Our Neighborhood: Enge

We don't have any trips planned for the next few weeks, so I have to find something else to post about.  Darren will be traveling to Moscow next week for a few days, but I am not going with him.  However, there are plenty of interesting things going on in Zürich to write about and also things that I want to remember.  So today, I will be showing you some highlights of our neighborhood.

We live in the Enge district of Zürich.  Enge lies on the northwestern shore of Lake Zürich.  It is a mix of  large business buildings, a shopping mall, and residential streets.  In the center of this district is a large train station (remember, Bahnhof means train station) where large commuter trains (like the kind we took to Geneva) and above-ground city trams stop.  We live just up the street from this train station.  We are lucky to live so close to a major train station like this because we can get to a lot of places from here, including the airport, without having to transfer trains.

The main train station in our neighborhood

This is the street we live on, which is just north of the train station.  There are lots of pretty houses along this street, though they are renovating one of the houses, so that's why there is a crane in the picture.

The street we live on, several houses down from our apartment building

This morning, I walked to the part of our neighborhood that is southwest of the train station, which has lots of great scenery.  There is a large hill there where this fantastic church is.  I love looking at it every day and I love listening to its bells ring.  The sign says it is a reformed Protestant church.

A large Protestant church in our neighborhood

Across the street from the church is this vineyard and lone house on the top of the hill.  This area is going to be so beautiful in a couple of weeks when everything blooms.  I will definitely be back.

Vineyard

Just south of the church and vineyard is the Enge Community Center, located on this picturesque corner. You can see a fountain right on the corner there.  This is fresh water you can drink.  They have these fountains all over Switzerland with cool water that is safe to drink.  I tried it this morning and the water was great.  This community center has a great park for kids to play and a little cafe inside.  This was where I helped out with a birthday party last week for my friend's 7-year-old son.  My friend needed an extra hand to control the ten rowdy boys.

Enge Community Center

These blue signs are all over Zürich and explain some history about the particular building it is attached to.  If only I could read them.  This one was next to the community center and I looked up some words when I got home.  I think it says this house was where Richard Wagner wrote his opera Tristan and Isolde in 1857.  I didn't know Wagner even spent time in Zürich, but apparently he lived here for about a dozen years.

I walked down the hill towards the east and ran into this old building.  

I headed back home and passed the main entrance to the church, which has a large staircase that leads up to the grounds.  I just happened to stop right at noon when the bells were ringing.  You can click on the video and hear the bells if you would like.

Looking west

Those are just some highlights from our neighborhood.  I really love Enge and I'm glad we found a place here.  More posts of Zürich to come.

The International Motor Show in Geneva

Last Saturday, Darren and I took the train down to Geneva, Switzerland to see the International Motor Show.  We had read about this world-renowned auto show when we were reading guidebooks about Switzerland some time ago.  Darren really likes cars, and I'm always up for an outing, so we decided we were going to attend.  We originally had planned to make a weekend trip out of it, but since Darren is teaching a class at church every Sunday for a while, we decided to try and fit everything into a day trip.  

We had an interesting start to the day when we got up at 6am, before the sun was up, and right when Darren turned on the light, the power went out.  Luckily, we had received some flashlights for Christmas from my family, so we just used those for some light.  So family, you now know that we did put your presents to good use!  The power came back on as we were leaving, so we didn't worry much about it.  We jumped on the 7:30 am train and were able to find an area without many people.  We had some stops in between Zürich and Geneva (Genf in German), so the train did fill up eventually.

A lovely Swiss train car

The 3-hour train ride to Geneva goes through some pretty countryside and at one point, runs beside the beautiful Lake Geneva.  I had been really excited for the view during the train ride, however, since it was still pretty early in the morning, there was some thick fog, so the picture below shows all I could see of Lake Geneva.  Oh well, can't ever control the weather as much as I would like.

The foggy view of Lake Geneva from the train, seems like it could be really pretty

We finally arrived at the auto show to see that not only was it gigantic, but it was already very crowded! The show had all the major brands that are sold in Europe, including the very high-end ones.

A view of how large and how crowded the car show was

We spent the next several hours visiting all of our favorite car manufacturers.  There were definitely some brands that I had never heard of that are not sold in the US, but that Darren was a little more familiar with.  We looked at a lot of cars, but I'll just show you some highlights of our favorite cars.  I can't give many details on the cars because I am not a car enthusiast.  Darren really should be writing this part of the post, but he has been working 11-hour days since we got back from Spain, so he doesn't have much time for the blogging.

The Chevy Volt!  We both like this one.

This is a Lotus, a blue one...?

This is a cool racing Porsche... a gray and orange one...?

The car below is a Porsche Panamera.  The base model is $86,000 in the US but, converting from Swiss Francs, $127,000 if you buy it in Switzerland.  Cars are very expensive in Europe and even more expensive in Switzerland.  Even if the car is made in Europe (like a BMW), they are still cheaper to buy in the US, even though they have been imported.  Weird, huh?  Just be glad we are on the winning side of that equation.  Anyway, I saw this Panamera just driving by our neighborhood the other day (oh the ridiculously rich Swiss), and I decided that I love it.  When we win the lottery, I'm buying this car.

My new favorite car, thanks to the Swiss, the Porsche Panamera

A Bugatti Veyron?

Darren in front of the Bugatti

A Lamborghini

The other half of the convention center!  So huge!

Now back to some more realistic cars to buy.  Below is my FAVORITE car.  Yes, I'm being serious, I love the Ford Fiesta.  I think it is super cute.  I am in love with hatchbacks and not just because I live in Europe now.  The Fiesta is really cheap and gets fantastic gas mileage.  Those are the only things that matter to me: cuteness, price, and gas mileage.  We got inside this sporty version of the Ford Fiesta at the show to see the interior.  Unfortunately, Darren does not like the interior.  I agree that the gauges and buttons look pretty lame, but I am willing to live with it just so I can have a cute hatchback.

My Ford Fiesta

Testing out a smart car, they are tiny!

Some Maseratis 

The last high-end brand we saw was Ferrari.  This isn't the best picture of the cars, but I wanted to highlight something else in this picture.  You can see in the earlier pictures that with the regular brands, you can get in the cars and play around with them, but all of the high-end brands would not let you in to touch the cars.  There were, however, some people who were let in to test out the cars.  We figured that these people either knew someone, were famous, or were very rich and were actually looking to buy one of the cars.  So the people in the picture below are those rich people who were looking to buy a Ferrari.  I have decided that the richer you are, the pointier your shoes have to be.

Ferraris and rich people

We took about four hours to get through the whole show.  We thought it had a nice variety of cars, but they could have used more signs in English.  Mostly everything was written in German or French, even though a lot of people visiting might not know either of those languages.  Since we had a few more hours of daylight left after we were finished with the auto show, we went over to downtown Geneva to see what it was like.  I don't have much background on these sites, so just enjoy the captions and pictures.

A Mausoleum

The Jet d'Eau, Europe's tallest fountain and Geneva's emblem

The historic part of Geneva

Part of the Protestant St. Pierre Cathedral

The inside of the St. Pierre Cathedral, where John Calvin preached

The Alabama Room at the Hotel de Ville, where the Geneva Convention was signed

Four leaders of the Reformation, though strangely lacking Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli

After our whirlwind tour of Geneva, we got a quick dinner and took the train back home.  Darren thought Geneva was just okay, but I thought it was nice, though I do prefer the German part of Switzerland.  We weren't able to see the Red Cross Museum or the UN Center because they are not in the downtown area.  It was a long day, but it is always nice not to have to pack to stay overnight and to be able to come home to your own bed.

Madrid

Friday afternoon, we left Barcelona to go to Madrid for the weekend.  We were only there for a short time and most of the things we saw were in museums where you could not take pictures, so that means our whole Madrid experience fits into one post.  After we got off the plane in Madrid, we grabbed a quick lunch, took the subway to our hotel, checked in, and immediately went out to see the city while there was a bit of sun.

Our hotel was near Plaza Mayor, one of the main tourist areas in Madrid, so we stopped by there first.  All the restaurants on the square have tables outside for their customers to watch all the spectacles going on in the square.  There were plenty of locals trying to make a buck or two by playing various instruments or even dressing up as famous cartoon characters like Sponge Bob and Mickey Mouse.  It was something we saw often in the tourist areas in Madrid and it was kind of strange.

Plaza Mayor, all pictures in Madrid by Darren

A statue of Philip III, one of the kings of the Spanish Empire

We then walked over to the Parque del Retiro, which is a massive park that was built for the exclusive use of the Spanish monarchs.  It must be nice to have a 350-acre playground just for you.  Even though there is still a Spanish monarchy, it's now a lovely public space.

A view of downtown Madrid as we were on our way to the park

Parque del Retiro with some abstract art displays

A modern art piece inside a gazebo, seriously, plastic things stacked together is art?

Just outside of the royal park was an avenue with lots of small, outdoor book shops.  We both really loved this.

Outdoor book shops

After the park, we stopped at Starbucks to get a little snack and use the internet to read reviews online about restaurants in the area.  Before dinner though, we went to the Prado.  The museum is actually free from 6 to 8 pm on certain nights, so we went during the free hours on Friday and Saturday night.  I think it was a good idea because the Prado is so large that you could spend several hours there, and instead of getting museum fatigue (I have an art viewing limit of about 2 to 3 hours), we were able to split up the visit.  

We thought we were being so clever to go during the free hours, but apparently we weren't the only clever ones.  We arrived at the museum about five minutes early and there was already a line to get in.  So we got in line and weren't really sure what to expect.  However, the museum was well-prepared for all of these visitors and right at 6 pm, they started letting people in.  They had everyone enter through different entrances so not everyone was starting in the same place in the museum.  Therefore, even though there was a line, we easily got in within ten minutes and didn't have any trouble. This did mean that the museum was a bit crowded (and therefore a bit loud), so it's a trade-off.

The line to get into the Prado during the free hours

After the museum closed, we got dinner, which ended up being okay and finally went back to our hotel room to get some sleep.  The next morning, as forecasted, it was cold and rainy the whole day.  We had planned for this by picking all inside activities for the day.  Our first stop was the Royal Palace.  We were glad we did that first thing in the morning because the line just got longer and longer as the day went on.  We took an audio tour of some of the rooms in the royal palace and saw the royal armory.  We could not take pictures inside, even though some Chinese tourists were blatantly doing so and not getting in trouble.  I thought the tour was excellent and I really enjoyed seeing the armory.  The best thing was that some of the rooms are still used today by the current monarchy.  I can't imagine what it would be like to attend an event inside a 300-year-old palace.

The royal palace, pictures were taken the next day when it wasn't raining

Darren at the gates of the royal palace, taken the next day

Another side of the royal palace

After the royal palace, we had some lunch, and then went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.  This museum's art collection originally came from the extremely wealthy Thyssen-Bornemisza family who had housed the collection in their large villa in Lugano, Switzerland.  The collection was amassed over 60 years and includes Western works of art from hundreds of famous painters from the 14th century to the 20th century.  The collection is estimated to be worth $1 and $3 billion!  This art was just in one family's home!  In the 1980s, according to Frommers, "for tax and insurance reasons" the family had to sell the collection and several buyers came forward from Princes Charles to the President of West Germany.  However, Spain was chosen, so the country purchased the collection and it was brought to Madrid.  It really is a fantastic collection with a lot of breadth that most museums do not have.  I think many people do not know about this museum when they visit Madrid, but I would highly recommend it.

After that museum, we took another break before going back to the Prado during the free hours.  This time, even though we arrived ten minutes early, the line was even longer.  But again, the museum handled it well and we got inside in no time.  We thought the Prado was good, but it was definitely more of a Spanish national museum, rather than a worldwide museum.  The majority of their collection was Spanish and Italian art during the periods in which all people painted were royalty and religious pictures.  Therefore, I felt like there was a lot of repetition.

The next morning, on Sunday, we only had a bit of time to explore before we had to leave for the airport.  We walked back over to the Royal Palace to get some better pictures and explored other parts of Madrid.

Ran into a store that was selling a product called Amanda

Saw an Egyptian temple that was donated by Egypt to Spain, so no, it wasn't stolen

Beautiful monument we passed by

After that, we headed back to the hotel and left for home.  We had some fun in Spain and we were glad we were able to go there.