This morning, I had a tiny bit of lie in, then after that it was time for my trip into the city. I had a couple of things on my list, but I was kinda just planning to wander round and try and get to know the city a bit more.
The first thing I did when I got there was visit Grossmünster, which is a really big church on the west side of the river, to get there, I had to walk through all these bendy, cobbled streets. It was pretty impressive, the stained glass windows weren’t as pretty as the ones in Fraumünster, but it was bigger so you can’t have everything! jks. The one cool thing about this chuch thought, was that you could climb to the top of the one of the spires, which was a really long way up.
The first set of stairs were stone spiral ones, that you could barely fit two people up, and as I was halfway up there was this group of ladies coming down, so I had to like smoosh myself against the wall to let them past. It was one of those really awkward situations, that there was no way out of. However, the spiral staircase eventually opened up into a bigger wooden one, that allowed for more than one person to go up and down. There was literally no one else climbing up or coming down at this point though, so it was really eerie and I definelty felt like Quasimodo, climbing the tower to ring the bells
The view at the top was worth the spooky climb though. It was a really cloudy and grey day though, I imagine on a clearer day, you see further out and the city will obv look a lot brighter, but even I had a lovely view of the city.
After visiting the church, I had a wander round the cobbled streets, looking in at some of the shops. I stumbled upon this kinda plaza, which was at the top of this steep hill. It was really nice up there, there was a park with kids playing and these old gentlemen playing bowls and chess, the cuteness of it melted my heart a little bit. I sat and watched the chess game for about fifteen minutes and then it got cold so I decided to walk back into the centre of town and try and find the National Museum. I passed the chocolate shop on the way and went back in to see them making the chocolate again, today they were making the chocolate bunnies for Easter, and there was a news reporter there, interviewing the two chocolatiers. I did make a note of the name of the store to tell you, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it is. I will do better next time, promise. I also found an English book shop which stocked lots of English goodies, like Cadbury’s chocolate, Marmite(!) and Heinz Salad Cream, which I have clearly taken for granted because I miss it. After restraining extortionate amounts of willpower in both the book store and the chocolate store, I went in search of the museum, which I found on the other side of the Hauptbahnhof (Main station).
It cost 20CHF to enter, which I didn’t think was that bad for a a museum, there was lots there, but a lot of the descriptions were in German, Italian or French and it was kinda difficult to figure out where the English descriptions were, so I just kinda looked in awe at all the cool stuff that had been dug out of the ground, from the past. There were these really cool rooms, that they had moved into the museum, with all wooden panelling for the walls, which had been had engraved, and these massive tiles stoves that were used to heat the rooms, although obv they hadn’t been dug out of the ground.. Most parts of the museum were really empty, so I was wandering around the museum by myself, which again was insanely creepy especially when surrounding by loads of old stuff, which could definitely haunted or cursed or something. I also have the most irrational fear of the mannequins that they dress up in museums to display clothes, but was relieved to see that they didn’t really use them. That was until I walked into this room, and there was about 5 mannequins in there. I don’t understand why they need faces, it’s just creepy and weird.
I jumped like 10ft in the air, the fact that I was completely alone made the situation 1000x worse, so I got out of there sharpish and went in search of some signs of life.
By this time it was about 5pm, and the museum was closing so I headed back out into the city. I wandered over this bridge that had all these padlocks on it, put there by couple I assume. Cute. After that I went in search of somewhere to eat by myself, comforted by the wise words of Mencken ‘He who eats alone, chokes alone.’ I eventually found a Italian restaurant, where I managed to eat some pasta, without choking, and read my book. The fact that I was surrounded by couples, feeding each other and making sappy faces at each other across the table nearly put me off but I was super hungry and managed to keep my food down. After I ate, I made a swift exit into the rain, and walked along the river before eventually catching a tram back to the station, to get my train back home.
When I got back, I was soaked through, from having to walk back from the station, and so had the hottest shower in the world to warm up. Vodafone had finally unlocked my phone so I have my Swiss number now! And that was the end of my very exciting Saturday.
