escape to Zurich.

after howie's first round of exams he had the weekend off! of course i didn't really know about this until 2 days before, but somehow we managed to change a couple of plans and head to zurich for part of the weekend. it was so great to spend time together outside of lausanne. i think that even if we're out of our apartment its difficult to forget that we're here for one very big reason. so getting out of town really feels good!

we spent friday night wandering the city a bit. ate at Sprungli (scavenger hunt!), saw the largest clock in europe (scavenger hunt!) and also saw corbusier's last house along the lakefront. actually, the lakefront there is quite amazing. i'm still getting used to the byob aspect of life here, also the tolerance for pot smoking. so the lakefront on a sunny friday evening was packed with people having a beer, chatting with friends, lighting up and hanging out. we even saw two guys biking together- they looked like twins as well- one holding the hookah while the other was smoking (while riding bikes through the crowd!) amazing.

sprungli! 

this country is MAD about chocolate bunnies.

chocolate mousse & cappuccino. yum.

howie is free!

giant clock.

getting a little lost... true adventurers.

sunset orange

sunset pink

le corbusier 'heidi weber' house/museum

of course we found the famous bratwurst stand. i think i like the bun-less approach.

howie's head has not grown- his torso has shrunk :)

so many bratwurst! 

the evening was a lot more wandering. it was great to see people out, restaurants open late, and general liveliness.  we even stumbled on some sort of marching band bar hopping around town. then we saw a group of bagpipers playing as they walked through the streets. then all of a sudden we saw another and another. some were huge, like 50-60 people, then some were only 4 or 5 people. nobody told us it was 'battle of the marching bands'?!  we made up that name but either something was going on or zurich-ites really like drums, piccolos and bagpipes. made for an interesting evening!

saturday the plan was to stay as long as we could, then take the train home in the evening. lets just say we walked until our feet were about to fall off. we started with the design museum and saw an amazing exhibit about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who was a very influential photographer with quite an amazing life. he travelled to china at the turn of communism, one of the first western reporters in russia, and witnessed the death of ghandi. he also survived a concentration camp during ww2 and once he escaped he dug up his camera he'd buried in the woods and continued to shoot. his work was so amazing and insightful.

we stumbled upon this market built under an existing train bridge in this industrial/artsy neighborhood. we stopped to eat some fish and chips (minus the chips) at this great little seafood stand. they also let us taste their olive paste and pesto. yummmm.

zurich Markthalle im Viadukt 

interior- the bridge splits and this is the space between

reminds me of minneapolis!

little restaurant in big arch

the next stop was the famous freitag store of stacked shipping containers. freitag is a swiss company that makes bags from old truck tarpaulins and seatbelts. every freitag bag is different, but once you start noticing these bags you see them everywhere!  too bad we can't really afford them at the moment- even the ipad case is 100fr. boo. i guess we did get to climb up to the top of the tower for free.

freitag store

a 'skyscraper' built from shipping containers

the view from the top

on our way down

the view from between the stacked containers

we saw a few more sights but eventually we just piled ourselves onto a train and called it a day.  i'll leave you with a few more photos from the trip!