Zurich

November 21 to 22, 2018

We took the TGV (high speed train) to Zurich, travelling over 180 mph at times. Upon arrival, we walked from the Hauptbahnhof up the river to the lake. It turns out that the last ferry boat of the day was leaving in ten minutes, so we hopped on (1). It was a pleasant ride to suburban towns along the lake, as a local family threw bread to the birds. We disembarked at Tralwil, found the train station, and took the next train back to the city.

After a nice Italian meal (2), we took the tram to Stettbach to attend a concert by my second favorite band: Within Temptation. Wow!

The next day, we had a pleasant stroll through the city. We stopped at the Frauminster, one of the oldest Churches in Zurich. From the 1200s to 1524, the Abbess was also the temporal ruler of Zurich, doing double duty as both the Abbess of the convent and the "Imperial Princess" of Zurich.

There were a number of large stained glass windows at Frauminster hand painted by Marc Chagall (3) in the 1970s. Occasionally, I understand why some art is renowned; there was something quite special about the design and execution of the Chagall stained glass.

There are many bunkers scattered throughout the country that can accomdate the entire Swiss population, just in case war comes to this neutral country. We noted one in the city.

We had käsespätzli (4) for lunch from an outdoor stall at the just-opened Christmas market. 

The Polybahn funicilar took us to the Polytechnic school where Einstein studied physics. We enjoyed a small exhibit of architectural drawings before poking our heads onto a classroom during a break; the math on the board was certainly over my head. As the professor returned, we listened discretely at the door and learned that the language of instruction was English. 

A walk further up the hill lead to another Funicilar going up Rigiblick (5). There were breaks in the low cloud cover that afforded us nice views of the city from the top.

After a German dinner (6), we took another tram further out of town to the Hallenstadion to see my favorite metal band: Nightwish (7). We got there early, so we planted ourselves right on the security fence, stage left. I've never stood (8) so close before. The heat when they blew off the gas jets was quite intense. Niggtwish gave another fine performance. 

(1) The ferry crew told us the boat was not returning to Zurich this afternoon (a). However, a map posted on a bulkhead showed rail lines on both sides of the lake, so I figured we could take a train back to the city from wherever the ferry ended.

(a) The late Fall ferry schedule is rather limited. 

(2) Italian is one of the four official languages of Switzerland. Perhaps that is why they have really good Italian food in Zurich. The other official languages are German (b), French and Romansch. 

(b) Although my German-speaking friends tell me it is quite different from standard German and is often referred to as "Swiss German" (i).

(i) I had noticed a sign earlier in the day (roughly translated as "Freshest bread in the neighborhood") that seemed to combine three German words with one French word. Apparently, this was Swiss German.

(3) Marc Chagall was born in Belarus, but did much of his work in France. Both countries claim him as their own (b).

(b) A local Swiss man had no opinion on which country could really claim Chagall: "We Swiss are neutral about everything" he said 

(4) Basically macaroni and cheese with lightly fried onions on top. Yum.

(5) We wanted to get the maximum value from the all-day transit pass we had invested in this morning. 

(6) How was the German meal? Well, let's just say there's a reason there aren't many German restaurants in the world, compared to, say, Italian restaurants.

(7) I came to Zurich because my two favorite bands were (coincidentally) playing on two consecutive nights in the city. 

(8) The standing area (stehplatz) was over the covered ice in the Hallenstadion arena that frequently hosts hockey games. There were seats in the arena (sitzplatz), but this was a metal concert! We had much more fun dancing, jumping, shouting and thrusting our metals horns in the air than the people in the seats (c).

(c) You can often tell who in the audience is a serious fan of the band by whether they know some of the band's kess popular songs. I was standing near such a fan. She recognized a kindred spirit and she high-fived me when I thrust my metal-horn hands into the air in time to a rather complicated passage in the band's masterpiece "Greatest Show on Earth."

View of Zurich from the Ferry

Kollion from the ferry

Kunsnacht from the ferry

End of the ferry line: Tralwil

Within Temptation rocking Samsung Hall

The largest clock in Europe

Chagall windows, Frauminster 

(stock photo; pictures are not permitted)

Where Einstein studied Physics

What Einstein studied?

Rigiblick Funicular

Zurich street scenes

View from the tram

Nightwish at Hallenstadion

Paris

November 20 to 21, 2018

The normally 30 minute ride from the airport turned into a 2.5 hour journey with multiple connections, crowded trams, etc due to a malfunctioning train near Gare du Nord. When I arrived in the city, I had trouble exiting through the gate, as my ticket had timed out.

A friend who is now living in Southern France met me for a Paris walking tour. She had not been to the city before. We heard the story of the narrow Rue du Chat Qui Peche (street of the cat who fishes). The mythical car could catch dozens of fish per day from the Seine.

We ended the tour at the Truileries Gardens. We walked further downriver for a closer look at the Eiffel Tower. The night was cold and damp (1) and the wet streets glistened in the City of Lights (2).

We had planned to use the Velib bike share system to ride the few miles back up river to our hotel, but neither of of us could make the system work. As we were passing a boat quay, a Batteau Mouche (fly boat) was about to depart, so we saw the city from the water. 

The following morning, we got an early start to visit the Notre Dame Cathedral. While I had been to the Cathedral before, showing it to someone else for the first time made me see the building, stained glass and paintings with fresh eyes. The scale of the church would really have imppresed people throughout most of its history. 

(1) We encountered some sleet in the late afternoon. 

(2) I read a book on the plane about Paris during the Nazi occupation entitled "When Paris Went Dark." It was a good read and a nuanced treatment of the topic.

Old Prison, Ile de la Cité

The Louvre

Paris scenes

Chinese Madonna, Notre Dame Cathedral

On Ile St Louis

Walking to Gare de Lyon

San Francisco to Reno by Train

September 15, 2018

I was in San Francisco for business Friday, and needed to be in Dallas in Monday. I stayed in the west coast and took the California Zephyr across the Sierra to Reno. The train follows the route of the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad, the Central Pacific. We had fine views of Northern San Francisco amd San Pablo Bays, which are navigable by ocean-going vessels a long way in from the Golden Gate. 

At Sacramento, a guide from the California State Museum joined us to provide narration of the various sites along the route to Reno. He told the story about the state surveyor declaring mountains where there was barely even a mild grade. The federal government offered bigger grants for building the transcontinental railroad through mountains, rather than on plains (1). 

We eventually did arrive at real mountains, reaching the Sierra Summit at 6,949 feet near Donner Pass, where the infamous Donner Party, en route to California, was trapped by an early snow in the Fall of 1846. They spent the winter camped near Donner Lake, which we passed on the way down from the Sierra. 

The train followed the Trukee River (draining Lake Tahoe) into Reno, Nevada.

(1) While the on-board guide did not share this part of the story, the state surveyor who declared the planes east of Sacramento to be mountains was named Josiah Whitney. The state named the tallest mountain in California Mount Whitney. 

San Pablo Bay

Climbing the Sierra

Approaching the summit

Donner Lake

The Truckee River, Flowing from Lake Tahoe

The Observation Car

Arisaig, Scotland

August 25 to 26, 2018

I had business in Scotland and came a day early to explore the West Highlands. It was a very dreary day (1) as I took the train north from Glasgow. Upon arrival at the sea-side village of Arisaig, a short walk took me to the village center. There is a memorial here in honor of the Czechoslovakian ex-patriates who trained here for special operations behind enemy lines during World War 2.

Thankfully, the weather had broken by morning when I set out to kayak in the clear, cold waters of Arisaig sound. There were calm winds and partly sunny skies as our group explored the Skerries, a group of low-lying islands in the sound. On a few occasions, we exposed ourselves to 2 to 3 foot rollers coming in from the south. We came across a group of about a dozen and a half seals swimming nearby, who watched us carefully, ready to submerge if they felt threatened.

As I was waiting for the late afternoon train back to Glasgow, I was surprised to see a steam train chuffing north into the station (2). The ride back to Glasgow was much more pleasant than the ride up yesterday. The train was much less crowded and the rain had stopped. We soon crossed the "World Famous" (according to the conductor) Glenfinnan Railway Viaduct (3).

The remainder of the ride was quite scenic. We passed seaside villages and streams cascading from steep mountains into lochs. At the highest stop on the line, we were deep in a moor, with the railway station the only building visible for miles across the tree-less, rocky, and boggy landscape.

(1) There was plenty of liquid sunshine, as they call rain here in Scotland.

(2) This was a seasonal tourist service running from Fort William to the end of the West Highlands line at Malaig. 

(3) I noted that the viaduct was on the cover of a Scotland tourbook a fellow passenger had. You may have seen it in the second Harry Potter movie, when the Weasley's flying car catches up to the Hogwarts Express.

Soggy Glasgow

Arisaig Station

Czechoslovak Memorial, Arisaig

Arisaig Harbour

Kayak lunch break

The steam train chuffing north, Arisaig

Views from the train 

Breakfast in Paris & Dinner in Dublin

August 18, 2018

After an overnight flight from the Seychelles, we had a 7 hour layover at the de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Seven hours was long enough to justify clearing French immigration before proceeding onto Dublin (1). We took a train to the Gate du Nord and had a marvellous baguette (2) and chocolat chaud (hot chocolate) for breakfast. 

We had a nice walk to Ile de la Cité, the historic heart of the city, where Notre Dame Cathedral (and thousands of tourists) is located. In the park behind the cathedral, we happened upon the Rock Choir (a group of women from the U.K.) who were singing rock and pop songs from the 1980s. 

When we arrived at Dublin, the immigration officer asked where we were staying. When I replied "Temple Bar," she responded: "Temple Bar on a Saturday night? At least you can sleep on the plane back to the States tomorrow" (3).

We wandered over to the Abbey Theatre to see what was playing, and bought tickets for a play called "Jimmy's Hall." The play centers on Jimmy Gralton, who helped build a community education and dance hall in Ireland in the 1920s before emigrating to the U.S. He returned to Ireland during the depression in the early 1930s (with his "yankee passport") and worked to revive the hall and its mission (4). He was met with resistance from local landowners and the parish priest for his radical ideas. He was eventually deported by the Irish government, reportedly the first and only time someone born in Ireland was deported from the Irish State. I knew little about the 1930s in  the Ireland as the country was forming an identity outside the U.K. (especially regarding  the different visions of the role the Catholic church would play in the Irish State), but the play provided the necessary context. 

The play combined straight acting, period music (In English and Irish), dancing, recitations from relevant statutes and rulings, historical recorded voices, and a short film of Irish government officials meeting with sitting cardinals. Despite having had no sleep for a day and a half (5), I was on the edge of my seat. The National Theatre Company were first rate. For example, the actor playing the local priest (a bad guy) played the role with subtlety and came across as someone genuinely concerned with protecting the youth of the village.

It turned out to be one of the best theatre experiences I have had in some time. The play provided much food for thought, and I plan to follow up with some reading on the relevant period of Irish history. At the end of the performance the crowd rose for a genuine and heart-felt standing ovation (6).

The following morning, we went in search of tea and scones. We fell into conversation with an Irishman near us. He was in Dublin for what he called "The Irish Superbowl," pitting Galway (his team, represented by maroon colors which we saw all over Dublin) against Limerick (in Kelly Green, also seen all over Dublin) in a hurling match. He described hurling as like "hockey without the ice." He went on to reminisce about his years living in Boston, his marriage to an Italian woman, his Italian wife's parent's family history, his grandmother who lived to 107 years old, and how tickets to hurling matches got harder to buy (and more expensive) when women started attending the matches.

(1) While both France and Ireland are both in the E.U., they have separate immigration processes. France is in the Schengen zone of common European border controls, while Ireland is not, linking itself to UK immigration to facilitate travel between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK (a)).

(a) The Ireland/Northern Ireland border is one of the stickiest points in the current Brexit negotiations. If a hard border is re-established between Ireland (an E.U. member) and Northern Ireland (a non-E.U. member after Brexit), this could jeopardize the Good Friday Accord of 1998, which ended "the troubles" (i) in Northern Ireland. Another complication of these negotiations is that the current UK government depends on the support of a Unionist Northern Ireland party to maintain its majority in the UK Parliament.

(i) "The troubles" is the name given to the tension and violence between the I.R.A. (wanting Northern Ireland to be part of the Irish Republic, and associated with the Catholic population) and the Unionist faction (who wish for Northern Ireland to remain part if the U.K., and associated with the Protestant population). The troubles were particularly violent from the early 1970s until 1998.

(2) Somehow only the French can make a really good baguette, although there are bakeries in Hanoi, Vietnam (a former French colony) that come very close to the Parisian standard.

(3) Temple Bar is not actually a bar, but a neighborhood in Dublin. The name is derived from an old embankment (barr) protecting the neighborhood from flooding of the Liffey when the tide came in. The neighborhood is now known for the large number of bars (in the modern sense) where people gather for a libation or two. The neighborhood is reminiscent of Bourbon St. In New Orleans, complete with roving stag (i.e., bachelor) parties and henny (i.e. bacherorette) parties. 

(4) The timeline is similar to my own paternal grandparents' journey. They also emigrated from Ireland in the 1920s and returned to Ireland (with their "yankee passports") in the 1930s. In the gent's loo (men's room) during the interval (intermission), I overheard an older gentleman telling his grandson about their family history during the 1930s. 

(5) I cannot seem to sleep on planes.

(6) In some places (such as on Broadway) standing ovations have become perfunctory, with some shows (e.g., Mamma Mia) even requesting that the audience stand for the last musical number which, of course, pre-positions the audience for the standing ovation. 

Gare du Nord, Paris

The Seine at Ile de la Cité

Notre Dame Cathedral, rear view

The River Liffey, Dublin

Playbill for the show we saw

Saturday evening revelry, Temple Bar

Posters protesting the Catholic Church's historical treatment of children