Author: dfkotz

Some of the little things I’ve noticed during my first week living in Switzerland, in no particular order:

• Efficient.  The public transportation system is fantastic – trams, trains, buses, and ships are pervasive, efficient, integrated, clean, timely, and understandable.  I sold my car before we left the US, and don’t miss it!
• Clean and walkable. The city streets and sidewalks are spotless, and the air unpolluted.  Genuinely pleasant place to walk.  but:
• Smokers.  Lots of smokers.  Living in Hanover and the Upper Valley I forget how prevalent cigarettes are in Europe.  I enjoy sitting in an outdoor café or biergarten, but have now learned to check the wind direction and the location of smokers before I choose a seat.
• Friendly.  Everyone here has been super kind and helpful.
• Expensive.  And just try keeping an 18-year-old growing boy fed in this place!  (We will need to double our budget.)
• Beautiful.  Zurich is a beautiful city on a beautiful lake.  It helps that the weather this week has been downright perfect – sunny, warm, not too hot, not humid; perfect for an evening glass of bier at the sidewalk café below our flat.
• Historic. Everywhere I turn, as I stroll the old streets between our flat and the university office, are centuries-old buildings just dripping with history. Seven chemists received Nobel prizes from their work in this building.  Brahms played music in that house. Einstein was a student here at ETH around 1900.
• Bread. Fresh croissants every morning!  Enough said.
• Delectable food: so far I’ve had Thai, Japanese, and Indian food.  I suppose one of these days I need to find some Swiss food.
• Green.  Many tree-lined streets and microparks make for a pleasant walk through the back streets to my office.  Still need to explore the many larger parks.
• Sundays.  All shops close on Sundays.  It leads to a very relaxed feeling in town.
• No bugs.  With all this warm weather, we leave open the windows (really skylights, because our temporary flat is at the attic level).   No screens!  because there are, amazingly, no bugs.  I note all windows in the neighborhood are the same.

This evening at sunset we walked a couple of blocks and hopped on the Dolderbahn, a cute electric cog railcar that takes passengers on a 5-minute ride up to the hilltop on the east side of Zurich.  It lets you off adjacent the Dolder Grand hotel, an immensely posh and beautiful place.  All I could afford was this photo from the driveway.

We’ve arrived in Zürich, where I have the good fortune to spend a year-long sabbatical at the Center for Digital Health Interventions at ETH Zürich.   Andy is attending the Zürich International School and Pam is planning many explorations.

I arrived a few days ago, to splendid late-summer weather.  Although I’ve not yet had time to explore the city, I have thoroughly enjoyed my daily walk to the office from our temporary flat.  It follows quiet streets at the edge of the old center of Zürich, passing schools and childcare centers bubbling with children in the morning, and sidewalk cafes burbling with adults enjoying an evening Bier in the late-afternoon sunlight.  It passes by a home where Johannes Brahms once made music, and the university hospital.  It passes homes dating to the 17th century, far older than Dartmouth or Hanover.   It passes buildings where a student named Einstein once took classes and a chemistry building that wrought seven Nobel Laureates before it was repurposed for the department of Computer Science.  It passes busy students bicycling to class and aromatic bakeries tempting me with their wares.  It passes an overlook where the university cafeteria looks out across the church spires of the city center to the lake and hills beyond.  [Gallery]

I can tell I’m going to really like this place…