Glattbrugg, Switzerland, Sept 27, 2013

Intro

Yesterday, we drove from Chavannes-de-Bogis, near Geneva, to Glattbrugg, near Zurich (actually, part of the Zurich metropolitan area - it's really hard to tell where one town ends and the other begins).

Nothing much exciting happened yesterday, so I won't tell you about it. Except to show you where we are, courtesy of Google Maps. The A shows the hotel. The airport is the big gray blob to the northwest, with runways aimed right at the hotel (as we have already learned!). Zurich itself is to the south, at the northern end of the lake. And to the east of the hotel is a pale green blob, the subject of today's adventures.

Today, we were a bit more active.

According to our maps, there is a big forest with lots of trails not too far from the hotel.

So we walked over to it, wandered on some of the many, many trails in the forest, and came back.

Here is the Google Earth shot of the trek - it was just under 9 kms in total.

The photos

When we headed out this morning, it was pretty misty. Of course, this makes for artistic photos. Here are some.

The entrance to the forest.

There were many places where there was a bit of sun shining on more distant trees - very pretty.

Trees have obviously been planted here by humans - hence the straight lines.

There were many times that this felt like walking in a rain forest. These are huge ferns.

There were many exercise stations along the trails. Here, Stephen does a few chinups.

We saw a couple of these camouflaged lookouts.

There is a tiny lake in the middle of this forest. As we approached it, we wondered why the surface was so, er, green. Was it algae? Or something like duckweed?

We saw ducks swimming in it, and in the end decided it was not algae, but a plant of some form. The ducks left a bit of a contrail behind them as they swam.

Fauna

Horses.

Chickens.

Oddities

Through the mist, we could see an amazing number of construction cranes. In fact, throughout our travels here, we have seen a lot of construction - buildings and roads - all signs of a good economy.

A sign: garbage kills animals.

What looks like a collection of identical small cabins, and flags of many countries. It doesn't look like the campgrounds that we have seen. Maybe it's a commune? It didn't look occupied. Or maybe it's housing for temporary farm workers. Not a clue.

A huge field of turnips, perhaps one of my least favorite foods.

Someone chose to decorate a tall tree stump. The yellow diamond painted on the stump is a trail marker.

Shades of Dr. Who!! A genuine British telephone booth.

The canal. The concrete structure on the other side is the side of a freeway tunnel. When we were here exactly a year ago, we walked along this canal much further - in case you missed it, read all about it at my last year's travelogue.

I looked at these shrubs and said "huh!?!". What's with the two-colour flowers? Each of these shrubs has one colour of flowers on the top half, and another colour on the bottom half. And each has a different colour pair. Stephen went close and peered in, and claims that each is only one plant. Maybe it is grafted.

Hockey

It seems that I just can't get too far from that famous Eis Hockey Club Biel. We were lunching in a Mexican food place (yep, go to Switzerland to eat Mexican - makes real sense). And on the wall was this big poster, which we soon realized was the season schedule for the local Kloten Flyers. And there, on the schedule, was the EHC Biel team, which appears to have lost their first game of the season to said Kloten Flyers, by a score of 6-3.

It turns out that these teams are all part of the Swiss National Hockey League. So, of course, the Biel and Kloten fans are going to be as enthusiastic as a Calgary Flames fan!

So, in our defence, we ate at the Mexican place because it was close by, it had an English menu posted outside, and the special of the day was the "Fitness Plate" of chicken breast and salad. The only thing that made it at all Mexican was the fact that there were some red beans (like you use for chili) in it. It was quite delicious.

Stephen goes solo

After lunch, Stephen decided to go for a walk, and ended up riding a train somewhere, wandering around a bit, and then taking a train back.