of inflicting job-killing regulation on our toxin-spewing industry, the Swiss would melt into a formless jelly without regulations and restrictions on their daily living. They dance with Bacchanalian delight while they carefully separate their cardboard recycling from their white paper recycling and package it in uniform neat cubes. It truly is a sight to behold.

The fact that they live their lives in the shadow of immense mountain ranges might also contribute to this rule-following culture. One needs a bit of structure and cultural uniformity to keep from feeling so insignificant and meaningless next to such imposing grandeur.
I have to say that the wall of recycling at the grocery store is a price I’m willing to pay to not swim in poo, toxic sludge and discarded packaging. Regulation never looked so refreshing!

 

Joe – After two weeks buying from the bakery, Maya wanted to make her own croissants. Voila!  Two Nutella-filled and four plain croissants!

Joe – I’m happy to report that, two weeks into our adventure, we have just today received both the remaining boxes that we had shipped prior to our departure and our Internet hardware. To you, these pictures are hardcore boring, but to us they represent a real improvement in our day-to-day.

Skype, FaceTime, Hangouts, and uploading blog posts with pictures just got a whole lot easier. Oh yeah, and working from home as well…

Joe – For those that aren’t driving around in Italian sports cars, Zurich has plenty of other transportation options. The trains, buses, and streetcars can take one pretty much anywhere one wants to go. But it seems that most people walk, bike, skate, or scooter themselves from place to place. Even the dogs are on wheels.

We got a couple of scooters, and have easy access to bikes.

We have also been walking a ton. 12,000 – 22,000 steps a day. And, for the first time in a long time, I went for a run. This was my view of the city at the start of a nice trail that Ali found.

Joe: Did you know that the small city of Zurich has more than 1,200 drinking water fountains? Walking down the street, it is typical to have multiple Porches, Mazerattis (what’s the plural of Mazeratti?), motorcycles, dozens of bicycles, and a drinking fountain in sight. Of these, we have availed ourselves mainly of the water (truth be told, we’ve done a bit of biking too). Maya stops to interact with just about every fountain we pass.  
But the water isn’t just for drinking. See that little head sticking out of the water?  That’s Maya at the Flussbad Oberer Letten, swimming/drifting down the Limmat, the river that drains Lake Zurich and runs through the city. Turns out, swimming in the river is a thing in Zurich. The river runs fast, and it is a ton of fun. 
Continuing with the water theme, Maya and I took a short train ride down the west side of Lake Zurich to an indoor (mostly) water park called Alpamare. It rocked. This place is an institution; the youth of Switzerland have been getting their wet on at Alpamare for decades. In the wave pool, Maya noticed another family speaking English and tactfully swam in close proximity for a few minutes before mustering the courage to say hello during a lull in the (wave) action…and it happened again.  I traveled to Europe and met some lovely people.  And they were Australian. The Aussies  are, as a class, both fantastic travelers and super amicable folk. In my younger days, I have found myself touring Europe with Aussiedler, though it was never pre-planned. Just last October, Maya and I were given a fancy automatic coffee maker and 2 kilos of coffee by an Australian couple (more successfully) playing the same contest in the Zurich Hauptbahnhof as we were. Maya and I were content with our winnings – cups of espresso and coupons – but the Australians had won big, then generously gave their winnings to us! Today, once again, I found myself hanging with Aussies…Maya quickly befriended the entire family, and we spent the next four hours having “our best day yet” in Zurich before training it back into town.