A building by any other name

11 Friday May 2012

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The KKL, whose full name is the Konzert und Kongresszentrum Luzern, is a conference & cultural centre in central Switzerland. It is one of the country’s architectural highlights, a distinctive landmark designed by Jean Nouvel which successfully blends into the surrounding alpine landscape of Lake Lucerne. Inside, there is an auditorium that has been so finely tuned for acoustics you can literally hear a pin drop on stage, even with a full house. The ambience at a recent Tori Amos concert I attended there was so magical that I went all fangurl about it on Facebook. Recently though, it was announced the 12-year-old building needs public funding to the tune of CHF 19 million for refurbishments, which inspired heavy criticism and even had some calling for it to be torn down.

The KKL’s signature roof

A while back, a friend I’ll call Marge sent me a text message. Whether I would like to come on a behind-the-scenes tour of the KKL. She promised there would be free coffee and nussgipfel; I said I’d go anyway. Getting a chance to snoop around where I normally have no right to be is just my thing, and the thought of seeing where the likes of Cecila Bartoli, Yo-Yo Ma and Kool & the Gang have hurried from dressing room to stage made my geeky little heart beat a little faster.

The next day, Marge sent me an email:

On Mar 13, 2012, at 9:47 PM, Marge wrote: Hiya. Do you have Canadian and Swiss citizenship?  Or just Swiss?

On 14 Mar, 2012, at 8:50 AM, Katrin wrote: Both, why?

On Mar 14, 2012, at 1:00 PM, Marge wrote: Have to submit list of participants with nationalities. Just getting it ready. :-)

On 14 Mar, 2012, at 1:03 PM, Katrin wrote: Ok… do you need my fingerprints too???

On Mar 14, 2012, at 1:14 PM, Marge wrote: Not yet, I’ll let you know ;-)

On 14 Mar, 2012, at 1:19 PM, Katrin wrote: Still wondering why they need that…

On Mar 14, 2012, at 7:56 PM, Marge wrote: At least you’re not Iranian. In the US, they wouldn’t even let you get close to a power plant.

Finally, the penny dropped.

The KKL, whose full name is the Kernkraftwerk Leibstadt, is a nuclear power plant about 35 km from Zurich which produces over nine billion kilowatt hours of power every year. The aftermath of last year’s earthquake in Japan and the resulting nuclear disaster in Fukushima has inspired the federal government to study dismantling Switzerland’s nuclear power programme and to suggest the KKL, along with the three other plants in the country, be torn down.

The Kernkraftwerk Leibstadt’s cooling tower, with visitor’s centre in the foreground

Marge’s husband works at the plant, which is how she got a group of us registered for a special tour that would include the reactor building, a rare thrill of potential danger in itself. And so I found myself recently donning a spiffy outfit that included a fluorescent orange T-shirt, bright yellow socks, a lime green jumpsuit and a light blue hardhat. This way, I wouldn’t be walking around in my own slightly irradiated clothes later in the day. The different colours make the 200 kg of laundry done by the plant every day easier to separate and, in line with the logic of the respectable Swiss, ensure no one steals a T-shirt. They obviously haven’t had much experience with North American visitors, because we all immediately tried to figure a way to smuggle them out as souvenirs and failing that, came up with a business plan for the gift shop. I would have loved to take a picture of us all looking so colourfully dorky, but then I’d probably be writing this from jail.

The tour started in an information centre open to the general public which reminded me of some of the set-ups found in the bunkers of James Bond movie villains – complete with nifty and colourful models of all kinds of potentially dangerous things.

An overview of the plant, from the KKL website (www.kkl.ch)

Our guide was very charming and knowledgeable, taking us through the whole process of how the plant worked, from nuclear fission in the reactor core to the energy produced by the turbines heated by the resulting steam, and the cooling system connected to the huge tower – that oversized chimney usually associated with a nuclear power plant. In true Swiss fashion, she remained staunchly neutral on controversial subjects: describing what happens during a nuclear meltdown, she classified the resulting radioactive clump of fuel elements as “not nice”. She also rounded off an explanation of uranium enrichment with the delightful understatement that “for some countries (having weapons-grade uranium) is an advantage”. Indeed.

In every group there’s one know-it-all (we had at least two) and neither is any tour complete without the self-proclaimed humorist, who in this case immediately quipped, as we set off in our colourful gear, that we were all sure to get “that special glow”. On our way to the reactor building, we were shown three sizes of plastic bags and asked what we thought they were used for. The joker suggested they were “to dispose of shoes, clothes and the body”. That didn’t make our guide flinch – or laugh – either, so finally I shut up and let her get on with it (they were for maintenance).

Options for taking photos inside are nil, so here’s another view from farther away…

Accessing the reactor building was like entering a space capsule; we went through an elaborate air lock system only a few people at time can use. That James Bond feeling was back. Once inside, the pool of crystal clear water covering the reactor itself had an amazing blue tinge, like Lake Louise in July. A “No lifeguard on duty” sign reassured me that I wasn’t the only wiseass on the compound.

Visiting the KKL was an imposing experience: it is an overwhelmingly complex, impressive machine, with an amazing amount of effort gone into technology, operation and plant safety – the reactor’s containment shield has been constructed to resist missiles and airplanes, for example. But still, there is an uneasy air to the place. “What’s that smell?” I asked as we all stood in the elevator on our way down to the fuel assembly storage facility. “Fear,” said Marge’s brother.

A cow’s eye view.

According to the World Nuclear Association, with all the nuclear power plants in the world, there have been only three major accidents – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima – in the cumulative 14,500 reactor-years of their existence. Those are excellent statistics, but still it can be hard to get beyond the fact that although the probability of a disaster is low, the consequences are high, with the waste from spent fuel rods needing to be stored for about a thousand years before radiation levels return to that of naturally-occurring uranium.

And that’s what it boils down to, as we try to reconcile our every-increasing need for energy with the fact that there is currently no more efficient way to produce it than a nuclear power station. 40% of Switzerland’s power is still generated by its four plants. Hydroelectric, fossil fuelled, wind, solar, and other alternatives are nowhere near as good at (or in some cases as clean as) producing the amount of kilowatt hours needed to heat my house, light my street and charge my pile of electronic toys. So I either have to get used to living with the risk of nuclear power, learn do with less energy or become smarter than I am and invent a better system.

The Wine, the Max and the Wardrobe

10 Friday Feb 2012

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The ceiling in our basement storage space has a frightening sag to it and the stucco has broken off in places. Given that our building dates back to the 19th century, I’m nervous enough to think it’s quite possible the next time I stumble down there for another bottle of wine the ceiling may fall in on me. (So if you don’t hear from me for too long, you know where to go look.)

There are three heavy storeys on top of this

Our plus-size cat Max (if he were a person, he’d drink beer all day watching football on the couch) has taken to whining at the door every morning to go sleep behind the wine rack where the ceiling slants down and prevents us from pushing the rack all the way to the wall. A few weeks ago Senta was putting a bottle into one of the slots and ended up poking a bottle out the back, where it landed standing up but leaning against the wall out of reach, where it remains. Max now sleeps beside this bottle of wine almost every day, and if he ever comes back into the apartment smelling strongly of Humagne Rouge 2009, we’ll know the bottle has finally fallen over onto the stone floor.

A builder came by to have a look at the ceiling and declared it to be in relatively good shape; apparently the ceiling just needs to be re-plastered. I’m in the language – not the construction – business, so I’m forced to believe him.

Max, doing what he does best

This meant the storage space had to be cleaned out, though, which is not as simple as it sounds. Because it’s a tiny little room and had a huge old wardrobe in it, there since I moved in almost 20 years ago. Senta and I tried to remove it once, but it turned out to be one of those physics-defying objects that may go into a particular space, but not out again. We tipped it this way and that, trying to force it through the doorway, to no avail. Finally we gave up and decided it looked very nice where it was.

But now the ceiling was threatening to cave in and so a few weeks ago I went downstairs with our little electrical jigsaw and began cutting the top of the wardrobe off. The back proved tricky, but once I told Senta we possess a small sledge hammer she got a gleam in her eye and went at it, adding a few quick wen-do kicks harking back to her women’s studies past. Soon the wardrobe was subdued and lying around in pieces. All we needed to do now was get rid of the debris, plus a few more things that had been mouldering down there for the past decade or so – those bits and bobs of wood & metal and paints I was sure would be useful for a home improvement project someday. That project now turned out to consist of throwing everything away.

The city of Zurich has a nice service where you heave everything onto the sidewalk and they come by with a garbage truck and cart it all away for about 90 bucks. The only condition is that it all has to be ready before 7 am. They said they could come on Monday.

So far so good, but there’s a law against making work noise before 7 am without a permit. And as we know, in Switzerland you can’t work outside on a Sunday. I don’t know what it’s like at your house, but my sidewalk is outside.

Getting around the Sunday rule and putting everything out on Saturday is dangerous. First of all, because you might get fined for leaving junk all over the sidewalk, and secondly because crafty people have been known to add things to your pile, increasing the time the garbage men have to spend removing it and thus incurring higher charges and stiffing you with the bill. I don’t know who these people are who drive around with garbage in their cars, but there it is.

A deconstructed wardrobe, trying to look unobtrusive

I finally decided that carrying a few things out to the sidewalk on a Sunday evening was preferable to waking my neighbours at 5 am on a Monday morning by clunking around in the basement. Plus although I tend to be a morning person, I like to wait until it’s actually morning to do so.

I got right down to it: lifting up one of the bigger pieces of chopped-up wardrobe and taking out the bare light bulb and half the fixture in the ceiling while I was at it. I stood there in the pitch dark, holding on to a massive piece of wood with glass and ceramic splinters all over the floor. Luckily there’s a light it the hallway, only it’s on a timer so I had to duck out there to switch it back on every 2 minutes or so. Finally the job got done, half the storage space is cleaned out so the builder has room to work – and now you can really see the sag in the crumbling ceiling and I’m wondering if maybe we’ll just declare the room as Max’s private sleeping quarters.

Somehow we’ll teach him to bring the wine upstairs.

We sleep on the floor now

FIGUGEGL and a Nice Crispy Nun

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

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I’ve always hated fondue. The thought of eating what a amounts to a pile of melted gruyère, emmental or vacherin and six slices of bread in a stuffy, cheese-smelling space with too many other people never seemed to me like something I’d want to do on purpose. Although I do love cheese, this variation ends up sitting in your stomach like a pound of Silly Putty, and you just know it’s not going to go quietly.

Another deterrent for me is that most recipes call for a nice splash of 40% kirsch – the famous cherry brandy from Zug. Not in a shot glass next to your plate, but actually mixed into the fondue. So the result is a bubbling vat of cheese that smells of lighter fluid and – well, I’ll stop whining now because you get the picture.

Earlier this month, I took it upon myself to make a version of fondue that I like. Since there is no “original” recipe, I decided to look at what’s out there and put one together to suit my taste.

Swiss ski champion Lara Gut tries on a cheese suit from the 90s (Photo by Toto Marti at blick.ch)

Although the concept of melting cheese in a pot and adding wine and spices has been around for centuries (the oldest written recipe was found in a cookbook from Zurich’s Gessner family and dates back to 1699), the idea of fondue as a Swiss national dish was created as a marketing ploy to sell more cheese. You’re shocked to learn this, I’m sure. In the 1930s, the now-defunct Swiss Cheese Union pushed the central Swiss recipe, which uses gruyère, emmental and sbrinz, as a traditional Swiss dish. Needless to say, the Swiss Cheese Union was formed to increase the sale of gruyère, emmental and sbrinz. The SCU was finally dissolved in 1999, but not before sponsoring the Swiss ski team for 7 years with some of the most ridiculous ski uniforms in the sport’s history.

In my search for the right fondue, I came upon other cheese mixtures, like the fribourgeoise, where potatoes instead of bread are dipped in vacherin cheese; the finduta, which uses fontina cheese, milk, eggs and truffles; and variations that add tomatoes, pepper or chili. Inspired by these mixtures, and by the fact that most recipes include rubbing the inside of a heavy caquelon pot with garlic, I came up with my own, replacing most of the very filling bread with other things:

For four people (all ingredients must be at room temperature to mix properly)

The cheese mixture, known as moitié-moitié (half & half):
300g grated vacherin cheese
300g grated gruyère cheese
3 dl dry, good quality white wine
3 tsp cornstarch
2 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion, finely chopped
freshly ground pepper and nutmeg to taste

Ingredients for dipping:
300g broccoli tops, cut into bite-sized pieces
200g white mushrooms, small
2 beure bosc, a.k.a kaiser, pears
200g bintje, charlotte or raclette potatoes
4 slices of white bread (such as baguette), cubed

Steam the broccoli tops for about four minutes, until they are tender with the inside still crispy; steam the mushrooms for about three minutes; steam the potatoes until they are done and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Set these three aside and keep warm.
Cut pears into bite-sized pieces; set aside.

Rub the inside of the caquelon with one of the garlic cloves, press the other and add to the pan. Melt the cheese in the wine, adding the spices and onion, stirring constantly to mix all the ingredients evenly. Bring the cheese to a slow boil, so as not to burn it. Add the cornstarch as needed to make the mixture creamy (you can test this by dipping in a piece of bread; if the cheese clumps nicely on the bread without dripping off, you’re good to go), then move the pot off the stove and onto a table-top grill. Make sure the temperature stays constant – hot enough to bubble slightly, but not to burn the cheese.

Use long fondue forks to dip the broccoli, pears, mushrooms, potatoes and bread into the pot. Those looking for more spice can also add paprika, hot sauce or more pepper.

When you’ve emptied the pot, there will be a thin crust of toasted cheese at the bottom of the caquelon. Oddly enough called “die Grossmutter” (the grandmother) in German-speaking Switzerland and “la réligieuse” (the nun) in the French part, this can be scraped out of the pot as a crunchy treat at the end.

In the 1950’s, the cheese union launched a marketing campaign with the abbreviated slogan: FIGUGEGL, to stand for “Fondue isch guet und git e gueti Luune” (Fondue is good and puts you in a good mood). After finding a way to enjoy a fondue that is light, with enough vegetables and spices to keep me interested, I finally agree.

Found at Trader Joe's in Monterrey, CA. The "alpine beer" is what must make it special.

Stone Soup

10 Saturday Dec 2011

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There is a European folk tale about hungry travellers who arrive in a village asking for food. When they are turned away by the suspicious inhabitants, they fill a large pot with water and set it up in a central place, lighting a fire underneath. Then they plop a huge stone into the pot and start mixing. A curious villager comes by and asks them what they’re doing. “Making stone soup,” is the answer. And what a soup it will be – the tastiest thing on earth. The villager asks if he can have some. “Well,” say the travellers, “you’d have to contribute something. Have you got any carrots?” The villager runs home, gets some carrots, and into the pot they go.

A few minutes later, another local comes by and wants to know what’s happening. One of the travellers tells her about the stone soup they’re making: a delicacy, a dream, a veritable explosion of spices and flavours. Eager to get in on the experience, she offers to add some ingredients. A hunter strolls up with a freshly killed brace of rabbits. Again there is curiosity about the pot, which is starting to smell good, and again the travellers agree to share their stone soup with him if he contributes. And so it goes, until, many hours later, the villagers and the travellers share a sumptuous meal together.

Stone soup

Meanwhile…

When I was six, my father moved us to Vancouver, BC, where he had just gotten a position as a physicist at a new university. It was the 1960’s, when the mere promise of his new salary got us a spacious house on the side of a mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean. With the front garden being just a long slope of lawn, my parents decided there was work to be done, and so many weekends of landscaping began, with the whole family pitching in. What resulted was a nice terraced garden with boxes of plants on different levels and the lawn in between. At the bottom where the garden met the road, Mum and Dad declared a rock garden to be just the thing. And so off we went to the local river to fill the family station wagon with rocks of different sizes – smooth, round stones of white granite speckled with black and grey, things of beauty in themselves.

These rocks were unloaded at the bottom of the garden and arranged in a nice pattern. My favourite one was a smooth stone about the size of a cantaloupe. It was almost perfectly round, and I was amazed that such a thing could have been produced by nature alone.

The house at 2689 Rosebery Avenue

Years passed and the weeds proved themselves stronger than our resolve to get rid of them. And soon the rock garden was merely a gravel verge dotted by larger stones along the bottom of the garden, less distinctively a thing in itself as my brother and I became teenagers and our friends started parking their cars next to it, then increasingly in it.

These friends were coming to parties. The famous Gygax house parties. Our parents were both liberal and often away, so my brother – who is three years older than me – invited the boys, and I invited the girls, which gave us all a new dating pool to work from and added an element of excitement to each event. Someone with access to a school chemical lab would bring a jug of pure ethanol and mix it with soda pop for a not-quite poisonous punch; others brought beer. Word got around at our school and sometimes a few too many people would show up. Things never really got out of hand, but once or twice a neighbour called the police about the noise and they would come by to break things up. The kids would disappear, leaving their bottles behind. Bottles you could take to the liquor store and get money for thanks to the deposit on them.

Zurich, summer 2010. In Canada, this pile could help finance your next party

A few years later, my parents had split up, my brother was at university and I found myself one afternoon in my last year of high school overhearing two kids talking about a party. “Are you going too?” they asked me. “Where?” “At the Gygax house.” These were two kids I didn’t know, talking about a party at my house that I had not planned. And my mother was out of town.

I rounded up a few real friends and we headed home, where cars were already parked in the gravel. Always eager to be liked, I decided to let the party happen. A few hours later I began to regret that decision, as more and more kids showed up – kids I’d never seen before, who seemed to be on the edge of trashing the place, just because they were bored and drunk in an upper middle class neighbourhood on a Friday night. Finally, I called the cops.

With most of us teenagers under the drinking age, the minute the flashing lights reflected in the front room windows everyone dropped their drinks and escaped out side doors and back windows, leaving me and my friends with a house full of empties, half-empties and full bottles of beer. The full ones we kept. We played music, we laughed and danced, we drank the free beer and cashed in the empties. An idea started to form in our minds. One that seemed new, but unbeknownst to us, was very old.

The perfect stone, bomb-shaped, flown to Zurich in my hand luggage - but that's another story.

Tour de Suisse, Part Two

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Articles about why Switzerland is actually flat

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After leaving my bike stranded at the train station in Baden, I was pleased to see it was still there a few weeks later – Switzerland is a popular source for bicycle foragers who drive up in large trucks and heave in anything that isn’t tied to a post. Having found my ride, the next detail to clarify was the very important issue of the day’s food. Since I didn’t remember there being a decent restaurant along the way between Baden and Aarau, I decided lunch on this trip would best be taken outdoors, in one of the many fields, woods or riverside spots on the way. I got all the fixings for a picnic lunch – a mini baguette, brie with truffles, nostrano salami, an apple and a bottle of fresh orange juice – from Manor, which has a really nice supermarket in the basement of its department store.

Manor Food leans toward the French market experience, so it has a good selection of fruit & vegetables, meats, fish, cheeses, cold cuts and bread for sale, as well as different deli items. It’s also the first place in Switzerland where I ever found wakame salad, which was exciting news for someone who’s tried and miserably failed numerous times to make it at home. If you want to know these things, the ultimate Manor Food is in the Chavannes Centre just outside of Chavannes-de-Bogis near Nyon in Canton Vaud. It’s a phantasmagoria of culinary delights where you can get anything and everything – for a price – and because of the many expats living in the region, most people there speak English.

Baden's thermal bath district. Thanks Wikipedia for the photo!

Before leaving Baden, I took a quick zip around on my bike: it has a nice medieval old town with some good shops, a casino for getting rid of any nasty money you have lying around, and a funky thermal spa district dating back to Roman times. The last time I went to the Baden bathhouse was about 14 years ago, when all was still dilapidated and lunch was shared in a room with wheezy people there for a good steam. Now everything is being renovated and the area is slated to become home to chic and delightfully expensive “wellness” temples. The pulmonarily challenged will be moved along by the prices, I’m sure.

Baden is also home to the formerly huge, now slimmed down by the economy, engineering conglomerate ABB, whose old compound is being transformed into a cultural and residential district. Which brings me back to my family. In the late 19th century, they tell me, my great grandfather was approached by two engineering colleagues who asked if he were interested in joining their new venture. He said no, so Mr. Brown and Mr. Boveri went on to build one of the biggest engineering firms in Switzerland without him. Or so says – yet another – family legend. “Se non è vero, è ben trovato,” goes my favourite Italian maxim: even if perhaps it isn’t true, it’s a good story all the same. And I’m sure my parents wouldn’t have had me if my family had been rich, so thank goodness.

This is where it becomes apparent I'm not writing as I ride. All stages of my Tour de Suisse are done between March and October.

Tootling off (along bike route No. 34) into the countryside is always a refreshing experience for a city slicker from the hectic and dangerous streets of Zurich. I found myself alone on narrow paved roads open only to hikers and farming vehicles, in peaceful landscapes populated by chirping birds or grazing sheep and cows. And insects. Lots and lots of insects. Please note: when travelling around outdoors between May and late August, a good bug repellent will save your sanity. One from another country does the trick better than a domestic spray, I was once told – because the local insects get used to the smell that’s meant to keep them away. A tip that turned out to be true: I am now a busy importer of Deep Woods Off from Canada and don’t suffer nearly as much as I used to.

I certainly found deep woods when I strayed off the bike path just before Melligen (maybe I should have remembered to pack the map after all). I found myself taking the very long way round through dense stands of trees and was suddenly confronted with a steep cliff dropping to a big river that I’m sure wasn’t there the last time I looked. So apparently it’s called the Reuss (the fourth largest river in Switzerland) and what do I know anyway and yes, I bought a map when I finally panted into Lenzburg an hour off schedule.

Lenzburg Castle with a sign from the famous local jam factory in front

At which point I need to plug McArthurs Pub in Lenzburg’s old town, which does a great job of reassuring the Celtic (and the Celtic-at-heart) that there is in fact civilisation in Switzerland. Perhaps not the place to stop during the heat of the day if you’re thinking of cycling on for another hour or two, but great fun for an evening out another time. They have all the essential drinks, with quiz nights, Scottish menu nights, sports events and lots of open & warm people. You’ll run into my friends the Sullivans there almost once a week.

The pub also has a lot of American influences (fried chicken night, burger & hotdog night), which reflect something I’ve noticed before: Canton Aargau is the American Midwest of Switzerland. It shares with that US region a love of sports bars, country music, conservative politics and American cars. Oddly enough, some Aargauers seem to have a propensity for the late 1980’s Ford Caprice Classic, a car I remember mostly as the vehicle of choice for the Vancouver Police Department. No one else ever had one back home, so it always unnerves me to find one in my rear-view mirror when I’m driving in Switzerland, no matter if I’m only a teeny bit over the speed limit.

Some friends I met along the way

From Lenzburg to Aarau the roads are mostly flat, dotted here and there with small towns, fields with requisite cows in them and once, a log cabin with a Canadian flag flapping on a pole outside. Having met only Swiss or Germans in Canada who owned actual log cabins, I figure this is a fan who came home with a set of blueprints. I was, of course, too much of a chicken to knock on the door and ask.

Past all that you turn north in Suhr onto bike route No. 3 and come to the outskirts of Aarau. Not much to look at, but if you keep to the official path, which goes along pleasantly rustic Bachstrasse towards the train station, you’ll have a quieter time of it than if you take the busy main road. Once in Aarau, you’ll find the station has been spiffed up to include a state-of-the-art guarded bicycle parking garage. So you’ll find your bike back where you left it for the next leg of the trip.

I find Aarau nicer from behind

Next time: the Swiss countryside gets more idyllic as cities and suburbs give way to small towns, castles, greenery and agriculture.

Tour de Suisse, Part One

21 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in Articles about why Switzerland is actually flat

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If you value your private parts, two things that are imperative for cycling over the course of several hours are a good pair of padded shorts and the right bicycle seat. Today’s models are a long way from the wool tights with thin chamois leather inlays; now there are gel compartments to protect every topographical aspect of your best bits. The right seat is somewhat trickier, especially for women. I had a salesman tell me straight-faced that there is no need to differentiate between men and women’s bicycle seats. I think I’m right in assuming that once that man finally has a date with a female, he’s in for a big surprise. A good thing to look for in a bike saddle (its official name) is enough padding for your sitting bones, and for women, a seat with a shorter “nose” and a dip in the centre – called a “relief”. Yes, it is.

A little relief in the centre

I started out on my Tour de Suisse from my apartment near Zurich’s Central square, taking the path that runs past the Landesmuseum and through Platzspitz Park, which became notorious in the early 1990’s as “Needle Park”, with enthusiasts from all over Europe gathering to enjoy drugs – mainly heroin – in the open air without threat of punishment, thanks to the city’s liberal drugs policy. Almost 20 years on, it is again a safe bit of greenery perfect for picnics by the river, and the only dangerous thing I’ve seen people do in the 19th century gazebo is dance the tango.

The path continues along the Limmat, past the Letten riverside badi, where Zurich’s trendoids roast side by side in the sun and you can go for a quick dip during your lunch hour on a hot summer day. A bit downriver there is Werdinsel Park, a great place for an afternoon barbecue, with a literally cool canal where you can let yourself be carried along by a gentle current. The western end of the park, downstream, you should visit only if you’re a fan of nude bathing or men who like to meet in bushes for excited casual encounters.

Oberer Letten Badi

Farther downstream is Kloster Fahr, a Benedictine nunnery in an enclave of Canton Aargau within Canton Zurich. This abbey is part of my family’s history: in 1841, as part of the Aargauer Klosterstreit, a conflict between the liberal-protestant Canton of Aargau and the conservative-catholic cantons of Switzerland that almost ended in war with Austria, a decree from the city of Aarau’s government ordered all monasteries to be closed. This ordinance would be repealed again in 1843 for nunneries, but by then my family’s fate had already been determined. With the abbey closed and everyone given just eight days to leave, my great-great-grandmother Karoline Karpf was sent out into the world to fend for herself. So naturally, given the times, she found herself a husband and together they launched a cheerful mini-dynasty that today includes upwards of 2000 people.

Kloster Fahr

At least that’s always been the story told at family reunions. Because I am a card-carrying geek (yes, there is a card: it’s virtual and called an Apple ID), I dug out my grandfather’s diary to check the facts. The first thing to hit me was that Karoline Karpf was born in 1835, which made her six years old when the monastery closed in 1841. And that it was another 24 years before she married in 1865. A closer look at the history of the nunnery reveals that when it reopened in 1843, it became much more relaxed about nuns leaving for the outside world, given its unstable past. So my guess is my great-great-grandmother became a nun not as a toddler but in the late 1840’s in her teens as was usual at the time, leaving around age 30 to marry great-great-grandpapa. Not as interesting as “my family exists because they closed a monastery”, I’m afraid, but then that’s always been the problem with reality. And yet even if the real story is more complicated, I like being connected to the history of such an old place.

Today still in operation, Kloster Fahr has a nice restaurant – Zu den Zwei Raben, which offers simple regional fare and practical outdoor seating to sweaty cyclists stopping in for lunch – as well as a shop that sells wine, honey, fruit & vegetables – all grown and made on the premises by the sisters themselves.

Next come the less exciting Dietikon and Spreitenbach, home of a huge Ikea, where I used to go when I felt homesick for Vancouver. Because let’s face it, every Ikea in the world looks the same on the inside. At the Mutschellenstrasse bridge, you have to decide between following a narrow footpath that rises precariously up and over the Limmat, or pedalling safely towards the main road and through the local towns. Soon you’ll be in Baden’s eastern suburbs: Neuenhof and Wettingen, home of my friend Susan, who’s a fabulous cook. If you ask nicely, she might let you use her bathroom. Then it’s over the bridge, where you’ll want to slow down just a bit to take in the nice view of Baden’s old town.

Baden from the Wettingen bridge

Next time: From Baden to Aarau through Lenzburg, getting lost in a forest along the way.

Switzerland, the movie-lover’s paradise

07 Friday Oct 2011

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If you’re like me, you prefer the full-screen movie experience over sitting at home in front of a TV that is in comparison very small, no matter how flat it is and no matter that pyjamas are the bomb. Even better is a huge screen outside on a square, or in a park by the lake, with people offering me food and drink. And I don’t mean popcorn chicken or pizza topped with poutine, which I was recently horrified to learn is an actual thing. The last meal I had at an outdoor movie was grilled cod with a mixed salad, crispy bread and a glass or three of nero d’avola. Bliss.

Summer brings on the open air movie season, with everyone from large corporations like telecom giant Orange (which hosts Orange Cinema on the edge of Lake Zurich) to neighbourhood cinemas (Kino Xenix) and community organisations that screen films outdoors. Orange Cinema does it blockbuster style, showing the latest Hollywood flicks or long-time favourites on a huge screen – which raises itself up slowly from pillars set in the lake and is framed by the Alps in the background once it’s fully upright. And tiny bats flitter around, feasting on twilight mosquitoes. No actual need for a movie in that kind of setting.

The screen about to go up over Lake Zurich

Smaller venues offer an exclusive neighbourhood atmosphere – like having a big screen set up in your own backyard – with people catching up on gossip or other news as they wait for the sun to go down. The one with the good food is Zurich’s excellent repertory cinema Kino Xenix, which yesterday held its every-month-with-an-r-in-it homemade mussel soup night, and also has a funky bar that’s usually packed with interesting alternative types open for a discussion about anything. If you’re having trouble making new friends among the (selective? shy? antisocial? – now there’s a post just waiting to be written) Swiss, this is the place where you have the best chance at succeeding.

Kino Xenix, ready for another season

For the ultimate in outdoor screenings, go to the Locarno International Film Festival, held at the beginning of August. Every evening, organisers show an out-of-competition movie on the old town’s Piazza Grande – imagine yourself on a huge cobblestone square surrounded by renaissance architecture under a warm starry sky watching “An American In Paris”: there’s no experience like it.

Smart phone, bad camera: on the Piazza Grande in Locarno

As a form of intermission, ponder this: with Zurich’s summer weather often unpredictable, or actually predictable in the sense that there’s sure to be a thunderstorm exactly on the evening you want to do anything outdoors, I’ve always wondered why the open air movie season isn’t in spring – what with the sun also going down earlier…

With fall comes a series of great film festivals, starting with Fantoche in Baden (just 15 minutes from Zurich on the fast train), that shows animated short films. A good tip there is to buy a ticket to the closing event, which includes a 1 ½-hour screening of the winners.

The Zurich Film Festival, the up-and-comer that received an rush of involuntary (yes, involuntary) publicity two years ago thanks to the arrest of Roman Polanski, gets its press like the major festivals: by focusing on the stars it increasingly attracts (this year: Sean Penn, Laurence Fishburne , Alejandro González Iñárritu, Paul Haggis and – Roman Polanski, who was finally able to pick up his 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award). But this Hollywood-style bustle lets the organisers show a very good and varied selection of films by new, second or third-time directors that are definitely worth seeing. This year’s winner of the Best German Language Documentary was “Darwin”, a movie made by Swiss director Nick Brandestini (and I do mean “made by”: he was solely responsible for cinematography & sound and carried out all the interviews) about a tiny town on the edge of nowhere in Death Valley, populated by a collection of some 35 social outcasts, former hippies and a few too many people with access to guns and alcohol at the same time.

Zurich Film Festival, ticket and press centre

Also held just outside Zurich is the International Short Film Festival in Winterthur, an event run mainly by volunteers (this is a shameless plug, but I just have to do it because I’ll be joining them again this year), which attracts filmmakers from all around the world and is one of the few festivals where you can actually mingle with them. Last year the darling of the festival was David O’Reilley, whose brilliant computer-generated short “The External World” deservedly won for Best Film.

Awards ceremony at the International Short Film Festival in Winterthur

By the end of November, I’m ready to start lobbying for human hibernation again. The cold, the high ceiling of fog over Zurich and having to wait until next summer for the next orgy of movies – what better excuses to stay in bed for at least four months?

And I should probably re-post this in June, when the season starts up again.

Welcome to the virtual opening of Today’s Office Looks Like This

03 Monday Oct 2011

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In 2009, I started cycling around Switzerland. With my job as a freelance travel writer and translator leaving me free to work wherever there is room for my computer, I work on the train as I bike around the country in segments – discovering the countryside in short bursts during my “lunch hour” (which sometimes runs to two or three, so I’m glad my boss is so understanding). The title of this site was born out of a series of photographs I put on Facebook for friends & family as updates. The articles posted here are (and will be) a mix of reports from my cycling trip as well as travel pieces about Switzerland, Zurich and other places I’ve been around the world.

So hum a bossa nova tune, take a virtual glass of champagne (or if you’ve got some in the fridge, why not pour yourself a real one?), have a look around, leave a comment, “like”, subscribe and tell all your friends to visit.

Enjoy!
Katrin

 

Fiona, the Savage Cow

02 Sunday Oct 2011

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The image we have of cows is of sweet beasts calmly munching grass all day long as they cling to the sides of the Swiss Alps or lay about on green meadows. They seem largely decorative, full of cowbell-tinkling Swissness – a true symbol of Switzerland’s mostly tamed outdoors.

Farmers inadvertently perpetuate this image by giving their dairy cows names like Fiona, Diana, Bella, Bianca and Nina (the top five favourites) – a fact not always enthusiastically welcomed by women named Fiona, Diana, Bella, Bianca or Nina. Scrolling down the list of other common dairy cow names, we find Heidi (to the annoyance of my mother, who already has other issues with her first name), Senta (my girlfriend; ditto, thanks to her Wagnerian parents) – and Katrin (sigh).

The more observant among you know that many cows in Switzerland don’t have horns, which makes them look even less threatening. But they only seem approachable: the average Swiss cow weighs about 440kg (970lbs) more than you, can get just as cranky as the rest of us, and is as protective of its young as any wild animal.

In recent years, confrontations with cows near hiking trails has escalated: two people have died, one man was trampled – luckily not to death – and a pair of German tourists on their way up a mountain had their path blocked by menacing cows and had to call for help. Another couple escaped the worst only when a rescue helicopter scared off the circling cattle – complete with horns, which they had aimed down at the couple on the ground.

So why are cows becoming so aggressive?

Every year, 200,000 calves are de-horned under anaesthesia. The official reason for this practice is the danger horns pose to people and the animals themselves while they are kept in close indoor quarters during the winter. Unofficially? The more cows that can be packed into a barn, the more money there is to be made.

But with the current trend towards sustainable and green farming there is also an ongoing movement to stop the de-horning practice, in a campaign led by organisations for the protection of domestic animals. (One such organisation, KAG Freiland, already has the marketing aspect covered to pay for any expenses building larger barns might incur: by getting farmers to produce and sell “horn milk” as a niche product.)

So with animal-friendly farming becoming more and more popular, cows are now often accompanied by their young when they go out into the fields to graze – horns intact. There is no longer a calving season, which means calves can be found out in the fields from spring through to fall. And getting between a mother and her calf – which makes you a clear threat – can of course result in aggressive behaviour on the part of the cow.

Whatchoo lookin' at?

Usually cattle farmers make sure not to let volatile animals graze close to hiking paths, but sometimes they have no other option if a certain meadow is ripe for grazing. Bulls are therefore also increasingly found out in pastures and have been known to make their presence felt to hikers straying off the beaten path. Reportedly, bulls can get annoyed if they’re spurned by a cow in heat – and might take it out on you.

So now that you’ve developed a sudden fear of cattle, how do you make sure you’re not attacked by excited cows on your way up the mountain? For those who know how to avoid large pieces of wildlife in general, this will sound familiar:

- Don’t leave the path if there are cows around (they tend to be out in the open and aren’t known to sneak up on people, so this should be easy)
- Don’t get closer than 20 metres (20 yards) to a mother with a calf and don’t even think about petting that cute little thing
- Don’t surprise or frighten a cow
- Don’t look a cow directly in the eye
- If you’re feeling menaced, slowly walk backwards away from the animal
- Carry a walking stick; in the worst case you can use it to bop an aggressive cow on the nose
- Keep your dog on a leash so it doesn’t disturb the cattle. Farmers do suggest letting it loose if a cow begins to threaten you, but in this case you’ll be using your dog as bait to distract the angry beast, so you may want to think that piece of advice all the way through first.

I’ve had my own uncomfortable moment in bovine company: on a cycling trip from Andermatt over the Gotthard Pass, my girlfriend and I decided to leave the main road, which was choked with stinky traffic as it is on most warm sunny days. As we pushed our bikes along the hiking trail that follows the valley floor at Gamsteg, we suddenly realised that some 300 cows, which had previously just been grazing or lying about in the sun, where now all standing up and staring at us. When we tried to take the long way around them, they started to follow. Completely unnerved, we ended up going all the way back to the road. Later we worked out the most likely reason for their alarm: the horn-shaped handlebars on our mountain bikes.

The Oldest Bathhouse in Zurich.

16 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Articles about Zurich

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One of Zurich‘s best kept secrets is a 2,000 year-old Roman bathhouse underneath Thermengasse.  In 1983, when a large part of Zurich‘s Altstadt streets were dug up to lay new pipes, workers discovered the foundations of Roman baths in an area covering Münsterplatz, Storchengasse and Thermengasse. After two years of archeological work on the site, the greater portion was catalogued and re-buried. A small strip was left exposed and is open to the public on Thermengasse, a narrow, steep alley connecting Weinplatz with St. Peter‘s Church, wedged between Pastorini’s toy store and a branch of the Trois Pommes clothing store.

The excavation site is covered with metal grating, creating a walkway over what remains of the pillars of the baths’ old heating system, in which a hypocaust circulated hot air through flues, heating the floors and walls in the building. With a series of wall plaques offering information on the old Roman settlement and its baths, you can easily imagine a time when Zurich was even smaller than it is now.

Around 80-70 B.C., Turicum (Roman Zurich) was a village of less than one hundred inhabitants on the fringe of the Roman Empire. The main road heading northeast from Aventicum (Avenches) through Aquae Helveticae (Baden) to Vitudurum (Winterthur) and Arbor Felix (Arbon) by-passed the village completely. It was the town‘s position at the end of two large bodies of water, Walensee and Lake Zurich, that eventually made it the choice for a border post. Lake-going cargo ships coming from the east in Raetia transferred their goods to riverboats and paid duty at the toll station in Turicum for transportation down-river and points west.

The original baths at Thermengasse were built during this time, and show that even a small outpost benefited from the Roman social service of baths for the general public. As the rest of the Empire expanded and settled, Zurich grew as well. Renovations to the baths in the 2nd century AD and an addition in the 3rd century AD enlarged them to approximately three times their original size. Originally modest buildings with a cold pool (frigidarium), humid-hot room (caldarium) and a steam bath (lanconicum) similar to the Scandinavian saunas of today, the Roman “therms“ eventually developed into elaborate pleasure palaces. Paint and mosaic fragments found during the excavation of the newer construction suggest a change towards the ornate. This is consistent with the progression of the baths’ function throughout the rest of the Empire. It is not known, however, whether the baths of Turicum themselves ever reached the brothel stage in their evolution as they did elsewhere.

In the 4th century AD, as the Roman Empire became increasingly threatened from inside and out, a citadel was built on Lindenhof hill as a defensive measure, and the Roman population of Turicum began to decrease as military and administrative functionaries were called back to Rome. The baths fell into disuse until the 15th century, when they were renovated and comprised at least three public bath halls and a steam room.

Prudish attitudes during the Reformation soon put an end to the lascivious practice of bathing in front of one’s neighbours with its perceived potential for debauchery, and the chore of keeping oneself clean was banished to nightly visits to nearby outdoor fountains or indoors to bedrooms stocked with a pitcher and bowl for quick “cat-baths” – those with room and means enough for a tub painstakingly filled it for a good scrubbing every two weeks, or, more likely, just once a month. Zurich’s remaining open-minded citizens took their bathing custom to nearby Baden, which had its own hot springs, a more relaxed attitude towards social bathing and a well-stocked pool, as it were, of prostitutes.

As Zurich grew exponentially with industrialisation in the early 19th century, so did water consumption, and water quality in the city’s network of pipes soon became an enormous problem. With hygiene more important than religious Puritanism, ten bathing areas were built along the river and the lakeshore, with men’s and women’s sections safely segregated. Most of these are still in use today as the city’s “badis”: the Badi Utoquai, Frauenbadi, Männerbadi Schanzengraben and the Unteren Letten Badi, although most have now gone co-ed – with some including charming elements of the original architecture, although the 1890’s construction of the original Utoquai, with its wonderfully over-the-top turrets, was modernised in the 1930’s. (See image above).

These days, while Zurich’s badis no longer have a hygienic function, they certainly still have a social one. They have developed into multi-use venues for relaxing in the sun and swimming, also hosting saunas (Badi Enge), bars (Barfussbar at the Frauenbadi; Bar Rimini at the Männerbadi), flea markets and other events year-round.

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