Showing posts with label Zurich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zurich. Show all posts
25 October 2010
Not-So-Flattering Views of Famous Places: the Alps
Taken during the train ride from Zurich to Vienna:
22 September 2009
The tourist as modern artist
The Goddess Serendipity arranged for me to be in Venice during the Biennale, that famous modern art exhibition that takes over the entire city for a few months every, well, two years.
I spent a few hours each day crashing different venues with my walking installation "The Tourist: Transcending and Transgressing Fronteras, Obfuscating and Obliterating Identity: a Work in Postcards, Photos, and Gelato-Stained Khakis." It got rave reviews--the critics didn't understand it at all, so of course they loved it.
On Sunday, I took my show to the main Biennale venue, way down at the southeastern tip of Venice, in the bucolic Giardini section of town. I shelled out an entrance fee of 18 euros--cultural learnin' ain't cheap--and strode in, holding my book prominently but casually at my side, careful to keep the brightly-colored title visible to passersby,
I visited several different countries' pavilions--Israel, Canada, Australia, Denmark, and various others--and learned that the hot new themes in art, the subjects on the cutting edge of cultural commentary, are (brace yourself):
What you do, see, is have multiple screens in the same room, each one showing something related to but--and this is key--different from the others. For example: show the same scene, but in different languages and with the timing offset by a few seconds (Singapore Pavilion). Or have four stacked screens, each with people spinning in some way--on stilts, on a bike, while holding a large object, breakdancing (Australia Pavilion).
Get it? Life is complex! And nuanced! And full of weird juxtapositions, contrasts that add up to something vibrant and interesting!
The most pretentious and dull of the videos was also the most hyped one. It was at the Great Britain pavilion, where there was a sign out front warning that large crowds were expected and seating was limited.
The filmmaker was one Steve McQueen, whom you may know from his acting roles in such movies as ... no, no, wrong Steve McQueen. This one, alas, is a brash young Brit who won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2008. His latest work, the one that we were all so eager to see, is titled "Giardini," which you may recall is the name of the area where the Biennale grounds are located.
The film took up two screens, side-by-side. It opened with several minutes of a close-up of rocks on the right screen and, on the left, a static view down a Giardini street. The only soundtrack was water dripping onto the aforementioned rocks, distorted and amped up for maximum obnoxiousness.
Eventually, the images changed: dogs foraging around the shuttered pavilions, streetlights switching on, leafless trees swaying in a winter wind. That was it. I suppose the effect was supposed to be mesmerizing; instead, it was monotonous and mercilessly mind-numbing. Snickers of disbelief started rippling through the audience.
In most cases, the two screens showed contrasting images that I'm sure were supposed to be Deeply Profound. For example, a brown spider poised on a tree trunk AND a red bug crawling on a leaf. Hidden vs. obvious! Predator vs. prey! Static vs. active! Eight legs vs. six! So much meaning!
The snickers eventually turned into a tidal wave of laughter--and bear in mind, this was a room full of people who had paid a decent amount of money to be there and who presumably had at least a passing interest in modern art.
Within ten minutes, I counted fourteen people walking out, presumably to track down Steve McQueen and throw him into a canal. By the twenty-minute mark, of a thirty-minute movie, another eleven people had given up. I'm sure more followed, but I was that eleventh person, the twenty-fifth total. I've never walked out of a movie before.
Guess what, Steve (et al.)? Idea A plus Idea B does not inherently equal Deep Thought C. Sometimes it just gives one the sensation of being kicked in the face AND the crotch simultaneously.
I can do the contrast thing, too. The Venice Biennale makes you think AND wince! You'll find both the sublime AND the moronic, the French AND the German AND the American AND the Venezuelan AND the Korean! In mediums as varied as sculpture AND video! There are disembodied heads AND crashing motorcycles AND cave paintings AND trying-too-hard-to-be-meta videos of gardens--and not just any gardens, but the very gardens that hold all these postmodern juxtapositions! Golly!
If there's one area of culture that can compete with modern art in contrast-obsession, it is, alas, travel writing. Just as in modern art, it can work. Sometimes. But usually it comes off as pseudo-intellectual hack work--there's no nuanced, analytical thought, just superficial observations paired in hopes that together they will sound insightful. See if these sound at all familiar:
- Nevada has gambling and recreation--vice and virtue!
- France has imposing, overcrowded landmarks and quiet, undiscovered bistros! It's a land of contrasts!
In the foreward to one of the recent Best American Travel Writing anthologies, series editor Jason Wilson offers a fine take-down of the "land of contrasts" trope. Alas, my book is at home, and I can't find the full text online, but I did manage to track down this bit about articles on Iceland:
The original composition of the line “Iceland is a land of fire and ice” has proved to be a seminal moment in the travel literature of Iceland. From that time on, the description has proved irresistible to travel writers — it has found its way into countless articles, guidebooks, and television documentaries.
Wilson was writing primarily about short-length travel writing--magazine and newspaper articles of the variety included in his anthology. But the criticisms can be applied just as well to travel books--not just guidebooks, which Wilson mentions, but travel memoirs as well.
Here, see if this formula sounds familiar: "I left my corporate job in the big city and moved to an idyllic [sun-dappled village/timeless mountain town]. The local people were sometimes charming, sometimes cold, always eccentric, and the whole region was a mesmerizing land of contrasts, both surprisingly modern and refreshingly traditional. The vineyard has a cell phone tower!"
Where did "land of contrasts" start? I don't know. But I can tell you that if you open your copy of E5D to page 291, the start of the Zurich chapter, you will read the following:
Imagine a boulevard lined at one end with banks and squat department stores, which suddenly opens into a lake of the brightest blue, covered with sailboats and swans. Consider a city of enormous commercial fame, where stock markets and brokers' houses stand a five-minute walk from brooding forests and mountain chateaus. ...
Zurich, the locale of these contrasts, is the city I'd choose for a first introduction to the land of contrasts, Switzerland. [Emphasis added.]
Birth of a cliché?
---
* To be fair, there were some genuinely compelling installations. And one of those multiple-video things, by an Icelandic artist with the delightfully-Viking-sounding name of Ragnar Kjartansson, was one of the most captivating and evocative pieces of art I've ever seen: five screens, each with him and another man playing music in various places in the Canadian Rockies. In each film, they play different instruments; together, it's a cohesive piece of music that sounds like otherworldy bluegrass, what a jam band on Venus might play.
I spent a few hours each day crashing different venues with my walking installation "The Tourist: Transcending and Transgressing Fronteras, Obfuscating and Obliterating Identity: a Work in Postcards, Photos, and Gelato-Stained Khakis." It got rave reviews--the critics didn't understand it at all, so of course they loved it.
On Sunday, I took my show to the main Biennale venue, way down at the southeastern tip of Venice, in the bucolic Giardini section of town. I shelled out an entrance fee of 18 euros--cultural learnin' ain't cheap--and strode in, holding my book prominently but casually at my side, careful to keep the brightly-colored title visible to passersby,
I visited several different countries' pavilions--Israel, Canada, Australia, Denmark, and various others--and learned that the hot new themes in art, the subjects on the cutting edge of cultural commentary, are (brace yourself):
- the search for meaning in life
- the futility of same
- the transience of identity
- despair
- contrasts
What you do, see, is have multiple screens in the same room, each one showing something related to but--and this is key--different from the others. For example: show the same scene, but in different languages and with the timing offset by a few seconds (Singapore Pavilion). Or have four stacked screens, each with people spinning in some way--on stilts, on a bike, while holding a large object, breakdancing (Australia Pavilion).
Get it? Life is complex! And nuanced! And full of weird juxtapositions, contrasts that add up to something vibrant and interesting!
The most pretentious and dull of the videos was also the most hyped one. It was at the Great Britain pavilion, where there was a sign out front warning that large crowds were expected and seating was limited.
The filmmaker was one Steve McQueen, whom you may know from his acting roles in such movies as ... no, no, wrong Steve McQueen. This one, alas, is a brash young Brit who won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2008. His latest work, the one that we were all so eager to see, is titled "Giardini," which you may recall is the name of the area where the Biennale grounds are located.
The film took up two screens, side-by-side. It opened with several minutes of a close-up of rocks on the right screen and, on the left, a static view down a Giardini street. The only soundtrack was water dripping onto the aforementioned rocks, distorted and amped up for maximum obnoxiousness.
Eventually, the images changed: dogs foraging around the shuttered pavilions, streetlights switching on, leafless trees swaying in a winter wind. That was it. I suppose the effect was supposed to be mesmerizing; instead, it was monotonous and mercilessly mind-numbing. Snickers of disbelief started rippling through the audience.
In most cases, the two screens showed contrasting images that I'm sure were supposed to be Deeply Profound. For example, a brown spider poised on a tree trunk AND a red bug crawling on a leaf. Hidden vs. obvious! Predator vs. prey! Static vs. active! Eight legs vs. six! So much meaning!
The snickers eventually turned into a tidal wave of laughter--and bear in mind, this was a room full of people who had paid a decent amount of money to be there and who presumably had at least a passing interest in modern art.
Within ten minutes, I counted fourteen people walking out, presumably to track down Steve McQueen and throw him into a canal. By the twenty-minute mark, of a thirty-minute movie, another eleven people had given up. I'm sure more followed, but I was that eleventh person, the twenty-fifth total. I've never walked out of a movie before.
Guess what, Steve (et al.)? Idea A plus Idea B does not inherently equal Deep Thought C. Sometimes it just gives one the sensation of being kicked in the face AND the crotch simultaneously.
I can do the contrast thing, too. The Venice Biennale makes you think AND wince! You'll find both the sublime AND the moronic, the French AND the German AND the American AND the Venezuelan AND the Korean! In mediums as varied as sculpture AND video! There are disembodied heads AND crashing motorcycles AND cave paintings AND trying-too-hard-to-be-meta videos of gardens--and not just any gardens, but the very gardens that hold all these postmodern juxtapositions! Golly!
If there's one area of culture that can compete with modern art in contrast-obsession, it is, alas, travel writing. Just as in modern art, it can work. Sometimes. But usually it comes off as pseudo-intellectual hack work--there's no nuanced, analytical thought, just superficial observations paired in hopes that together they will sound insightful. See if these sound at all familiar:
- Nevada has gambling and recreation--vice and virtue!
- France has imposing, overcrowded landmarks and quiet, undiscovered bistros! It's a land of contrasts!
In the foreward to one of the recent Best American Travel Writing anthologies, series editor Jason Wilson offers a fine take-down of the "land of contrasts" trope. Alas, my book is at home, and I can't find the full text online, but I did manage to track down this bit about articles on Iceland:
The original composition of the line “Iceland is a land of fire and ice” has proved to be a seminal moment in the travel literature of Iceland. From that time on, the description has proved irresistible to travel writers — it has found its way into countless articles, guidebooks, and television documentaries.
Wilson was writing primarily about short-length travel writing--magazine and newspaper articles of the variety included in his anthology. But the criticisms can be applied just as well to travel books--not just guidebooks, which Wilson mentions, but travel memoirs as well.
Here, see if this formula sounds familiar: "I left my corporate job in the big city and moved to an idyllic [sun-dappled village/timeless mountain town]. The local people were sometimes charming, sometimes cold, always eccentric, and the whole region was a mesmerizing land of contrasts, both surprisingly modern and refreshingly traditional. The vineyard has a cell phone tower!"
Where did "land of contrasts" start? I don't know. But I can tell you that if you open your copy of E5D to page 291, the start of the Zurich chapter, you will read the following:
Imagine a boulevard lined at one end with banks and squat department stores, which suddenly opens into a lake of the brightest blue, covered with sailboats and swans. Consider a city of enormous commercial fame, where stock markets and brokers' houses stand a five-minute walk from brooding forests and mountain chateaus. ...
Zurich, the locale of these contrasts, is the city I'd choose for a first introduction to the land of contrasts, Switzerland. [Emphasis added.]
Birth of a cliché?
---
* To be fair, there were some genuinely compelling installations. And one of those multiple-video things, by an Icelandic artist with the delightfully-Viking-sounding name of Ragnar Kjartansson, was one of the most captivating and evocative pieces of art I've ever seen: five screens, each with him and another man playing music in various places in the Canadian Rockies. In each film, they play different instruments; together, it's a cohesive piece of music that sounds like otherworldy bluegrass, what a jam band on Venus might play.
15 September 2009
Figuring it out: the personal journey
I noticed a few days ago that I've become a more confident traveler. Zurich was a tipping point.
Three weeks ago, in Copenhagen, I didn't eat a single meal in a restaurant; it was all either take-out or street food. Dining alone kind of frightened me. If I'd found a Frommer-recommended place that was still open (which I didn’t, aside from the really expensive one in the Tivoli Gardens), I would have gone in and eaten alone, miserably, pretending to write or read the whole time, dreading contact with the server.
That's basically what happened last year in Florence and Paris. If not for Arthur and this project, I probably would have survived on gelato in Italy and crepes in France. But you have to eat, and when you play by certain oddball rules, you have to put yourself out of your comfort zone and eat in historic restaurants with sometimes-historic, sometimes-grouchy employees. Eventually, inevitably, you learn that the waiters and bartenders can be interesting people, certainly more interesting than the company of pigeons in the park or Eurovision on television. Even introverts need to socialize. Sometimes it just takes a bit—okay, a lot—of effort. I started to learn that lesson last year, but the trip was short enough that I never fully adjusted.
In Copenhagen, I was still greeting each new day with trepidation, rather hoping that my efforts to find restaurants and sights Arthur recommends (to coin a verb, my “Frommering” efforts) would be unsuccessful so that I could retreat to a quiet park with a bag of pastries.
Of course, a major point of this project, or at least the self-centered point of it, is indeed to get out of my comfort zone and embark on a Personal Journey--to become smarter, savvier, suaver, sophisticated-er, sweeter-smelling, etc. Enlightenment and Self-Improvement and all that treacle. The profound epiphanies are still in short supply--and I'm okay with that; I was pretty happy with life beforehand, thanks very much. (And believe me, if I do figure out the Meaning of Life, I’ll let you know.)
In the abstract, though, in some ineffable way, I have become savvier, more confident, more competent. Certainly in terms of travel.
The change has come in part from the simple act of getting used to life on the road, life in an ever-changing, ever-unfamiliar environment. When you have to figure things out the hard way over and over, day after day, eventually even the hard way becomes slightly easier. You start to learn just enough words to get by, the rhythms of life, the subway systems, all the little markers of becoming at ease with a place . . . and, by extension, yourself.
Much of the credit, though, goes directly to Lee. Before he got here, I never set foot in a bar (on this trip, I mean), and it never would have occurred to me to sit at the bar and talk to the bartender. Our second night together, in Amsterdam, Lee did a shot of some exotic alcohol that was green and evil-looking and, according to the ads posted all over the bar, extremely potent. I looked on squeamishly, nursing my Heineken--the one drink I had that night, I believe--and worrying that, this being Amsterdam and all, someone might slip roofies into my beer, take my passport, and dump me into a canal.
By our last night together, in Zurich, I was demanding to Lee that we go bar-hopping. In one spot, I noticed on the shelf a bottle of Havana Club rum, a liquor that Lee, a bartender when not a sidekick, had never seen before. I presumed it was illegal in the States (Havana means Cuba means embargo), which made it all the more appealing. I informed Lee, in no uncertain terms, that we were doing shots. People who know me just did a double-take when reading that sentence, so perhaps I should confirm: that's correct, I ordered semi-illicit shots of alcohol. With glee.
I'd never ordered a shot in a bar--not Europe, not in the US. It's just not something that would have every occurred to me, to be honest. I'm happy to report that it was delicious: smooth with a nice little kick. A great complement to the various . . . actually, I'm not going to finish that sentence, for fear that you'll think I've become a huge lush. I have not. Promise. I have no desire to be like those women we met in Amsterdam, the ones who traveled specifically to get hammered.
I'm not sure everyone would see an uptick in bar-hopping as progress on my part, but believe me, it is. Or rather, it's a sign of progress, a symptom of it. I'm going out more and over-analyzing less. I've loosened up . . . a bit. Don't worry, I'm still charmingly neurotic and endearingly awkward and amusingly paranoid. There's still plenty where that came from. But the fears are a bit less absurd and a bit more fleeting, and they're tempered by some newfound confidence, a confidence whose very presence I frankly find amusing and astonishing. I have greater faith that things will work out in the end and, more to the point, in my own ability to make that happen.
Thank you, Lee, thank you, Arthur, for guiding me to this point:
Yesterday (Monday), after less than 24 hours in Vienna, I felt like I knew how to navigate the city, not just geographically but culturally. I'd already adjusted, at least to a large degree. I can't tell you how many times I had an internal dialog that went like this:
"Okay, so take the U3 three stops, then look for the big church, take a left, walk three blocks, go over the canal, and the place will be just past the park, on the right."
"Shouldn't you check the map a few more times? Or at least keep it out?"
"Nope. Not necessary."
"Are you sure you know what you're doing? Really?"
"As a matter of fact . . . yes."
"Oh. Well . . . all right, then. Carry on."
Of course, I also had the following thought, as my tram was going past the glorious neo-Classical parliament building, with its grand columns and statues of noblemen on horses: "Man, I have seen this building so many times in Europe. All these damn cities look the same! I am so over columns and horse statues."
So maybe I'm coming down with a minor case of Grand Tour Fatigue Syndrome, too, which is not exactly good news. . . .
Three weeks ago, in Copenhagen, I didn't eat a single meal in a restaurant; it was all either take-out or street food. Dining alone kind of frightened me. If I'd found a Frommer-recommended place that was still open (which I didn’t, aside from the really expensive one in the Tivoli Gardens), I would have gone in and eaten alone, miserably, pretending to write or read the whole time, dreading contact with the server.
That's basically what happened last year in Florence and Paris. If not for Arthur and this project, I probably would have survived on gelato in Italy and crepes in France. But you have to eat, and when you play by certain oddball rules, you have to put yourself out of your comfort zone and eat in historic restaurants with sometimes-historic, sometimes-grouchy employees. Eventually, inevitably, you learn that the waiters and bartenders can be interesting people, certainly more interesting than the company of pigeons in the park or Eurovision on television. Even introverts need to socialize. Sometimes it just takes a bit—okay, a lot—of effort. I started to learn that lesson last year, but the trip was short enough that I never fully adjusted.
In Copenhagen, I was still greeting each new day with trepidation, rather hoping that my efforts to find restaurants and sights Arthur recommends (to coin a verb, my “Frommering” efforts) would be unsuccessful so that I could retreat to a quiet park with a bag of pastries.
Of course, a major point of this project, or at least the self-centered point of it, is indeed to get out of my comfort zone and embark on a Personal Journey--to become smarter, savvier, suaver, sophisticated-er, sweeter-smelling, etc. Enlightenment and Self-Improvement and all that treacle. The profound epiphanies are still in short supply--and I'm okay with that; I was pretty happy with life beforehand, thanks very much. (And believe me, if I do figure out the Meaning of Life, I’ll let you know.)
In the abstract, though, in some ineffable way, I have become savvier, more confident, more competent. Certainly in terms of travel.
The change has come in part from the simple act of getting used to life on the road, life in an ever-changing, ever-unfamiliar environment. When you have to figure things out the hard way over and over, day after day, eventually even the hard way becomes slightly easier. You start to learn just enough words to get by, the rhythms of life, the subway systems, all the little markers of becoming at ease with a place . . . and, by extension, yourself.
Much of the credit, though, goes directly to Lee. Before he got here, I never set foot in a bar (on this trip, I mean), and it never would have occurred to me to sit at the bar and talk to the bartender. Our second night together, in Amsterdam, Lee did a shot of some exotic alcohol that was green and evil-looking and, according to the ads posted all over the bar, extremely potent. I looked on squeamishly, nursing my Heineken--the one drink I had that night, I believe--and worrying that, this being Amsterdam and all, someone might slip roofies into my beer, take my passport, and dump me into a canal.
By our last night together, in Zurich, I was demanding to Lee that we go bar-hopping. In one spot, I noticed on the shelf a bottle of Havana Club rum, a liquor that Lee, a bartender when not a sidekick, had never seen before. I presumed it was illegal in the States (Havana means Cuba means embargo), which made it all the more appealing. I informed Lee, in no uncertain terms, that we were doing shots. People who know me just did a double-take when reading that sentence, so perhaps I should confirm: that's correct, I ordered semi-illicit shots of alcohol. With glee.
I'd never ordered a shot in a bar--not Europe, not in the US. It's just not something that would have every occurred to me, to be honest. I'm happy to report that it was delicious: smooth with a nice little kick. A great complement to the various . . . actually, I'm not going to finish that sentence, for fear that you'll think I've become a huge lush. I have not. Promise. I have no desire to be like those women we met in Amsterdam, the ones who traveled specifically to get hammered.
I'm not sure everyone would see an uptick in bar-hopping as progress on my part, but believe me, it is. Or rather, it's a sign of progress, a symptom of it. I'm going out more and over-analyzing less. I've loosened up . . . a bit. Don't worry, I'm still charmingly neurotic and endearingly awkward and amusingly paranoid. There's still plenty where that came from. But the fears are a bit less absurd and a bit more fleeting, and they're tempered by some newfound confidence, a confidence whose very presence I frankly find amusing and astonishing. I have greater faith that things will work out in the end and, more to the point, in my own ability to make that happen.
Thank you, Lee, thank you, Arthur, for guiding me to this point:
Yesterday (Monday), after less than 24 hours in Vienna, I felt like I knew how to navigate the city, not just geographically but culturally. I'd already adjusted, at least to a large degree. I can't tell you how many times I had an internal dialog that went like this:
"Okay, so take the U3 three stops, then look for the big church, take a left, walk three blocks, go over the canal, and the place will be just past the park, on the right."
"Shouldn't you check the map a few more times? Or at least keep it out?"
"Nope. Not necessary."
"Are you sure you know what you're doing? Really?"
"As a matter of fact . . . yes."
"Oh. Well . . . all right, then. Carry on."
Of course, I also had the following thought, as my tram was going past the glorious neo-Classical parliament building, with its grand columns and statues of noblemen on horses: "Man, I have seen this building so many times in Europe. All these damn cities look the same! I am so over columns and horse statues."
So maybe I'm coming down with a minor case of Grand Tour Fatigue Syndrome, too, which is not exactly good news. . . .
14 September 2009
Switzerland: now at twice the cost and half the efficiency!
Arthur says that it's "strange to be in a country where (a) everything works, (b) everyone seems well-off, (c) all appliances, machinery, telephones and gadgets are more modern than ours."
Switzerland definitely has the reputation of being a land of precision, function, and efficiency. Think Swiss watches, Swiss banks, Swiss Army Knives.
But have you ever actually used a Swiss Army Knife? Trick question. No one has EVER used one. They make great gifts, but if you want actual function, use a Leatherman. Swiss Army Knife blades are laughably small and dull; the other tools are basically useless. I'm sure there might be some situation in which I need a tiny, crappy awl, but it can't imagine what it would be.
The knife is the perfect metaphor Switzerland, at least in our experience: superficially well put-together, efficient, precise. But in reality, not so much.
Case in point: the transit maps. They're a disaster. In other cities (Berlin and Paris, for example), the maps have a relative scale--the distances between the stations are all the same, but the cardinal directions of everything are more or less correct. The maps kind of sprawl in a linear fashion, according to how the city itself is laid out. They make sense.
The Swiss have tried to cram the Zurich transit map into a square, orderly grid. In theory, it's great: it fits in a small space, and if you check the index of stations and see that your desired station is in sector B3, you just find that square on the map. But by trying to force a logical grid on a sprawling, disorderly system, they've ended up with a map that looks like a plate of pasta studded with tiny meatballs.
The pricing of things here also completely defies logic. Most foods are jaw-droppingly expensive. A Big Mac Value Meal costs 11 CHF (their currency is nearly even with the dollar, so that would be about $11). A Whopper, sans fries and drink, costs 7 CHF. A vastly inferior curry in a dive of a restaurant in a dreary neighborhood costs 19.50 CHF.
But go to a swank restaurant in a hip section of the center city and order fondue. It'll be 22 CHF per person--about what you'd pay in the US, but the quality here is better. (Yes, you'll look like a tourist. Deal with it. Arthur insists you have this exotic "food specialty of Switzerland," and it is damn delicious.)
Or head to the bustling lunch stand on the Limmatquai and order up half a rotisserie chicken and a huge, rustic roll. Cost: 9.50 CHF. That sounds about right, maybe even a little cheap, given the quality and quantity. Just don't order a beverage: Lee's 20 oz bottle of Coke, at the same place was 5 CHF.
Totally baffling--as Lee put it, they don't seem to have any idea what to charge for things (although, as I said, for the most part they seem to have decided that prices should be absurdly, whimper-inducingly high).
The city just isn't as orderly and efficient as you've been led to believe. The trains run on time, but good luck figuring out the layout of the central train station and getting to your train in the first place. And please ignore all the graffiti. Oh, and how many dapper accountants did we see? ONE. You think this whole city is full of them. Not so.
Lee and I figured it out, though: the reason everything here is so freaking expensive is that they spend gobs of money on PR consultants to convince the rest of the world that this place is as modern, orderly, and efficient as Arthur claims. Kudos to those consultants; they've done a fine job. I was convinced. Until I came here.
Switzerland definitely has the reputation of being a land of precision, function, and efficiency. Think Swiss watches, Swiss banks, Swiss Army Knives.
But have you ever actually used a Swiss Army Knife? Trick question. No one has EVER used one. They make great gifts, but if you want actual function, use a Leatherman. Swiss Army Knife blades are laughably small and dull; the other tools are basically useless. I'm sure there might be some situation in which I need a tiny, crappy awl, but it can't imagine what it would be.
The knife is the perfect metaphor Switzerland, at least in our experience: superficially well put-together, efficient, precise. But in reality, not so much.
Case in point: the transit maps. They're a disaster. In other cities (Berlin and Paris, for example), the maps have a relative scale--the distances between the stations are all the same, but the cardinal directions of everything are more or less correct. The maps kind of sprawl in a linear fashion, according to how the city itself is laid out. They make sense.
The Swiss have tried to cram the Zurich transit map into a square, orderly grid. In theory, it's great: it fits in a small space, and if you check the index of stations and see that your desired station is in sector B3, you just find that square on the map. But by trying to force a logical grid on a sprawling, disorderly system, they've ended up with a map that looks like a plate of pasta studded with tiny meatballs.
The pricing of things here also completely defies logic. Most foods are jaw-droppingly expensive. A Big Mac Value Meal costs 11 CHF (their currency is nearly even with the dollar, so that would be about $11). A Whopper, sans fries and drink, costs 7 CHF. A vastly inferior curry in a dive of a restaurant in a dreary neighborhood costs 19.50 CHF.
But go to a swank restaurant in a hip section of the center city and order fondue. It'll be 22 CHF per person--about what you'd pay in the US, but the quality here is better. (Yes, you'll look like a tourist. Deal with it. Arthur insists you have this exotic "food specialty of Switzerland," and it is damn delicious.)
Or head to the bustling lunch stand on the Limmatquai and order up half a rotisserie chicken and a huge, rustic roll. Cost: 9.50 CHF. That sounds about right, maybe even a little cheap, given the quality and quantity. Just don't order a beverage: Lee's 20 oz bottle of Coke, at the same place was 5 CHF.
Totally baffling--as Lee put it, they don't seem to have any idea what to charge for things (although, as I said, for the most part they seem to have decided that prices should be absurdly, whimper-inducingly high).
The city just isn't as orderly and efficient as you've been led to believe. The trains run on time, but good luck figuring out the layout of the central train station and getting to your train in the first place. And please ignore all the graffiti. Oh, and how many dapper accountants did we see? ONE. You think this whole city is full of them. Not so.
Lee and I figured it out, though: the reason everything here is so freaking expensive is that they spend gobs of money on PR consultants to convince the rest of the world that this place is as modern, orderly, and efficient as Arthur claims. Kudos to those consultants; they've done a fine job. I was convinced. Until I came here.
By the numbers (part III)
Days on the road: 25
Days left: 15
Cities visited: 6
Current city: Vienna (Wien)
Cities left: 4
Trains taken (not counting subways, trams, and other local transit): 11
Maximum number of trains in one day: 5
Trains we should have taken that day, if the info desk woman in Munich hadn't given us completely erroneous information: 1
Countries Lee visited semi-illegally on that day: 1 (the detoured route took us through Austria, which wasn't included on his Eurail pass)
Comment by Lee as we slipped into Switzerland without event: "This is just like 'The Sound of Music'--I have evaded the authorities and fled Austria!"
Travel days used up on my Eurail pass: 5
Travel days left: 3
Didgeridoo-playing street performers seen: 3
City with best street performers overall: Copenhagen (no contest)
City with worst: Amsterdam
Pastries consumed: lost count. Probably 50-ish.
Panang curries consumed: 3
Way that Panang curry at dive-y restaurant in depressed neighborhood in outer Zurich was probably prepared: from a can
Price of said curry: 19.50 CHF (Swiss francs)
Price of presumably-authentic fondue in fancy restaurant in hip neighborhood in central Zurich: 22.00 CHF
Current exchange rate of CHF to dollars: about 1.05 CHF to $1.00 (that is, nearly even)
Price of a Big Mac value meal in Zurich (not that I had one): 11.40 CHF
Price of a single Whopper in Zurich (ditto): 7.00 CHF
Price of a really good rotisserie chicken lunch, with rustic roll, in the very heart of Zurich: 9.50 CHF
Price of a 20 oz. bottle of Coke at same restaurant: 5.00 CHF
As you will have surmised, amount that Swiss pricing is consistent or seems to conform to any logic: apparently none
Price of a room at the Sternon Oerlikon in Zurich, circa 1963: $3, including breakfast
Price of a room in 2009: 145 CHF, not including breakfast (apparently)
Adjectives Arthur uses to describe said hotel: rustic, quiet, old-fashioned
Adjectives I'd use: loud, ugly, clearly geared toward business travelers with expense accounts and a high tolerance for the greatest interior design hits of 1986
Highest price of a watch seen displayed in a Zurich shop window: 94,700 CHF
Weirdest item seen on a menu: foal
Europe's most popular food, and the most readily-available in every city I've visited: doner kebab
Favorite kebab-stand name: Kebabistan (in Copenhagen)
Second-favorite: Ali Kebab . . . or maybe it was Ali Kebaba (Zurich)
Favorite typo on English sign in restaurant: "menü's" (the rare misplaced-umlaut AND apostrophe double whammy!)
Historic Munich beer halls/gardens patronized: 4
Drinks consumed, aside from beer, that I had not had before: 4 (Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Sazerac, Havana Club rum)
Status of my mother's eyebrows after reading those last two items: arched in alarm
Number of said drinks that were consumed mostly because of the intrigue of imbibing something that is probably illegal in my homeland: 1 (Havana Club, presumably from Cuba; Lee, a bartender, had not heard of it.)
Minimum number of one-line in-jokes that Lee and I established, and which are Very Funny if you know the full context and back history: 4
List of said in-jokes: "the contessa"; "African click language"; "narrative!"; "yeah, we're famous."
Minimum number of instant crushes developed on women on bikes: 138
Number of said women who have spotted me, swooned, and nearly plowed into a canal/windmill/castle/Rodin statue, only to be saved by yours truly at the last minute: ... zero
Number of said women who have even made eye contact: zero
Eccentric pink-fluffy-bathrobe-wearing women approached by in Zurich park, with request for a kiss: 1
Headwear of said woman: plush flower pot hat
Minimum number of cats we were guessing she owned when we first spotted her: 20
Our reaction as she approached us: "It's about a 20-foot drop down this cliff. We can probably make it with minimal injury."
Level of our relief when we discovered that she was basically normal, that the outfit and kiss request were part of a bachelorette party hazing ritual, and that she did not reek of cat urine: palpable
Kisses granted: 4 (2 per cheek from each of us)
Comment to her friends for picking outfit that was just weird enough to be humiliating but plausible (and therefore more embarassing than, say, a tutu): Well done.
Swiss celebrities I can name: Roger Federer (the tennis player)
His native language, to the best of my knowledge: French
Language I assumed they spoke in Zurich, based in this information and Arthur's lack of comments to the contrary: French
Language they actually speak: German with random French and English touches, just to confuse you
Days left: 15
Cities visited: 6
Current city: Vienna (Wien)
Cities left: 4
Trains taken (not counting subways, trams, and other local transit): 11
Maximum number of trains in one day: 5
Trains we should have taken that day, if the info desk woman in Munich hadn't given us completely erroneous information: 1
Countries Lee visited semi-illegally on that day: 1 (the detoured route took us through Austria, which wasn't included on his Eurail pass)
Comment by Lee as we slipped into Switzerland without event: "This is just like 'The Sound of Music'--I have evaded the authorities and fled Austria!"
Travel days used up on my Eurail pass: 5
Travel days left: 3
Didgeridoo-playing street performers seen: 3
City with best street performers overall: Copenhagen (no contest)
City with worst: Amsterdam
Pastries consumed: lost count. Probably 50-ish.
Panang curries consumed: 3
Way that Panang curry at dive-y restaurant in depressed neighborhood in outer Zurich was probably prepared: from a can
Price of said curry: 19.50 CHF (Swiss francs)
Price of presumably-authentic fondue in fancy restaurant in hip neighborhood in central Zurich: 22.00 CHF
Current exchange rate of CHF to dollars: about 1.05 CHF to $1.00 (that is, nearly even)
Price of a Big Mac value meal in Zurich (not that I had one): 11.40 CHF
Price of a single Whopper in Zurich (ditto): 7.00 CHF
Price of a really good rotisserie chicken lunch, with rustic roll, in the very heart of Zurich: 9.50 CHF
Price of a 20 oz. bottle of Coke at same restaurant: 5.00 CHF
As you will have surmised, amount that Swiss pricing is consistent or seems to conform to any logic: apparently none
Price of a room at the Sternon Oerlikon in Zurich, circa 1963: $3, including breakfast
Price of a room in 2009: 145 CHF, not including breakfast (apparently)
Adjectives Arthur uses to describe said hotel: rustic, quiet, old-fashioned
Adjectives I'd use: loud, ugly, clearly geared toward business travelers with expense accounts and a high tolerance for the greatest interior design hits of 1986
Highest price of a watch seen displayed in a Zurich shop window: 94,700 CHF
Weirdest item seen on a menu: foal
Europe's most popular food, and the most readily-available in every city I've visited: doner kebab
Favorite kebab-stand name: Kebabistan (in Copenhagen)
Second-favorite: Ali Kebab . . . or maybe it was Ali Kebaba (Zurich)
Favorite typo on English sign in restaurant: "menü's" (the rare misplaced-umlaut AND apostrophe double whammy!)
Historic Munich beer halls/gardens patronized: 4
Drinks consumed, aside from beer, that I had not had before: 4 (Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Sazerac, Havana Club rum)
Status of my mother's eyebrows after reading those last two items: arched in alarm
Number of said drinks that were consumed mostly because of the intrigue of imbibing something that is probably illegal in my homeland: 1 (Havana Club, presumably from Cuba; Lee, a bartender, had not heard of it.)
Minimum number of one-line in-jokes that Lee and I established, and which are Very Funny if you know the full context and back history: 4
List of said in-jokes: "the contessa"; "African click language"; "narrative!"; "yeah, we're famous."
Minimum number of instant crushes developed on women on bikes: 138
Number of said women who have spotted me, swooned, and nearly plowed into a canal/windmill/castle/Rodin statue, only to be saved by yours truly at the last minute: ... zero
Number of said women who have even made eye contact: zero
Eccentric pink-fluffy-bathrobe-wearing women approached by in Zurich park, with request for a kiss: 1
Headwear of said woman: plush flower pot hat
Minimum number of cats we were guessing she owned when we first spotted her: 20
Our reaction as she approached us: "It's about a 20-foot drop down this cliff. We can probably make it with minimal injury."
Level of our relief when we discovered that she was basically normal, that the outfit and kiss request were part of a bachelorette party hazing ritual, and that she did not reek of cat urine: palpable
Kisses granted: 4 (2 per cheek from each of us)
Comment to her friends for picking outfit that was just weird enough to be humiliating but plausible (and therefore more embarassing than, say, a tutu): Well done.
Swiss celebrities I can name: Roger Federer (the tennis player)
His native language, to the best of my knowledge: French
Language I assumed they spoke in Zurich, based in this information and Arthur's lack of comments to the contrary: French
Language they actually speak: German with random French and English touches, just to confuse you
11 September 2009
Zurich on ... a lot of money a day
Lee: Maybe I can do a post about what you can get in Zurich for $5 a day now.
Doug: Nothing?
Lee: Absolutely fucking nothing. They would give you a haughty Franco-German laugh, in whatever language they speak here. They'd laugh at you in three languages, all of them official.
Seriously, Zurich: $6 for a Carlsburg? $15 for a Manhattan? (That's right, we drink classy drinks. We're classy men. Citizens of the world and all.)
* * *
Special bonus quote from Lee, as he's preparing for bed:
L: Aw, sweet!
D: What?
L: Want a free stay in this hotel?
D: Sure.
L: Here, drink from this glass. It's got a chip in the rim. Drink right here. [Points to chip.]
D: Um . . .
L: You can sue them. You'll be able to stay free whenever you want. That's the only way you could afford to stay here.
D: Um . . .
L: It's the American way: affordability through litigation. It might be the only way we get out of here without going bankrupt.
Doug: Nothing?
Lee: Absolutely fucking nothing. They would give you a haughty Franco-German laugh, in whatever language they speak here. They'd laugh at you in three languages, all of them official.
Seriously, Zurich: $6 for a Carlsburg? $15 for a Manhattan? (That's right, we drink classy drinks. We're classy men. Citizens of the world and all.)
* * *
Special bonus quote from Lee, as he's preparing for bed:
L: Aw, sweet!
D: What?
L: Want a free stay in this hotel?
D: Sure.
L: Here, drink from this glass. It's got a chip in the rim. Drink right here. [Points to chip.]
D: Um . . .
L: You can sue them. You'll be able to stay free whenever you want. That's the only way you could afford to stay here.
D: Um . . .
L: It's the American way: affordability through litigation. It might be the only way we get out of here without going bankrupt.
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