27 December

We got an early start (again) this morning and made the “grueling” 6 minute walk to the train station. As usual we grabbed some fresh-baked pastries and orange juice at the station before boarding our train. The ride was uneventful and it was nice to finally hear more German than French. The first thing we did at the Zurich train station was look for an information desk where we could pick up some maps and travel tips for the city. A note to future train travelers; the information desks at stations will usually be labeled with a big lowercase “i” and will usually be located fairly close to the tracks. The people here can be wonderfully helpful and these are also great places to pick up free maps. Their English is also usually spot-on so don’t be afraid to ask them anything. Better to find out information from these people than people on the street (though they are usually pretty nice and helpful, be careful who you ask. Some could be setting you up to be pick pocketed ‘cause it’s so obvious you’re a tourist). For a change I took on the role of navigator and started leading us in the direction of the hostel. The walk was much longer than I expected and since the map I had failed to include the smaller side streets, I started to get a little worried. Right when I was about to ask for help, I saw the street we were supposed to get on and felt immediately okay. The hostel we stayed at was called the “Zic-Zac Rock Hotel” and had interesting décor. I guess they tried to be cool and really embraced the “rock” theme by hanging up posters of various rock artists all over the place and naming rooms after bands. We stayed in “Queen” with U2 and Kate Bush just down the hall. Weird. At least the bathrooms and showers were much cleaner here than at Aloha and the room wasn’t too bad either. Another weird detail was the sink for washing hands and brushing teeth was in the hallway. A little awkward, but luckily there were very few people with us on the hall so it wasn’t too bad. After a bit of unpacking and resting, we walked out into the city. Saket had seen some boots on the way to the hotel that he was rather keen on so we stopped by there to check them out. The price was kind of reasonable but since he wasn’t so sure about the quality he elected to forego the investment and we moved on. There’s a big street in Zurich known as Bahnhofstrasse which is literally “train station road” but is outfitted like a major shopping street. It was nicely lit and fun to walk down. All the Christmas market stalls were closing and so we didn’t get to see any neat displays. We went off in search of a couple of famous Zurich churches and walked through them for a bit. Zurich is also known for having churches with the largest clock faces in Europe. We spotted this faces intermittently through buildings but simply good not get close enough or position ourselves in the right place for a good shot. Finally we walked out into a square where I just stopped and snapped several pictures of the face. We were feeling a little hungry so we stopped by a Starbucks for some coffee and snacks. I had an espresso brownie that was pretty good. Saket and Sachi enjoyed some coffee while I just had a few sips of theirs. A light snow was falling and the ground was turning steadily white which was quite pretty though it made picture taking a little dodgy since we were paranoid about getting moisture on the lens. As night fell we continued just wandering around the city streets. We were feeling hungry for dinner and since tomorrow was our birthday and we knew we’d be splurging then, we decided to go real cheap for dinner and picked up some sandwiches and small grocery snacks. It was too cold outside (and not great conditions for picture taking either) to really have any fun after dinner so we just hung out in the hostel and worked on postcards and such. Then we went to sleep.