The Swiss countryside

Cities are humanity.  They are where we grab great dinners, check out storied art, meet other "cool" people, and stroll around while connecting dots and curiously peering in windows.  When "we" travel, especially in Europe, it seems the city is the institution that we visit.  Sure, the countryside races by on rolling train rides between Europe's great centers, but it is the city that grabs the traveler.  Paris, Barcelona, London, Prague - the city is the reward and destination, the places we write home about.  But to know the whole story of any country, one must read passed the opening chapter.  One must travel beyond the city walls.

The edge of the city does not announce itself, and through years of travel, I have grown appreciative of the subtleties of reaching open space, which is both dramatic in relativism and quiet in introduction.  After days of bathing in humanity and the shuffle of urban life, I find myself looking longingly at maps for quaint places that I have never heard of, picturing peace, simplicity, and adventure.  Rivers look curious, lakes have a sort of splendid solidarity, and national parks invite the traveler with a promise of wild edges and marooned corners of ecological decadence too wild to birth civilization.

The ten oldest bars and restaurants in the world

I once drank at a pub in Ireland where Vikings had commiserated after invading the Green Isle.  It was older than you or I, our great grandparents, or even the Magna Carta.  It was from the dark ages for sure, and where once Vikings swilled brews, today, tourists eat fish and chips while locals complain about Eurozone politics.  If you look closely enough and kind of squint at the Brazen Head, you can just barely picture middle ages Dublin.  You can almost smell the smoke.  If those walls could talk, they would tell the tale of mankind's ascent into a sophisticated society, for better and worse.  I wondered while I sat at the bar scribbling into my little notebook, how many other really old places are out there?

It is rare for a restaurant or bar to last a very long time - where a long time is determined with a measuring stick notched in decades.  The public houses, inns, and restaurants on this list evade conventional measurement, lasting centuries atop centuries.  These are places where arguments took place about the events we only read about in history class.  The oldest companies in the world are Japanese, but every spot on this list is European.  The Germanic people, it seems, are especially adept at building things that last a very long time. They dominate this list.

Zurich: the world's most expensive city?

It was 2:00pm at Delta HQ when my phone rang.  It was Kristin. "We have to make the 4:30 to Zurich, Bermuda is completely booked up for tomorrow."  It was Memorial Day weekend, and we needed to use the extra day off as extravagantly as possible.  I asked no questions.  Within minutes, I scrambled to close up my work.  I cleaned out my teapot, saved my excel files, and raced home to pick up Kristin.  Within two hours, we were boarding a flight for Zurich.  Working for an airline has its benefits, the contours of which I am just beginning to explore.

Zurich is the top city on the Economist cost of living index, but we found it easy to stay there on the cheap.  We booked our 4 star hotel through Priceline "pick a price" for about $140 after tax, we dined on Bratwursts and pretzel rolls (a personal favorite), and used Zurich's superb train and subway system to get around when foot travel was not in option.  

I did not find it prohibitively expensive at all. In fact, I was not nearly as fatigued from sticker shock as I have been in the past in places like Singapore, London, or the Kathmandu International Airport - where I once bought a Kit Kat bar for something like $5.

Anyways, here are some pictures from our spectacular trip to Zurich: