The day started early – 6am (which with my UK clock is really 5am). No-one had seen fit to replace the MacDonalds next door with a scenic Swiss Mountain View overnight, so I took solace in breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
No full English here. This is strictly your continental breakfast with croissants, yogurts, fruit salad, fresh fruit and so forth.
After a nice, albeit surprisingly healthy, breakfast we went to reception for the cab ride to the office.
The taxi was a silver S320 Mercedes with electrically adjustable rear seats and enough legroom to practise sprinting starts if you were of the athletic persuasion. I’m not, so I settled back into the lovely leather seats and enjoyed the journey.
I enjoy the sights of foreign countries. Somehow the greenery always looks different from the UK, and the architecture is interesting. Materials and shapes are often different to the usual UK bricks and there are some really wacky designs.
There’s a building at the airport that I noticed where the windows are in a pattern which gives the impression that one office has a window at floor level and the next at ceiling level which I’ll try and grab a photo of on the way back.
Morning training was interesting, culminating in lunch – again irritatingly healthy. Surprisingly, the morning coffee break included Walkers of Aberlour shortbread!
After a full day of work the taxi back was a cool black Chrysler 300C. The weather had brightened up considerably which meant we could actually see some of the beautiful countryside between the office and hotel.
Upon arrival at the hotel it seemed apparent that MacDonalds was still there next to the hotel, and my room is still next to the Drive Thru window. Not near enough to order from bed though. And there’s an Ikea just the other side of the road. So much for authentic Switzerland.
The company took us out for a meal in the evening to an authentic Swiss Beer Kellar in downtown Zurich. They had more different kinds of sausage on one menu than I’ve ever seen before, so I went for option 222 which was a selection accompanied with their traditional Potato Salad.
The Potato Salad was very different to UK style – a much heavier flavour and seemingly containing horseradish or similar. The sausages were great, apart from the last one which was laced with some serious Paprika! A small glass of house red sorted that out though.
Zurich town centre was very picturesque, with more of the Switzerland visuals that I was expecting.
The main shops were incredibly expensive. Mark and I were looking for gifts for our better halves but we’re not buying there! One store had a blouse and matching jacket for CHF13,450 (approx. GBP6,500/USD13,000)! Ouch!
The picture above is of Mandy, Carole, Keith, Tamara and Mark walking up a street just off one of the main roads.
Once we’d finished the meal, watched the end of the Manchester United match (some of our team are very sad people…) and had a couple of drinks we watched the trams go past while waiting for our 300C Taxi to take us back to the hotel.
Incidentally, the cars in Switzerland are cool. There are plenty of Alfas, many with lowered suspension, and lots of modified cars. Having taken a brief walk near the hotel (principally to see if there was anything nearby that wasn’t MacDonalds, Ikea or BP) and I came across a Ford dealer that specialised in imported USA vehicles. See below:
There was also a car lot with the most bizarre selection of vehicles that I think I’ve ever seen:
Yes, the fourth car there (the silver one) is a new-shape S-Class Mercedes, and yes, the front two are a Suzuki Swift (very rusty) and an Opel Vectra estate. The one in between the Vectra and S-Class is a late 1970s Porsche 924 in a fetching shade of brown. As you can see from the cars on the right this is the selection that they’ve chosen to display on the main road!
So that’s day two. Two more to go…