Expovina

Fasnacht band, Zurich Switzerland

Martyrdom of Felix and Regula

In the 3rd century, Felix and Regula, siblings and members of a Roman legion stationed in Valais, fled to Zurich: not a stupid thing seeing as the legion had been defeated and was to be executed en masse. Unfortunately they were Christians, and in Zurich they were tried for refusing to pray to the Roman gods. This time they didn’t get away and were decapitated on the site of today’s Wasserkirche in the Neiderdorf.

Midsummer Night's Ball

The main train station in Zurich it the largest public hall in Europe. On Saturday July 5th, they will have installed 400m2 of quality wooden flooring so the estimated 6’000 people attending this free event can dance is style. Plus as they say on their website, the Midsummer Night's Ball is the only ball with it’s own train station.

Sechsileuten in Zurich, Pagan meets High Tech

I’ll admit I was somewhat down on arrival in Zurich. It didn’t help that my first hotel had a charming Swiss “country” motif. The lobby furniture was covered in cowhide designs. One wall in my room had a mural of a gopher looking under the dress of peasant girl raking hay, and in the bathroom there were little cows on the shower curtain and tiles. You even needed to get a “cow chip” from the front desk to use as a breakfast voucher. I didn’t, thank you, and for the first time was happy to see Starbucks in a European city.

Street Parade 2007

Now here's one that doesn't need many words.  Street Parade 2007, Zurich Switzerland

The Zürich Festival

This one almost slipped by me: the Zürich Festival. All kinds of events to get you all “cultured up”. There will be opera, concerts, plays, dance and fringe theater, both indoor and out. Some of the productions will be free, and others will be shown on a big screen in the Münsterhof.

Visiting Ballenberg, the Open-Air Museum

More fun than an indoor museum, and more mellow than an amusement park, Ballenberg mixes historical accuracy, engaging hands-on displays, beautiful scenery, and live demonstrations. You can enter most of the buildings, which are often fully furnished and filled with fascinating details like jam on the shelves and tools on the workbench. If you visit the farmhouse from Madiswil, make sure you look up at the ceiling where hundreds of Ballenberg's own recipe sausages hang, ready to be smoked.

Zurich Stroll

Most Zurich guides will say that Zurich is divided into two by the Limmat River: the West or Left Bank, and the East or Right Bank. I’ve also always divided it up in two: Niederdorf, and everything else, and since Niederdorf was always on the other side of the Limmat from where I lived and worked, we referred to it as going “over the bridge”, which invariably made for late nights, because that’s where everything was happening.