David Kotz

Final day

The twin peaks of Zürich.

Today is our last day in Zürich, our last day in Switzerland. I will reflect more on the overall experience in a future post, but for now, let me reflect on this final day. I decided go hiking – but to stay close to home, and to re-visit the twin peaks of Zürich by having breakfast on Uetliberg and lunch on Zürichberg.

I’ve been to Uetliberg several times, either on foot or by train. Today I took my original route – the steepest, most direct route – and was soon at the summit area. It was hazy and the view of the Alps was limited, but I nonetheless enjoyed tea and a pair of gipfeli while sitting in the morning breeze.

Later, after some errands, I made my final climb up my usual morning route to Zürichberg, extending it a bit to reach the (wooded) summit. From there I followed gravel paths down to the 120-year-old Zürichberg Hotel, which I had passed many, many times without stopping.

Today, I met Pam and Andy there for lunch on their sunny terrace overlooking Zürichsee and the distant Alps. Though the view was still hazy, it was a beautiful day and a fine meal.

Andy, Pam, David go for birthday lunch at Zürichberg Hotel.

Check out the gallery for more photos.

Uetliberg, Albisgütli to summit and down to train: Distance: 2.9 km; Time: 01:01:52 (including breakfast); Ascent:324.3 m; Min/Max Altitude:810.4 m, 855.3 m; Location: (47.35166, 8.48746)

Zürichberg, home to summit and down to hotel: Distance: 3.0 km; Time:00:35:11; ; Ascent:226.0 m; Min/Max Altitude: 635.4 m, 668.1 m; Location: (47.38222, 8.56758)

CDHI

The Center for Digital Health Interventions.

As I wrap up my year-long sabbatical in Switzerland, during which I was a visitor at ETH Zürich, I am grateful to have been part of the innovative team at the Center for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI). Led by Profs. Elgar Fleisch and Tobias Kowatsch and jointly operated by ETH and the University of St. Gallen, the center is working on a range of important problems, interesting studies, and innovative technologies: passive health-sensing techniques in smartphones, smartwatches, and cars; stress detection; asthmatic cough detection and breathing-exercise games for asthmatics; machine learning to predict when a person might be receptive to health-intervention messages; chat bots to engage and encourage people involved in health interventions; systems to detect hypoglycemia in the driver of a car; passive interventions that can occur while driving; and more.

The CDHI offices (and me!) are reflected in the building across the street, August 2019.

Although my visit has been scientifically productive and rewarding, it is really the people who have made the visit so delightful. The faculty welcomed me by encouraging and enabling me to be involved wherever I seemed interested; my officemates patiently answered all my questions about Zürich and Switzerland; the graduate students adopted me into their lunchtime group outings; and the staff assisted me with all the complex logistics of moving to, living in, and departing from Switzerland. Just a portion of the team is pictured below. I am proud to have been part of this group for the past year, and hope I can return again some day!

Group photo, ETH-St.Gallen lab ski day at Obersaxen, Switzerland.

Braunwald Panoramaweg

A return to Braunwald for the summer perspective.

Although it was tempting to think of Friday’s climb of Piz Palü as a grand finale for my time in Switzerland, today’s sunny summer weather just couldn’t be ignored. With only a few days remaining in Switzerland – a hiker’s paradise – I decided to maximize the opportunity. So this morning I hopped a train back to Braunwald, where in March I spent an intense day postholing my way across the high country toward Schwanden. It was quite different today! Read on and check out the gallery.

Piz Palü

I grew up hiking in the Adirondack mountains of New York, and later the White Mountains of New Hampshire – places that are still near and dear to my heart – but ever since I was a young boy, leafing through pictorial mountaineering books from legendary climbers like Chris Bonington and Reinhold Messner, I’ve dreamed of ‘Real Mountains’ capped with snow and glacier. Yesterday, I finally had my chance and summited Piz Palü (3900m, 12,811′). Although relatively simple on the grand scale of mountaineering, it was nonetheless the most challenging mountain I’ve experienced in my 50 years of hiking. Read on and definitely do not miss the gallery – we were blessed with outstanding weather and snow conditions.

Final Fountains

My final post about fountains.

Two months ago when I set out to share with you the amazing variety of fountains in Zürich, I never imagined it would keep me so busy. It was a fine project during those weeks when I was unable to travel far.

Today I’ve posted a final batch of 16 photos (starting here), emphasizing decorative fountains. Most, if not all, of these fountains are for enjoyment rather than nourishment.

Early morning in a square along Rämistrasse.

In my first post I wrote “it might be fun to find them all. Since most (if not all) appear on a street corner, i.e., at intersections, the challenge appeared to be similar to the famous Hamiltonian Path problem in computer science: given a graph of vertices (intersections) connected by edges (street segments), devise a path that visits each vertex exactly once. No such option existed for me, as I spread my travels out over several weeks and must begin/end each walk at the same point. But I’ve tracked my walks as a means of finding new routes to cover each day.” As of today, I’ve photographed about 161 fountains (though I hear there are about 1200 fountains in Zurich); the map around my home (orange arrow) looks like this:

I managed to make a thorough coverage of the intersections in the hillside between Altstadt (by the lake) and Zurichberg (at top right).

Here’s another pair of maps, showing the location of all the fountains (all my photos are geo-tagged). The numbers represent photos, not fountains, so they over-count fountains; also, photos that are close together are aggregated into a single bubble on the map. The first map covers all of Zürich; the second map zooms in to my home turf.

Map of fountains whose photos I published; counts indicate photos not fountains; some counts are aggregated.

You can find all the posts here and all the photos here. To wrap up, below is one of the first fountains I saw in Zürich – in the mall under the train station.

A decorative fountain in the underground mall at HB in Zürich.

More fountains

An eclectic mix of fountains.

Today, a rather mixed batch of nine fountains seen all over my part of Zürich. They range from traditional to contemporary, from geometric to animal to human. See the gallery beginning here.

Lenin in Zürich

Lenin spent a year in Zürich while writing his book.

If you wander down a tiny street in the Altstadt (old town), you may come across a nondescript historical marker indicating that “Lenin lived here.”

A residence of Lenin when he was living in Zurich.

Indeed, it turns out that Lenin and his wife lived here for a year, 1916-17, while he worked on his book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. A nearby marker gives more details:

For more, see here and Wikipedia.

Bach to Bachtel

A beautiful morning for a quick hike.

In November, Andy and I made a frosty climb to the summit of Bachtel, not far from Zürich, and enjoyed a brisk view and a hearty warm lunch below a gray sky. Today, I wanted a quick morning hike so I hopped a train out to Wald and walked back up to the summit under blue skies and amidst summer sights and sounds and smells. My climb reversed the path of our November descent, up through the outer neighborhoods of Wald and through the pastures of the hillside farms. From the summit I had a grand 360-degree view of Zürichsee and the Alps to the south and the rolling hills to the north and east. I settled into the outdoor veranda of the summit restaurant for a cup of tea while the sun slid across the southern horizon. I then picked a new trail down, ending up in the pretty village of Wernetshausen, where I could hop a bus and train and tram back home. Check out the gallery.

A fine view from the restaurant on Bachtel.

Hike stats: 8.8km with 510m gain and 389m descent; 2h14 moving time, 1:00 stopped time.

Return to Sulzau

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Laurence, as we drove from the train station in Horb toward Sulzau, Germany, the tiny village where my great-great-great grandfather Franz Kotz first learned his trade as a schreiner (cabinetmaker) and which he left in 1848 to find a new life in America. I never imagined that I might be back in Sulzau so soon, in search of the Sulzau-Kotz connection – and I certainly never imagined I would meet a distant cousin, today. Read on!

Bremen and Worpswede

A weekend to visit family in Bremen.

After visiting Munich we continued north across the pastoral plains of Germany to reach Bremen, where Pam has relatives. We changed trains in Hannover (with the requisite joke about our “return to Hanover”), where met Andy after his arrival from Zürich. Although the skies were grey, the onward train to Bremen passed through pretty countryside. Check out the gallery and read on.