Adventure off tour to Zurich and the Swiss (Newfie) Family Healey!

Heather and me

Today I left the tour for a very special side trip.  I managed to navigate the Swiss rail and go from the little town I'm in (Sarnen) to Zurich and meet my friend, Heather, who has been living with her husband and son in Switzerland for a little under two years.  Everyone at work was very excited that I was going to visit her.  To be honest, it didn't take a great talent to navigate the Swiss rail because it is so precise and runs exactly (almost) as they say it will. If they say a train will leave at 9:46, it will leave exactly at 9:46.  No exceptions.  

I did have one little surprise on the way home when my train back to Lucerne just suddenly turned into a Zurich HB/airport train and decided to go the other way - I hopped off quickly in Zug and waited for a different train to go where I wanted, so it's a good thing I was paying attention.

Anyway, I met Heather at the main Zurich station (Zurich Hauptbahnhof) and she greeted me with macaroons! We did a walk around Zurich and saw a lot of the nice areas, including the old town area, and she even brought me to an English bookstore - which I desperately wanted since I read the one book I bought in London in two days.  I need something to do on my 7 hour ride to Paris tomorrow and I was having real troubles finding English books (much less ones that I want to read). In any case, Zurich was beautiful - ALL of Switzerland is beautiful.  However, one thing I've learned in the slightly over 24 hours that I've been here - everything is INSANELY expensive here.  I thought London was a pricey city, but it is practically cheap compared to Switzerland.  Also the Swiss are very precise.  They actually measure wine out at restaurants by centilitres (there are actual measurement lines on the wine glasses).  They charge you by every 1cl and it isn't cheap.  I paid 13.90 Swiss Francs for 2cl of wine last night (which is practically nothing) - Swiss Francs are approx. 1.49 x the Canadian dollar so that's approx. $20 Cdn to get essentially what was two sips of wine.  Nuts!

Heather explained to me the concept of "Swiss economics" and it's too much to get into here, but let's just say that the Swiss are more than a little odd.  Beautiful country, but a kind of insular weird culture and crazy high price tags on everything.  My tour director told us that an average salary in Switzerland is 80,000 CHF, but that in the rest of Europe it's approx. 30,000 Euros.  I can see why given the price of everything here.  

The Horgen "badi"

After we did lunch in Zurich (and bought a giant 1kg bag of Tara's favourite cookies), Heather brought me back to where she lives which is about 20 minutes south of Zurich - a town called Horgen. Since her 2 year old was still taking his nap, we killed some time by going for a drink at the local "badi".  It's basically a private park/swimming area with a coffee shop/bar and you pay a yearly membership to belong (so nobody who doesn't belong can get in, so it keeps out the riff raff, essentially).  I paid 3.50 CHF for a day pass and we sat right in front of Lake Zurich and had a drink.  

Then we went back to her apartment and it was really nice because for once, I got to just laze on a couch and relax my feet (but don't get me wrong - my Fitbit still hit 16,000 steps today).  But for some reason, maybe because I wasn't on my own or it wasn't part of the tour - I don't understand since Heather and I still walked enough to meet that many steps - my feet seemed to de-puff a bit and heal.  I actually feel they are much better after today.  But back to the story - we went back to Heather's apartment and her husband, Tim, who had generously taken the day off to mind Jasper, got me a Swiss beer.  The thing about Swiss alcohol is that they have their own beer and wine (Fendant), but they don't export it, so you can only get it here.  The Fendant is very good (I had it last night) and the beer was quite good too.  

Short Round in Jasper's room

Then, of course, a major highlight was to see one of my favourite cats in this world - Short Round.  He is a fluffy ginger cat and he has attitude.  This is him to the left, next to the teepee in Jasper's room that Heather's dad made for him.  Short Round actually has his own room and his own teepee (which is smaller), but he prefers to go to Jasper's apparently (and Jasper likes to go into Short Round's teepee). Too funny.

Heather then made me a real Swiss fondue for dinner (which was amazing) and Tim served me some wine and other booze throughout the night (Lemoncello from Venice and some scotch).  They made sure I had a great time is the main takeaway here - Heather and Tim - you are both awesome!  And also what was so lovely of Heather was that she not only bought me a "welcome to Switzerland" gift bag with all kinds of lovely Swiss treats including chocolate, cookies, postcards and an amazing facemask, among a few other things, but she also remembered my birthday tomorrow and had a birthday cake for me with candles as well as a little birthday present of some Swiss soap.  She even bought some Italian coffee for me to bring back to Telefilm as a gift for the office.

So tomorrow we leave for Paris at 7:15am (wake up call is 6am), so I seriously need to go to bed.  I had a really great day "off tour" though and I have the Healey's to thank for that.  Thanks, Heather and Tim, for the wonderful hospitality! You guys are great!