Tag: Switzerland

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Thank You

As a traveler I think the most important phrase is “Thank you.” That was what I learned to say before each country we traveled to. Even if you can't speak the local language and talk in English or gestures, it is nice to be able to thank someone in their native language. Second most important for me is “I'm sorry” or “excuse me”. That is very useful when on crowded buses or trains and you have to push by someone to get off. Third is probably “where is the bathroom?” or simply “toilet?” which gets the message across.

Anyway, here is how to say “Thank you”, in every country we visited, at least how it sounded to me. Please don't get too offended if I mangled your native language, I was trying 🙂 :

Taiwan (mandarin), China: Shi-shi

Korea: Gamsameeda

Egypt (Arabic): Shockram

Zurich – Switzerland, Vienna – Austria (German): Danke

Geneva – Switzerland (French), France: Merci

Spain: Gracias

Italy, Vatican City: Gratzie

Hungary: Kusonome

Czech Republic: Dekuji

Poland: Dziekuji (very similar to Czech)

Norway: Takk (pronounced like talk)

Denmark: Tack (like tact)

Iceland: this is the one I didn't learn. Supposedly it is similar to Danish (tack) but they add several syllables to differentiate from Denmark. Just saying “tack” is frowned upon, so I went with “Thank you” which everyone understood.

Canada, U.S.A.: Thanks.

 

-David

 

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Geneva

One of the great things about Switzerland is the cities are small. Geneva has a population of only about 200,000, which means you can walk around and see a lot of the city on foot. This is basically impossible for the massive metropolises we've been visiting so far (Cairo, Seoul, Beijing, Taipei).

Some people will be glad to hear that one of my missions today was to get some Swiss chocolates to send back to Veeva. If you don't get any blame Abhay. 🙂

Local chocolatier
Small farmers market downtown
Famous watch brands all over downtown
Jet d'Eau, if you zoom in you can see people walking underneath it
Little boy taking a family photo
I went a little closer, but you get drenched in a hurry if there is a gust of wind. It shoots 132 gallons of water per second.
Kids in a park

As the sun goes lower it makes a rainbow in the Jet d'Eau.

Hard to see but there is a rainbow in the background

We didn't go to the UN office, it doesn't seem all that interesting to be honest. Actually a place I was interested in which is nearby is CERN. They do high energy physics experiments with the Large Hadron Collider there that might destroy the world. Just kidding, but if you are worried you can check the status here. It is also a birthplace of the World Wide Web (link to first page on the web). Unfortunately they are not currently offering tours to individuals, although they used to. Oh well.

-David

 

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Zurich to Geneva

At around 11am we left our place in Thalwil and caught the train back to Zurich main station. There we activated our Eurail pass. We should have activated it when we arrived the first day because I think it counts for local trains, so we could have saved a few francs on the train from Thalwil. We couldn't activate it in Thalwil because it is an automated station, there is no ticket agent. The agent has to stamp the pass to activate it.

We have 10 day global passes, which covers most of Europe. The way it works is we pick 10 days in a two month period and we get unlimited travel on those days. You have to write the days you use it on the ticket (in ink) and the places you travel. For some trains you need to reserve a seat, which costs extra and isn't covered by the pass, but for Zurich to Geneva we could just jump on the train. We just missed the 12:32pm train, so we stored our luggage in a locker and walked back to Hiltl for another veggie buffet lunch. Yanmei wants to open a restaurant like this in the US now.

We leisurely came back and got on the 2:32pm train. The ride was very pleasant. There were stops at Bern, Fribourg, and Lausanne along the way. If we'd planned better we could have got on an earlier train and then got off and looked around in each of those towns, and then got on the next hourly train. Something to keep in mind when we plan our future train rides.

The countryside was the idyllic Swiss countryside you read about. Green fields and rolling hills spotted with small towns, with a backdrop of the Alps.

-David