A Day In Zurich
Last Saturday morning Nicki, Caroline, Natalie and I boarded a train and headed to Zurich, about a 3-hour ride away.
We figured we’d spend the day wandering around and visiting some museums before heading back for free after 7pm using our Swiss after 7 train passes.
The weather in Switzerland has been frighteningly warm for January (kind of like most of the planet right now), and I’ve heard that even in the mountains the snow is little-to-none — ski conditions are not great. However, it was a nice day for us with sunshine and a high in the 50s.
Click on this for a somewhat larger view
We wandered through the old part of town for awhile and found lunch at a nice creperie. We then went to the Grossmünster (literally, “big cathedral”) which offered a great view of the skyline. They also had a really cool organ and a nice nativity scene.
I remarked on this before when I visited the city briefly to see Snow Patrol, but you can really see a difference between French-Switzerland (i.e. Geneva) and German-Switzerland (i.e. Zurich) in design, culture, etc. Everything seems much cleaner and a hair more sophisticated (not to knock my city or anything, but I think Zurich’s a little more my speed). We passed a large bookstore solely devoted to art, design, and photography tomes as well as a lot of well-designed shops and restaurants.
We went into a contemporary art exhibition who’s highlight was a really cool video installation replicating bad snap shots. Basically, there were four screens set-up and videos ranging from 8-12 minutes in length that showed people standing fairly still in photo poses (though there were elements in each that made it clear they were videos: lit candles that melted down, lights at a dance club, etc.). Each setting was lit in such a way that a flash had appeared to go off, and it was fun watching how well (or poorly) the subjects were able to keep their exact poses for so long.
Following that, we met up with Farhad who had arrived in the city the previous evening to visit a friend and went to the Kunsthaus, a famous art museum that had pretty much everything. One of the current exhibitions is devoted to the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, one of my favorites from art history. The level of detail in his work is nothing short of amazing and seeing so many original prints was a wonderful experience.
The permanent collection includes everyone from old masters to Monet to Van Gough to Picasso to Kandinsky to Klee to Warhol to Lichtenstein to Jasper Johns and probably anyone you could think of. While there were some well-known pieces present, they also had several lesser-known works by big names which I often prefer to the more famous images. I also saw works by a few artists I wasn’t previously aquainted with that I really enjoyed.
Here are a few of my favorites, mostly from postcards (since photography was discouraged inside) which unfortunately don’t fully encapsulate the beauty of the physical pieces but might give you a basic idea:
Monet’s Houses of Parliament, Sunset
Dali’s Women with Head of Roses
Giovanni Segantini’s The Wicked Mothers
One of my favorites. Augusto Giacometti’s Adam und Eva
I love the stylization of the forms and the composition of the piece. Brilliant!
A piece by Julian Opie (don’t recall the exact name), the artist also responsible for the excellent art for Blur’s best-of album a few years back. What you can’t see in the photo is that some areas are slightly raised giving the whole thing a nice textural feel. I had to sneak out the camera for this one.
After the museum, we did a little more wandering and then searched out a place to eat, settling on a Swiss-German beerhall. Farhad and I enjoyed a good dunkle and we all had amazing food. I personally had a sausage in onion sauce with some excellent rosti (a traditional Swiss dish—basically a form of hashbrown, but very tasty).
Since everything but restaurants and bars closes early in this country, even on the weekend, there really wasn’t much more we could do after dinner so we headed back to Geneva.
It was a nice day and I hope to return to the city a few more times while I’m here.
We figured we’d spend the day wandering around and visiting some museums before heading back for free after 7pm using our Swiss after 7 train passes.
The weather in Switzerland has been frighteningly warm for January (kind of like most of the planet right now), and I’ve heard that even in the mountains the snow is little-to-none — ski conditions are not great. However, it was a nice day for us with sunshine and a high in the 50s.
Click on this for a somewhat larger view
We wandered through the old part of town for awhile and found lunch at a nice creperie. We then went to the Grossmünster (literally, “big cathedral”) which offered a great view of the skyline. They also had a really cool organ and a nice nativity scene.
I remarked on this before when I visited the city briefly to see Snow Patrol, but you can really see a difference between French-Switzerland (i.e. Geneva) and German-Switzerland (i.e. Zurich) in design, culture, etc. Everything seems much cleaner and a hair more sophisticated (not to knock my city or anything, but I think Zurich’s a little more my speed). We passed a large bookstore solely devoted to art, design, and photography tomes as well as a lot of well-designed shops and restaurants.
We went into a contemporary art exhibition who’s highlight was a really cool video installation replicating bad snap shots. Basically, there were four screens set-up and videos ranging from 8-12 minutes in length that showed people standing fairly still in photo poses (though there were elements in each that made it clear they were videos: lit candles that melted down, lights at a dance club, etc.). Each setting was lit in such a way that a flash had appeared to go off, and it was fun watching how well (or poorly) the subjects were able to keep their exact poses for so long.
Following that, we met up with Farhad who had arrived in the city the previous evening to visit a friend and went to the Kunsthaus, a famous art museum that had pretty much everything. One of the current exhibitions is devoted to the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, one of my favorites from art history. The level of detail in his work is nothing short of amazing and seeing so many original prints was a wonderful experience.
The permanent collection includes everyone from old masters to Monet to Van Gough to Picasso to Kandinsky to Klee to Warhol to Lichtenstein to Jasper Johns and probably anyone you could think of. While there were some well-known pieces present, they also had several lesser-known works by big names which I often prefer to the more famous images. I also saw works by a few artists I wasn’t previously aquainted with that I really enjoyed.
Here are a few of my favorites, mostly from postcards (since photography was discouraged inside) which unfortunately don’t fully encapsulate the beauty of the physical pieces but might give you a basic idea:
Monet’s Houses of Parliament, Sunset
Dali’s Women with Head of Roses
Giovanni Segantini’s The Wicked Mothers
One of my favorites. Augusto Giacometti’s Adam und Eva
I love the stylization of the forms and the composition of the piece. Brilliant!
A piece by Julian Opie (don’t recall the exact name), the artist also responsible for the excellent art for Blur’s best-of album a few years back. What you can’t see in the photo is that some areas are slightly raised giving the whole thing a nice textural feel. I had to sneak out the camera for this one.
After the museum, we did a little more wandering and then searched out a place to eat, settling on a Swiss-German beerhall. Farhad and I enjoyed a good dunkle and we all had amazing food. I personally had a sausage in onion sauce with some excellent rosti (a traditional Swiss dish—basically a form of hashbrown, but very tasty).
Since everything but restaurants and bars closes early in this country, even on the weekend, there really wasn’t much more we could do after dinner so we headed back to Geneva.
It was a nice day and I hope to return to the city a few more times while I’m here.
posted by Aaron at 3:17 PM
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