If you have Snapchat and you follow the cities they feature, you will know that they recently featured Zurich. I went to Zurich with my sister the day after Christmas, in 2013. It was nice seeing the city again (I even recognized a few places!). However, I remember Zurich from my trip completely differently.
Zurich was astonishing. Maybe it felt so magical and exciting because the trip was not planned. Zurich was just a transit on our way to Dubai. You see, we were not supposed to leave the airport. The plan was to stay at the airport hotel for the 12 hour transit. But that’s obviously not what we did.
We were heading to the terminal from where we were meant to catch our flight to Dubai. On our way, we saw the sign that said “Arrival” with an arrow to the right. My sister and I looked at each other, did our little telepathic nod and headed right. The problem was that my sister only had one page left on her passport (I still had three -phew!) and we needed that one page for the residence visa in Dubai. We just wanted to ask about the stamps on the passport and if they could somehow squeeze them into the other pages on my sister’s passport.
I still remember the guy who greeted us with what sounded like “Good Morning” in Swiss. He was super sweet and upon hearing about our little dilemma, told us that he would manage. What now?
“Jaba?” my sister asked me if we should go to the city.
“Acha cholo jai!” I replied, agreeing to go.
And that was that! We headed right out, caught a train and went to the city.
Even though we were there for only a couple of hours, I remember it vividly. I remember being drenched in cold December rain at 5 am in a deserted city. I remember watching the sun rise from the city silhouette from over a bridge where lovers locked locks with their names and promising notes. I remember a street adorned with fairy light from one corner to the end. I remember walking around town – frantically in search for some coffee – and finally finding a perfect cafe where we dried off, had a cuppa and some macarons.
Unfortunately I did not have a camera on me, and what a shame too, for Zurich was truly picturesque. We did the best we could and used our phones – here’s some snippets from the trip:
Fun fact: Zurich has the most fountains of any city in the world with approximately 1200 drinking water fountains.
If someone was to ask me about my most spontaneous adventure in life, it definitely would be this trip. Explaining to the parents why we had those stamps on our passports is a completely different story :p
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