Today was the day I got to finally add a new country to my
list!
We had to get up pretty early, but our two hostel roommates
needed to as well, so it all worked out. No one had to be quiet or get ready in
the dark (or try and stay asleep with the lights on)!
After getting ready, I ate some of the cereal I’d bought at
Aldi/Hofer the day before, and then we were off to the train station. It was
rush hour, so the underground was pretty hectic and crowded, but again, it was
just two trains with three stops total—no big deal.
We managed to get seat reservations for our train once we
were at the station, which was good because it was going to be a long one.
Luckily, it took us directly to Zurich, but still, it was almost an 8-hour
train.
We had quite a bit of time before we could get on the train,
so we popped into McDonald’s for breakfast. They were serving fries at 8 in the
morning, so obviously we got some. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good
(Kayla’s were all old and nasty and about half of mine were, too), but it
wasn’t the end of the world. They had free Wi-Fi, so that kept us entertained
until we headed to a market to get some food and then to the platform to get on
the train.
Some little cucumbers I bought at the market. Look--they're called cucuminis/minigurken!
Surprisingly, those 8 hours on the train flew by! Maybe I’m
just really used to travel at this point, I don’t know. However, we did watch
both The Phantom of the Opera and Legally Blonde, so that definitely
helped pass the time. We also ate sandwiches that we bought at the train
station that morning. And of course, the scenery outside was just gorgeous. I
happened to check my map at one point to see where we were, and lo and behold,
we were in Liechtenstein!! So that makes two
new countries for me.
We arrived in Zurich around 5:20. We kind of struggled to
find an ATM, especially since Kayla really had to pee (which she did sneakily
at a Burger King), but finally we did. Switzerland uses the Swiss Franc, so we
needed to pull out some cash.
Such pretty bills!
Our AirBNB wasn’t exactly close to the station, and we
didn’t really feel like trying to figure out the public transportation system
of a new city with all our bags and everything, so we took a taxi. It was
pricey, but fast and easy. On the way there, I saw a Tesla car on the road for
the first time, which was exciting for me.
Our AirBNB was a small but nice apartment in the Oerlikon
neighborhood (or actually, I don’t know if it was a neighborhood, or a
district, or even a different town…but you get it). After staying in a few
hostels, it was nice to have a place all to ourselves with a bedroom, kitchen,
bathroom, and living room. Kayla was disappointed because she’d been banking on
doing laundry there, but we couldn’t find the washer and dryer, even though it
said online that the apartment had them.
Hungry, we headed out to find food. We had heard that
Zurich’s prices were very high, and that certainly was the case. At any given
restaurant, one person’s meal is probably going to be around 24 Swiss Francs
(CHF), which at the moment is roughly $25-6. So that night, we went to a nearby
grocery store and got some necessities: frozen pizza (a pack of three for like
2 CHF!), bagged lettuce, bread, cheese slices, goat cheese, butter, crackers,
turkey, and bananas. We went back to the apartment with plans of making one of
the pizzas.
Buuuuutttttttttttt it didn’t quite work out. The main
problem with European flats is European appliances. The oven and stove were
both gas, and needed to be manually lit. And the only lighter in the place was
out. Feeling somewhat defeated, I ate goat cheese and crackers, and Kayla ate a
turkey and cheese sandwich.
So we couldn’t eat what we wanted to, and we couldn’t do
laundry. It was pretty sad, but kind of funny at the same time. To make
ourselves feel better, we started watching The
Lizzie McGuire Movie, but got tired and had to stop about halfway. We went
to sleep hoping that we wouldn’t struggle quite so much the next day!
No comments:
Post a Comment