Zurich and Geneva

Departure
So, on Friday afternoon, I went straight from the office to Heathrow, on my way to four days in Switzerland. As much as BA has been hyping Terminal 5, I have no particular desire to fly through there again after this. The train stopped about a mile outside of the airport and the conductor said it was due to an evacuation at Terminal 5. We waited for 15 minutes or so, and then continued on without hearing any further announcements. When the train eventually got to T5, the public transit transfer area was deserted. Apparently an alarm of some type had gone off, so they were keeping everyone outside of it. Police escorted us up the escalators and outside into a huge crowd, without telling us anything about what was going on.

Eventually, I noticed people inside the main terminal building, fought my way through the crowd, and walked through a wide-open set of doors into the terminal. Now, I was on ground level, which is two stories (four escalator rides) below departures. The elevators were not working due to the evacuation, so I found a set of escalators and took them up to departures. Security was uneventful, except for the government statistician attacking me as I tried to put on shoes. However, the terminal itself was virtually empty, and my flight left from a gate at the absolute end of the terminal. The nearest food was six gates away, and it was closed. I ended up finding a takeaway sushi place another 10 gates further back toward civilization, and was able to eat dinner with chopsticks as I walked onto the plane.

Granted, after that, the flight was uneventful and the service was great. No lost baggage, food and alcohol included, just a bit of a hassle getting to the plane itself.

Friday Night
I got to Zurich just after 10, and met Chris at his place. He started a rotation to his company's office there just a few days prior, and is in corporate housing until he gets the keys to his actual apartment. After dropping my luggage there, we explored the city a bit, found a bar, and split a bottle of a decent French wine. It was great to catch up and to hear the stories of someone else who's doing a similar international rotation, but with a completely different company. Granted, I give him massive credit for doing it in a country where he doesn't yet speak the primary language.

Saturday
We found a decent place for brunch. Wow, brunch! We had issues with interpreting everything on the menu, but both settled on a Swiss breakfast plate. It had a few types of bread, fruits, jams, eggs, and more... it was phenomenal!

We meandered through the city for most of the afternoon and took a number of the photos posted here. Originally, we'd considered going swimming in part of the river through town, which is apparently great when the weather cooperates. Unfortunately, though, it was 20 degrees and off-and-on raining, which made that a bit tough.

We found a great little Italian restaurant around the corner from his place for dinner, ventured through the city at night, and crashed much earlier than the previous day.

Sunday
We went to a design museum for a bit, before I hopped a train to Geneva.

...or so I thought.

I was supposed to get off the train at Bern and transfer to a train on the opposite track to continue my journey to Geneva. Now, the train that I was on left Zurich 10 minutes late or so, and it was only a 6-minute connection in Bern. I should have thought of this, but it apparently didn't register. So, I walked across the track, asked someone "Genève?" heard something resembling yes, and got on the train. I buried myself in my book again, until the conductor came by, looked at my ticket, and told me I was not headed southwest to Geneva, but rather southeast. He told me to get off at Thun, the next stop, transfer back to Bern, and then on to Geneva. I did, and got to see some amazing countryside in the process, but it did put me into Geneva a bit later than initially expected.

Geneva
Sunday night was a quick walk through town. Monday morning, I got up and did my first run in five days. As the sun was rising, I went north along Lake Geneva. It was a crystal clear blue sky, clean air, light breeze... it felt perfect! After the meetings for which I was actually in town, I ventured out to a coffeeshop on the lakefront to write up my notes, go through email, and organize myself. I'd originally expected to have dinner with someone from my client, who was supposed to be coming in from London that night. However, he said he was on a later flight than expected, so I ended up getting dinner on my own at Restaurant Le Lacustre‎, overlooking the lake.

Today was a much quicker day -- I had a meeting that ended at 10:30, spent a half hour writing notes afterward, and then was back in London in time for a 4pm meeting. Now, off to a spinning class!