Swiss Cities

While in Switzerland, Jay and I also spent a few days in Bern and Zürich. Both cities had a great feel, just not a lot of things we actually wanted to do and I am happy to now be on a train to Munich.

I think of America as a pretty national-pride heavy country, but cities in Switzerland take it to another level—everywhere you look there are Swiss flags, flags for the region and flags for the locality. On top of that, Jay pointed out the nationalist (anti-EU) advertisements all over the place. A good one had a circle of hats with the EU star floating in the water, one man completely drowned (presumably Greece), and the whole ring trying to pull the last man in the water down (presumably Switzerland). Another good and incredibly common one was of a boulder labeled “AUNS initiative” that had knocked over a statue a demolished a shield of the Swiss flag.

 

Zürich

I was pretty skeptical of Zürich when we first arrived; luckily, it grew on me, in spite of the rain. The two things I quickly noticed was that, first, most people probably live outside Zürich and commute in for work, because the city was deserted mid-day Sunday. And second, Zürich really is a very well-off city, and you could feel the cost of living more than in Oslo. I’m pretty sure we saw more luxury vehicles than people. We spent a nice mellow day walking around the old cobble stone streets then went on a boat around Lake Zürich.

Flags on every building in Bern and Zurich: overkill.

Largest clock in Europe

Zurich from the water

Bern

Following the trend of narrow stairs and great views, a highlight of Bern was climbing up the 270 stairs of the St. Vincent belfry to see the Bernese Alps.

Another highlight was the Bear Pits, which has housed brown bears (the city mascot) since the early sixteen century. When reading about Bern, I had a hard time believing that they actually had a 6,000 square meter park for some bears in the middle of the city, but in fact, yes, the city has four brown bear mascots living in an enclosed (but free to the public) park next to the river.

Bear Park

Bern city mascot: hard life!

Lastly, we visited the Einstein Museum, an incredibly in depth exhibit on the physicist’s life and contemporary historical events that shaped his life. It was beautifully done and very interesting, though the theory of relativity presentations gave me some serious MIT flashbacks. I can pinpoint the exact moment physics got too theoretical for me—gyroscopes, the last lesson in first semester mechanics. After that, I could strong arm the math enough to do well on exams (thanks in no small part to Andy Brown) but it never really made sense to me. Somehow my brain just can’t conceptualize beyond a certain level of abstractness (or I guess microscopic-ness in the case of E&M) and physics was one of the courses that made me feel really stupid during college. Luckily, working at the Health Foundation and finding the wonderful (applied and tangible!) field of evaluation knocked the MIT-induced intellectual insecurity right out of me. It will be a continuing goal in my life to surround myself with people and organizations that appreciate and foster many different forms of intelligence.