Eine Stadtfürhung durch Zürich

Don't worry, that's almost all of the German I'll be using in this post.

Today I joined a bunch of exchange students on a walking tour of the city through Free Walking Tours Zurich, which I'm going to go ahead and promote here with highest regard because they don't charge a cent and they're really good. As you'll see, we got to explore most of Zurich's old town, and it was fast-paced enough that it wasn't boring, but not so fast that we got lost in all the historical details. SO if you're ever in Zurich, "Free Walking Tours Zurich" is the way to go!

I also learned some Swiss German:

Hello - Gruezi!
Thank you - Merci
Excuse me - Scusi
Most common quantity of beer (I think? It's like 3dl or something) - Stange

That's all I remember. I'm sure there were more phrases, but I can't think of them now, so I'll have to get back to y'all on that...

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for... Pictures from the tour!

This is the largest clock face in Europe - it's
8 meters in diameter!

I don't remember which street this is, but isn't
it just so European?!

The view from Lindenhof(platz?) - one of the highest places
in the city. Those huge grey/green buildings in the back are
the universities - on the left is ETH and on the right is UZH.

Me, in front of the city, with the alps in the background WUT

One of 2,000+ fountains in the city, each of
which is open to the public as drinking water!
(You can see a boy filling his water bottle at this one)
At the top is an armored woman, as a tribute to
all the city's women who dressed up in armor
to scare away an invading army (in the 1400s?)

The house where Lenin once lived! We had to fight off a pile
of Russian tourists to be able to stand in front and take pictures...

"Here lived Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, from
February 21, 1916 to April 2, 1917"

This is the building of a major guild (Zunft), and on it are the three
main flags - Zürich's on the right, Switzerland's in the middle,
and the flag of the Züricher Guilds on the left.

Plaque on the side of the Voltaire Cabaret bar where Dadaism
was (according to the Swiss!) first founded.

This is the most controversial statue in the entire city - it depicts
some ancient mayor who was brutally murdered, but was built
in the 20th century, so it's considered far too modern for him.
Apparently every year the Swiss newspapers call for it to be
taken down.

More Alps!

So, as you can see, a very productive tour. I also learned about the two churches from my last post - the one with the clock tower and green roof is called the Frauenmünster (women's monastery, loosely translated), and was created by a king in 853AD for his daughter, back when the city was just a forest and a few houses. More and more women came, and as a whole they held complete power over the city, making its decisions and helping it to grow into a real city. In the 13th century they handed over the power to the Guilds, and now the site of the old monastery is a church with gorgeous stained glass windows (no pictures allowed inside the church, or I'd have a million to show!) that has been rebuilt many times because of fires and floods. We got to go inside for a few minutes to look at the stained glass, and there was an organ playing a really familiar-sounding piece, which I couldn't quite name. It was surprisingly pretty, though! Ask anyone who went on the Austausch with me in 2010 and you'll know that I tend to despise organ music in general, but this piece sounded really joyful, and the acoustics were great - not too echo-y, but still able to maintain the chime-like quality of the top notes. Anyways, I think I'll have to revise my position on organ music, because this was actually beautiful.

The other church, with the two towers, is called the Großmünster (large monastery, loosely translated) and was commissioned by Charlemagne when - as the story goes - he was riding through and his horse stopped at that spot and refused to go any further. He got off the horse and asked some locals if there was any significance to the spot, to which they replied that there was an old story about two people who had been executed on the other side of the river, but after they had been beheaded their bodies stood up and walked across the river to this particular spot, where they fell down and died. Charlemagne instantly concluded that they must be saints, and built a church there.

We got to go inside that church too (again, no pictures) and the stained glass there was even more interesting - some of the windows were filled not with glass, but with pieces of geodes (or whatever those glassy colored rocks are called) all held together by clear glass. It's both really pretty and really unique, but the longer you stare the less they start to look like rocks, and the more each circle starts to look like an amoeba or some sort of bacteria...and then it just gets weird.

Oh! I forgot to mention that yesterday I took a different bridge than usual across the river, and found all these different locks around the side of it. I really want to hear the history behind it, because there are locks on almost all the bridges I've seen so far, but never quite this many:

A lot of them have hearts or initials on them, but some of them seem more solemn than that, and as I stopped to take pictures I started to wonder what the story was behind each of them. What makes a person (or people) decide that this is the right lock, and that it needs to be forever locked to this particular spot? I guess the more pressing question, though, was Where can I find a totally unique lock so I can add my own to this bridge?