Zug, Switzerland - We arrived in Zurich last night. In keeping with best practice for avoiding jet lag, we avoided sleeping on the flights (connected through Lisbon), which had us awake for 30 hours straight. This is hard. I find it's best to drink coffee and watch action movies non-stop - the intermittent explosions, screaming, yelling and fast-paced music help to keep you stimulated.
After we arrived, we went for dinner at Kin, which describes its food as "Asian infused wonders with local and seasonal ingredients." Kin is a cozy (aka cramped) restaurant located on a corner in a more bohemian part of town. We got the chicken laap salad, tsume-style miso salmon, yuzu mushroom salad, a beet and caviar dish, and the mystery dish. In ordering our meal, Hannah asked the waiter what the mystery dish was, and she was told it's a mystery. We got it anyway - it was a mung bean with Brussels sprouts and fried shallots. For dessert: miso cheesecake. Thumbs up for Kin - we like this spot.
This morning we moved to Zug, where we'll be staying for a few weeks before (hopefully) moving to Zurich in January. Zug is about 30 minutes outside of Zurich. Zug is where my company's European office is located. Its tax policy is attractive relative to other parts of Switzerland, so it attracts a lot of companies, including many healthcare companies I work with.
Zug is adorable. This afternoon, H and I took a stroll down the waterfront which is well-stocked with ducks and swans looking for handouts (AKA, panhandler swans). Along the waterfront is an enclosed stairway that disappears under the water. The stairway drops about 10 feet underwater and at the end is a full-length glass window allowing you to gaze into the (very murky) water. Someone claimed to have sees a fish but I'm skeptical. The waterfront drops you off at a small plaza where you can enter the old town. In the plaza you'll find a small aviary with owls, ducks, and a variety of other mostly unusual birds. It's probably not the most humane aviary. It's well-maintained, but the spaces seem small given that these animals can - you know - fly.
The old town, which dates back to the medieval era, is picturesque with narrow cobble stone streets winding up a hill away from the lake. Many of these quaint historic buildings now house upscale shopping. Old renaissance-era clock-towers dot the skyline while small statues and fountains are scattered through the city's small, quiet plazas. This place is immaculate - there is no litter or dirtiness anywhere. One (me) almost wonders if they should remove their shoes as they enter the town.
Swiss oddity #1 is the checkout system at their larger stores. We went to a Coop City (roughly, a CityTarget meets Safeway in the US) to pick up groceries and household items. Like American stores, the Coop City is organized into departments by the category of good - there's groceries in one part, clothing in another, electronics elsewhere, etc. The difference is that there's a checkout for each section and you must pay separately in each department for the goods from that department - you cannot consolidate all your purchases at one register. H and I thought the checkouts that dotted the store were distributed for convenience, and so we collected a variety of things we needed from all over only to be told we had to go back to each department and pay separately at each for the items from that department. For us, this meant four total checkouts, about a third to a half of all the departments in the store. To be clear, this is one retail space owned by one company - as in, we had to pay Coop City four times in four separate locations within their one store.
Swiss oddity #2 is garbage disposal. Here, you buy specific bags for garbage at the store that are specially marked. You can only dispose of trash in these bags and it's essentially how the government taxes people for garbage. These bags are kept behind the cashier at most grocery stores. The problem for H and I was that we didn't know how to say "garbage bag" in German, so we played a small game of charades with the cashier trying to mime a garbage bag by pointing to an assortment of bags and then creating dropping motions with our hands. This, plus repeated use of the English words "garbage", "rubbish", and "trash" unfortunately had no effect on our stone-faced cashier. Eventually, we gave up and went to another cashier. This one spoke English, but she was not in the right department of the store to supply us with the needed bags. However, she was able to supply us with the German word "kehrichtsack" and, armed with this new vocabulary, we returned to our previous cashier, who was more obliging - but similarly stone-faced - this time around.
After we arrived, we went for dinner at Kin, which describes its food as "Asian infused wonders with local and seasonal ingredients." Kin is a cozy (aka cramped) restaurant located on a corner in a more bohemian part of town. We got the chicken laap salad, tsume-style miso salmon, yuzu mushroom salad, a beet and caviar dish, and the mystery dish. In ordering our meal, Hannah asked the waiter what the mystery dish was, and she was told it's a mystery. We got it anyway - it was a mung bean with Brussels sprouts and fried shallots. For dessert: miso cheesecake. Thumbs up for Kin - we like this spot.
This morning we moved to Zug, where we'll be staying for a few weeks before (hopefully) moving to Zurich in January. Zug is about 30 minutes outside of Zurich. Zug is where my company's European office is located. Its tax policy is attractive relative to other parts of Switzerland, so it attracts a lot of companies, including many healthcare companies I work with.
Zug is adorable. This afternoon, H and I took a stroll down the waterfront which is well-stocked with ducks and swans looking for handouts (AKA, panhandler swans). Along the waterfront is an enclosed stairway that disappears under the water. The stairway drops about 10 feet underwater and at the end is a full-length glass window allowing you to gaze into the (very murky) water. Someone claimed to have sees a fish but I'm skeptical. The waterfront drops you off at a small plaza where you can enter the old town. In the plaza you'll find a small aviary with owls, ducks, and a variety of other mostly unusual birds. It's probably not the most humane aviary. It's well-maintained, but the spaces seem small given that these animals can - you know - fly.
The old town, which dates back to the medieval era, is picturesque with narrow cobble stone streets winding up a hill away from the lake. Many of these quaint historic buildings now house upscale shopping. Old renaissance-era clock-towers dot the skyline while small statues and fountains are scattered through the city's small, quiet plazas. This place is immaculate - there is no litter or dirtiness anywhere. One (me) almost wonders if they should remove their shoes as they enter the town.
Swiss oddity #1 is the checkout system at their larger stores. We went to a Coop City (roughly, a CityTarget meets Safeway in the US) to pick up groceries and household items. Like American stores, the Coop City is organized into departments by the category of good - there's groceries in one part, clothing in another, electronics elsewhere, etc. The difference is that there's a checkout for each section and you must pay separately in each department for the goods from that department - you cannot consolidate all your purchases at one register. H and I thought the checkouts that dotted the store were distributed for convenience, and so we collected a variety of things we needed from all over only to be told we had to go back to each department and pay separately at each for the items from that department. For us, this meant four total checkouts, about a third to a half of all the departments in the store. To be clear, this is one retail space owned by one company - as in, we had to pay Coop City four times in four separate locations within their one store.
Swiss oddity #2 is garbage disposal. Here, you buy specific bags for garbage at the store that are specially marked. You can only dispose of trash in these bags and it's essentially how the government taxes people for garbage. These bags are kept behind the cashier at most grocery stores. The problem for H and I was that we didn't know how to say "garbage bag" in German, so we played a small game of charades with the cashier trying to mime a garbage bag by pointing to an assortment of bags and then creating dropping motions with our hands. This, plus repeated use of the English words "garbage", "rubbish", and "trash" unfortunately had no effect on our stone-faced cashier. Eventually, we gave up and went to another cashier. This one spoke English, but she was not in the right department of the store to supply us with the needed bags. However, she was able to supply us with the German word "kehrichtsack" and, armed with this new vocabulary, we returned to our previous cashier, who was more obliging - but similarly stone-faced - this time around.
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| He's a joker. He's a smoker. He's a midnight toker. |
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| People adding to the Wishing Tree |
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