Swisss

December 31, 2012

So me and a bunch of friends went for a holiday at Zurich, Switzerland last week.

Zurich is a beautiful city and has many places to visit, but it is a bit pricey.

The land of Swiss Army knives, Swiss chocolates like Tolberone, beautiful Swiss Alps, and CHEESE.

You can get cheese almost everywhere, they are famous for it.

Didn't know their national language was German. Noticed the letter "U" was replaced with ü and I think there is a different way to pronounce it, much like the Mandarin language where there are different pronunciations when there is a stroke or dots above the letter.

I couldn't pronounce most of the destinations we visited, was thankful most of the people knew English.
Was also grateful for the samaritans who offered to help us when we were lost or didn't know how to read the map.
Once, we were at the train station, wondering which platform we had to go to board our next train. This Chinese lady, asked us in Mandarin where were we heading. We told her our destination and she told us which platform to head to. She literally instructed us to run as the train was arriving in a few minutes time. We assumed she must be a Chinese and must have stayed there for quite some time to be so familiar with the train timings.

We stayed at a nice hotel called Novotel. Was looking forward to their buffet breakfast every morning. I ate like a Hyena.

Encountered snow for the first time, or probably the second time. The first time was when I was at Korea a long long time ago for skiing. Assumed the snow was fake as it was at a skiing resort and it was man made.
White fluffy snow everywhere, touch it and it sinks. It was definitely fun to hold it on the hand, but soon it would sting as it was very cold. It almost felt like Ice Kacang, the local desert back in Malaysia. Give me a can of sweet corns, some peanuts, syrup, grass jelly and we can have desert on the spot!

Snow! Snow! Snow!

While in the cable car with Lay Wing, Joon Wei, Felicia, Syin Sze and Me

We took a train to Flumserberg. At the foot of the mountain, we took a cable car up the mountain. We did not ski as it was expensive to rent the whole gear and jumpsuit. But we rented the sledge and went sledging instead. We were supposed to wear the waterproof jumpsuit just like everybody else, so ended up all of us were wet and cold.

Lay Wing, Me, Syin Sze

Sledging is fun only if you knew how to steer the sledge. It requires practice and skills. The sledge was difficult to control and occasionally I would topple over or hit the curb. My friends had bruises after the trip as one of them sledged off course and some of them even got hit by the sledge. A little dangerous I must say.

Cheese Fondue, one of the local and popular delicacies at Switzerland. It was delicious but like I said, expensive.

It is served with bread or meat if you wish, but it only means you have to pay more! The cheese was creamy and had a pungent smell. I am guessing they also mixed the cheese with some wine or liquor because of the strong taste of alcohol. I read somewhere that if you shared a table with other people while having cheese fondue, you would have to kiss each other! Amazing! Sadly, I only read that after we had the meal.

We also visited Rheinfall at Schaffhausen. It has a very large waterfall, formed through a series of earth movements and soil erosion.

We also went to the top of another mountain at Uetliberg. Had to do a little climbing up the slope of the hill and we were greeted with these beautiful views of Zurich.