A very wet Zurich

Thurs 31 August

Woke to mist and rain. Unterägeri is a small town of about 8,500 in the canton of Zug on the shore of the Ägerisee.

We had a cruisey start: breakfast at 9 a.m. - we walked to Gilbert and Sabine's (Elodie had already walked to school at 8 a.m.).

We took bus then train with Gilbert into Zurich. Very wet today and predicted it will be so for the remainder of our stay. Gilbert is very disappointed about the weather but we are not bothered; we are not here to be tourists. We are here to catch up. Gilbert lived with us as an exchange student in 1990.

We exchanged my old Swiss money from many years ago for new/current money at one of the banks (UBS) with Gilbert's help.

A coffee before a visit to the Swiss National Museum - the Landesmuseum; then a city walking tour for 2 hours.

The museum is in a splendid French Renaissance building and has excellent collections including some marvellous interactive displays.

The walking tour was quite extensive and ended at the Grossmünster Romanesque-style Protestant church overlooking the Limmat River which flows through Zurich. According to legend, the Grossmünster was founded by Charlemagne, whose horse fell to its knees over the tombs of Felix and Regula, Zürich's patron saints. Huldrych Zwingli initiated the Swiss-German Reformation in Switzerland from his pastoral office at this church, starting in 1520. It has a large cycle of extraordinary stain glass windows by the great German artist Sigmar Polke (1941–2010), known as “the Alchemist” for his love of working with and combining unconventional materials.

It was a good plan for such a wet day, even if we got pretty wet feet. But the umbrellas kept us pretty dry.

Of interest historically is that during WWI, Lenin and his wife spent a year in exile in Zurich. A commemorative plaque on the house serves as a reminder. He finished his work "Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism" in Zurich. Whether Lenin visited the Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of Dadaism, is still unknown but has fuelled speculation as to whether Lenin was a secret Dadaist. When the Russian Revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, Lenin left his exile in Switzerland and returned to his homeland.

Not the best photo - the boys on the bus back home:

On our return to Unterägeri, we had showers, refreshed for an hour then walked up to have another wonderful dinner with Gilbert, Sabine and Elodie. Elodie greeted us at the door looking resplendent in her gymnastics outfit. Here she is with Milo.

We had a joke tonight that I refer to the boys as MF1 and MF2 in the blog, but that 'MF' could be misconstrued as Mein Fuehrer!!