Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

The title basically sums up my trip to Zurich. My last day of work started with a long meandering walk through the city taking lots of pictures. Halfway through the walk, I discovered a street with lots of banks that look like the Swiss banks you see in the movies. I learned that taking pictures of these banks is a great way to get suspicious looks from the security guards. :-P

I also discovered lots of hidden courtyards with gardens and fountains. It was so much fun exploring these, that I managed to get to work 10 minutes late. Fortunately, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but people were a little worried that I may have gotten lost or something.

We had another long day at work. The only notable part that I can share is that the weather was great so we ate on the roof top patio. Roof top patios are awesome! After work, I walked back to the hotel, dropped my stuff off and headed to the shops.

I needed to buy lots of souvenirs, so I found a souvenir shop. It was pretty expensive, but had a good selection. I spent around an hour picking out things that I knew people would like and would somehow also fit in my limited carry-on bag space. Unfortunately, somewhere in the chaos of packing all the gifts, the saleswomen forgot to add one of the things to the bag. And it turned out to be the one thing I bought for myself. D’oh!

Since everyone hasn’t received their gift yet, I won’t mention what I bought, but I really like the gift I bought for Crissy’s dad. It’s really cool. :-)

And no, I didn’t buy any chocolate. And before you freak out, the good chocolate brands are available here in specialty shops, so I didn’t want to add to my already nearly 35 pounds of carry-on bags.

After the shopping trip, I dropped my bags off at the hotel and set up to explore “Old Town”. Old town is the part of town I was staying in; it’s on the lake and has a lot of the historic buildings and cobblestone streets that are only open for foot traffic. And there were some really good street musicians.

For dinner, I found a nice Ristorante Pizzeria and had a wonderful outdoor dinner overlooking the lake. Though, I was dining alone, I did have a nice conversation with some German tourists one table over who were very interested in American politics and were surprised how much I knew about world events. I hopefully changed their initial impression of “stupid American tourist”. :-)

One thing that stood out about the pizza is that it isn’t sliced. In fact, you’re not supposed to eat it with your hands. The proper way is to eat the pizza use a knife and fork on the whole thing. Since the pizza was so incredibly tasty, it was frustrating to have to eat it so slowly. I just wanted to pick it up and take gigantic bites.

After dinner, I explored the town again, a lot of the old town is lit up by nights and it was quite nice.

Finally, I packed and went to bed. My trip back started the next morning and was mostly uneventful. Business class was not full on the flight back, so I was expecting to be bumped up (given my “Elite” status). But apparently they only bump when business class is not full and coach is overbooked. So instead of letting some of their best customers sit in a nicer, empty seats, they had us stay in our coach seats.

They could have gotten some great goodwill for no cost, but their policy dictates otherwise. That makes little business sense.