Day 26 - 29 - Zurich
Josh in the Kunthouse
Josh and I stayed with my Swiss family for a few days in a small town outside of Zurich. It was so wonderful to see them and spend rare, precious time with them. On our first full day, Josh and I took the train to Zurich from their house. I was extremely excited to show my favorite city in the whole world to Josh. We spent the day walking around, exploring, seeing galleries, eating bratwurst and visiting museums. It was a relatively casual day. We visited the Kunthaus museum. It is supposedly the best art museum in all of Zurich. I have been before but most of the work had been changed out so I didn't recognize it until we reached the permanent galley. Their permanent gallery is filled with the most gorgeous art you can imagine. Monet, Picasso, Cezanne, Degas, Mondrian and many more artist fill the walls with beautiful pieces. The special exhibitions that were shown were very.... Interesting... Graphic would be a good word to describe them. Very sexual. A bit too much for my liking and as a photographer, seeing nude exhibitions are not uncommon..... so this is saying something. Overall the museum was fabulous though. For dinner, we went home and ate with everyone. Josh and I attempted to speak German without much success.
The instruments and their maker
Our second full day we decided to stay in the village of my family. It's a beautiful town with a few farms and lots of land. It seems like a little village from a storybook. It's so perfect and lovely. Josh and I went to see the animals that live in the town. There were cow, sheep, goats and alpaca for us to look at and pet. We also passed a "pick your own flowers" garden. This garden belonged to a family who just let you come in and pick them. This is the kind of small town I mean. We helped babysit Susi's godson/nephew, Leandro. I have met him once before when he was a baby. He is now 4. He knows zero English but Josh and I had a blast playing with him. We also had google translate up at all times to quickly translate words. He is such a happy, sweet child. When Fabienne (my cousin) got home from school, we took her to horse riding. Her lessons were at a small barn. We started talking to the man who lived there with his wife who taught the lessons. The man had a huge workshop that he was very proud of inside the home that he showed us. We thought it was really awesome. So he then told us he has a museum upstairs. We didn't think he meant much by it..... He asked if we wanted to see it and of course we said sure. It was amazing. He handmade wooden instruments. They were absolutely stunning. He made trumpets, French horns, traditional Swiss instruments, trombones, etc. Josh and Leandro both played them. The maker played each of them for us. You could see the joy in his eyes. We hadn't expected to find a little masterpiece in this barn but there we were standing in one. The rest of the day we spent at the lake in their town swimming with swans and ducks. The lake had the most gorgeous view of the mountains in the distance.
From the Helmhouse exhibit
Our third day, we went back to Zurich. We saw beautiful lookouts, hung out on the river, ate more bratwurst, saw more galleries and bought lots of chocolate. We went to the Helmhouse museum. It is a free admission museum. The work displayed was from about 15 artists from all over the world that had each been given an 18K grant. Some of the work was fascinating and some was really horrible. Most of them dealt with sound as the prominent sense. We left around 3:30pm to visit Yoko and Hans Peter from my the other side of my Swiss family. They are a lovely couple who I have stayed with before in Switzerland. We went to their home and spent a few hours with them enjoying the traditional Swiss meal, Raclette (cheese that you cook on a special burner along with some veggies). It is a very delicious and traditional meal that is served on special occasions. After wonderful time with them, we went back home. For dinner, the family we were staying with had also prepared Raclette for us on our last night! Hahaha so much cheese! They didn't know we had had it earlier in the day. Good thing we like the meal! Dinner was wonderful.
In the morning we woke up around 4:30am and left at 6am for the train to London. We took the train from their home to Zurich, then to Paris and then to London. After traveling all day, we were happy to make it to London. We checked into our airbnb and started exploring. London is super cool.
All the best,
Lilly
Sculpture by Giacometti, one of my favorite artists. Also, yes my legs are sunburned into socks.
The barn that also housed the amazing handmade instruments
Notice the beautiful wooden one
Leandro playing the Saxophone
Chocolate in Zurich
From our visit with Yoko and Hans-Peter (Raclette one)
My family we stayed with for the week (Raclette two)
View of Zurich