We ended our Alpine adventure by returning to where we began — in Zurich, Switzerland. Since we’d only spent one jet-lagged night there before headed for Konstanz at the beginning of the trip, we wanted to at least devote a full day to this city. That was a good choice, as this city on the northwestern end of one of Switzerland’s lovely lakes (Zürichsee) truly is beautiful. (A little accidental German wordplay: the title of this post translates in English as “Back to beautiful Zurich”!)
The Limmat River flows out of the Zürichsee, through the center of the city of Zürich, northward to join the Aare River which flows into the Rhine at Koblenz.
The city center is very walkable and most of the older, more interesting buildings and churches are near the river. The weather on our day there was variable, but even when it was raining, the compact old city was pleasantly walkable. We found it fairly easy to find refuge from the rain.
The Grossmünster Church is one of the four big churches in the city center. We climbed one of the towers for a panoramic view.
From the Grossmünster tower you can see where the lake stops and the river begins.
Across the river from Grossmünster is St. Peter, another prominent Protestant church. You can also see the growing area of modern buildings outside the historic center.
The most striking feature of Grossmünster is its collection of windows. German artist Sigmar Polke crafted seven windows from agate, which he cut into thin slices that would let light pass through them. The brilliantly colorful result was then expanded with five brightly colored glass windows.
We walked around the old streets on both sides of the river for several hours — every corner seemed to bring a new perspective.
We made our way a steep hill on the west side of the river to a pretty park called Lindenhof. The views are wonderful.
Not sure, but this might be the Zürichers’ version of the “secret handshake”.
The Lindenhof also has another very cool feature — several giant chess boards, where people strike up a game with strangers and other strangers stand around and watch them play. Here, an old fart was beating a young hot-shot player in front of his buddies.
The house in the foreground has a gorgeous patio (with a trampoline even!) that overlooks the city and the river.
Gee — can you tell what country we’re in? They do love their flag here.
We ended our 26-day trip feeling very good about the whole thing. A late-arriving luggage snafu in Zürich that made for a troublesome first night of the trip had faded into the distant past, overtaken by 99% positive memories of biking, driving, boat-riding, and of course walking in this part of the Alps where Germany, Austria, and Switzerland converge.
Our AirBnb and hotel experiences were generally excellent, and provided a lot of wonderful memories of their own. The idea of staying in strangers’ homes when vacationing is not something that would have appealed to me 20 years ago. But we have found that it enriches our travel experience so much that we rarely travel now without including at least some AirBnb nights.
We met many wonderful people along the way — from some who we were with for hours to others that were no more that a 10-second exchange of pleasantries. Some day, many of those encounters will fade from our minds. But until then, we’re going to try to grab them and hang on any way we can. It’s one of the main reasons for this “70 @ 70” blog. It explains why I take so many photographs. Creating the memories is the fun part, but many (most?) of those moments are ephemeral. So the hard part — and of course ultimately the impossible part — is the preservation of the memories of our lives.
I think all of us who take photographs, or write journals, or draw, or paint, or create images are striving for the same thing.
But we know that just because it’s impossible doesn’t make it pointless. Our memories are precious. They’re worth saving. So we keep trying, don’t we?
We flew home the next the morning. — a long day in the air with plenty of time to start planning our next big trip.