Entry tags:

Zürich, europe, google, switzerland, transit, travel, work

Zürich: Cool/Not cool
Cool: Public transportation

The Swiss S-Bahn heavy rail network is superior to BART, and the Zürich tram system completely kicks Muni's ass. Seriously.

The tram system has multiple transfer hubs, it actually obeys the posted time schedule, and it goes places other than downtown. It's a bit more expensive than Muni — CHF4.00/US$3.70 for one trip within town, or if you're smart CHF82.00/US$75.50 for a monthly pass, versus US$1.50 for a two-hour Muni pass or US$45.00 for a Muni adult monthly fast pass. However, Zürich tickets also more useful: they're good for all buses, ferries, and the S-Bahn. The catchphrase is "Ein Ticket für alles" (One ticket for everything), and it lives up to the name. A normal-price ticket is tied to a single zone, but Zone 10 contains pretty much everything significant in and around Zürich, except for the airport itself, so you hardly even notice it. Buying the S-Bahn ticket to cross zones to the airport is only CHF6.00/US$5.50, so it's right around the same price point as what BART would run you here in San Francisco (and the S-Bahn is far nicer than BART).

Oh, and the S-Bahn can actually take you to other countries. Beat that, BART and Caltrain!

Cool: Walkability

San Francisco is a very walkable town by US standards. The hills are sometimes a bit more than you bargained for, but the idea of driving to the grocery store is a pretty foreign concept here.

Zürich, however, beats San Francisco handily on this front. All the guide books suggest a two-hour walking tour from the Hauptbahnhof ("Main Train Station") down Bahnhofstrasse, past all the ritzy shops, then across the river to Bellevue and then back up Niederdorf through Altstadt ("Old Town"), which includes both the old churches and the red light district, and finally crossing the river again to the Hauptbahnhof to wrap up the tour. The "two hours" figure assumes quite a bit of touristy gawking; you can easily walk up one side of the river in about 25 minutes, so the whole route would be an hour or so if you were in a hurry.

San Francisco doesn't quite have this. If you flattened out the hills, moved downtown to a more central location, relocated Haight-Ashbury, The Castro, the north end of The Mission, and the Folsom/12th end of SOMA to all be one continuous neighborhood on one side of Market, relocated North Beach, Union Square, and Nob Hill to stretch along the other side of Market, then replaced Market with a river, then you'd have a version of San Francisco vaguely similar to how Zürich is laid out.

Cool: History

Zürich was the birthplace of Dadaism, and thanks to Switzerland's famous neutrality it was also a crossroads for many famous figures and an incubator of many 20th century schools of thought and ideological movements. Café Odeon, which today is sorta halfway a gay bar, was once an old haunt of Lenin and Trotsky (before they got famous), Mussolini (ditto), James Joyce, and various other figures who were staying in Zürich to take advantage of Swiss neutrality.

Oh, and Zürich was an important crossroads going back to pre-Christian Roman times, continued to be so through the Holy Roman Empire, and was one of the epicenters of the Protestant Reformation. Zürich is chock full of famous churches and abbeys that are steeped in that history: for instance, Fraumünster abbey once held absolute power over the city, but in 1524 as Zürich was being swept by the Swiss Reformation, the last Fraumünster abbess Katharina von Zimmern turned control of the abbey over to the city, abdicated her position, and even got married the next year.

Not cool: Schweizerdeutsch

One of my co-workers, a U.S. native who's now been living in Zürich for over a year, previously spent some time living in Germany and is a fluent German speaker. Even he has trouble wrapping his head around Swiss German, which is a mostly-spoken dialect of German so distinct from High German that it's almost its own language: not only does it have a lot of peculiar vocabulary, but it also changes a lot of pronunciations, a few spelling rules, and the occasional grammar rule. German-speaking Swiss are capable of speaking Swiss Standard German, which is mutually intelligible with standard High German, but would rather speak English than speak what they consider a clumsy dialect.

Mixed: Multilingualism

Basically everyone in Zürich speaks two versions of German (Schweizerdeutsch and Swiss Standard German), plus English, possibly plus either French or Italian. Any American posessing even a sliver of shame will feel embarrassed at how monolingual he or she is. Imagine how Americans react to a tourist visiting the US who speaks no English, and contrast that with how Zürich natives don't bat an eyelash as they switch to speaking your foreign language, and how the restaurants almost always have English menus (or bilingual German/English descriptions).

I suppose if you have no shame, this counts entirely as a "Cool".

Not cool: MySpace

As a side note, MySpace has taught me that I'm apparently "schwul". Humorously, I have trouble keeping the words "schwul", "Schwert", and "Schweiz" separated in my head.

Not cool: Uptightness

Switzerland tracks fairly well with the rest of Europe on a lot of things, like gay rights or a laissez faire attitude toward nudity. (It was interesting to walk around Niederdorf and actually have to stop and ask myself, "Back in the US, could someone get away with showing this in plain view of the public, even in San Francisco?" Doubly so when you consider how close Niederdorf is to various famous historic churches.)

But on most other matters, Switzerland is apparently the Singapore of Europe. If you have the (mis)fortune of owning a car, you do not speed, even by 1kph, or you will be ticketed. Also, many places in Europe have become less and less religious over the years, but not Switzerland: many businesses are required by law to close on Sundays, and apparently it's a little bit scary to be atheist there — the country is very Christian and very Protestant (and I don't mean Methodist).

Worse than all that, the level of xenophobia manages to exceed even that of the US. The Swiss People's Party (SVP), which holds beliefs roughly analogous to, say, Pat Buchanan, is now the single most widely supported party across Switzerland, and enjoys 29% popular support — which is large when you consider that Switzerland has a 4-party parliamentary system with proportional representation. One of their ads shows three white sheep standing on a Swiss flag and kicking out a black sheep, with the words "Bringing safety" emblazoned across the poster — and these people get votes in Switzerland.

Not cool: Prices

Eating at a fast food place like McDonalds or Burger King (both are ubiquitous) will set you back around CHF15.00/US$13.80 for a combo meal, or CHF10.00/US$9.20 for just a burger by itself. A sit-down meal at a restaurant will normally run between CHF30.00/US$27.60 and CHF50.00/US$46.00, and that's for a steak-and-potatoes kind of restaurant.

Housing is even worse. Zürich makes San Francisco look cheap, and house prices are such that only 37% of the Swiss own their home, which is one of the lowest ownership rates in Western Europe. From what I understand, rents are a 60%-80% premium above San Francisco prices for equivalent space — although most renters instead opt for spaces that are small by any American measure.

Not cool: Food

The Swiss policy on vegetables is similar to the German one: they boil vegetables until they are no longer a threat. Hopefully you like potatoes, because you're going to be eating a lot of them. Seasoning consists of salt and, if you feel adventurous, ground black pepper. Spicy mustard is sometimes available for those who like taking their life into their own hands.