Ein Wochenende in Zürich (A Weekend in Zurich)

I had two reasons for visiting Zurich. First, I had only spent one day looking around Basel during my last trip to Switzerland (on account of the other day being spent at BaselWorld), so I felt like visiting another city to see what the country had to offer, even if only on an abbreviated visit. Ideally, I'll visit Switzerland again next year to hike in the Alps, but I haven't planned that far ahead and there are no guarantees I can put such a trip together given all of my other travel priorities. Second, I had already visited four of Europe's five microstates (Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino and Andorra), so I owed it to Liechtenstein to pay them a visit, and Zurich was the easiest major city from which to access the country. On account of football scheduling, I spent my first day in Liechtenstein.

Vaduz

It turns out that Vaduz gets a moderate level of tourist traffic in October, although the majority of visitors travel to Liechtenstein using a chartered tour bus. I found that it was easy enough, and much cheaper, to travel from Zurich to Vaduz by train and public bus. Basically, you take a train from Zurich to Sargans, a small Swiss town on the border with Liechtenstein, and then take a public transit bus from Sargans to Vaduz. The train ride had some decent views of the Alps, but I'm assuming it isn't as scenic as the Glacier Express or the Bernina Express.

The advantage to this travel approach is that the public bus route loops through other Liechtenstein towns in between Sargans and Vaduz, including a small town called Balzers. This town is built around Gutenberg Castle, which is probably Liechtenstein's most famous landmark outside of Vaduz, and the bus route circled around the entire castle, giving riders a decent view of the structure from every angle.

Gutenberg Castle in Balzers, Liechtenstein. I doubted that there was public access to the castle interior, so I stayed on the bus as it looped through Balzers. I could not verify the name of the church on the right, but I think it's just Katholisch Pfarramt.

Vaduz is a very small city and most of the sites to visit are located on a pedestrian-only street which was hosting a small outdoor market on the day that I visited. I got the sense that the city caters heavily to tourists, not to the same extent as Andorra or San Marino, but still enough to give that particular street a very touristy vibe. The city also had a good view of the Alps in every direction, although there were no notable mountains in the area.

The Liechtenstein Center provides tourist information and sells various souvenirs, but you can also pay three Swiss francs to get your passport stamped. With this, I now have passport stamps from four of the European microstates (the fifth, Vatican City, does not issue a stamp).

The interior of St. Florin's Cathedral. A lot of tourists took photos of the exterior, but there was no signage at the door and no traffic entering/leaving the building, so very few tourists attempted to even enter the cathedral.

The Liechtensteinisches Landesmuseum (National Museum) contains various artifacts and displays on the history of Liechtenstein. Pictured are traditional women's dresses.

My ticket to the Landesmuseum also gave me access to the National Treasury, which included some royal artifacts (a crown, a few medals and some ceremonial swords), a large collection of jeweled eggs (I suspect someone in the royal family was an avid collector), and two separate trophies presented by NASA to Liechtenstein containing fragments of the moon. Unfortunately, the Treasury did not allow photography, although it was too dark to take good photos anyway.

The Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein is small, but contains a variety of art from different styles. The museum even has two works by Pablo Picasso, including the painting pictured above: Woman in an Armchair.



After the three museums, I took the short but very steep walk up to Vaduz Castle. The castle is the official residence of the Prince of Lichtenstein, so there is no public access, but I figured I'd take a closer look anyway. I consider reaching the castle to be a sightseer's badge of honour like the third tower in San Marino: few people make it out to countries like this and only a small percentage of those few bother to climb up to these landmarks, so reaching the third tower of San Marino and Vaduz Castle makes for a more unique travel experience.  

A photo of me at the back of Vaduz Castle (the side facing towards the mountain). The sun was shining bright that day, and the group of tourists behind me struggled as much as I did to take a photo that wasn't either filled with glare or heavily darkened by the camera reacting to the sunlight.

I was also able to stay late in Vaduz and attend a local football match. FC Vaduz happens to play in the top division of the Swiss Super League and they were playing FC Thun that day. Both teams are in the bottom half of the standings so it wasn't exactly a marquee matchup, but how many football tourists can say they've seen a Swiss Super League match in Liechtenstein? (Actually, there might be more than a few. The attendance at this match alone was 2,757 and I'd estimate that about a quarter of the crowd were tourists.)

Rheinpark Stadion during the match between FC Vaduz and FC Thun. On the far left, you can see Vaduz Castle on the side of the mountain. The visiting team supporters are on the opposite side of the stadium.

It turns out that Liechtenstein football fans are the quiet type. There was a handful of home team supporters that brought banners and a drum, but they were silent throughout the match. For the visiting team, there were about 80 supporters for FC Thun who were cheering off and on for most of the match, so the stadium had a bit of noise but not a lot. Even the clapping seemed somewhat muted when FC Vaduz scored. Anyways, the game ended in a 1-1 draw and was ok quality, but I was still left wondering how these teams could survive against the bigger market Swiss teams like FC Basel or Grasshoppers.

Zürich

The tourist information desk at the airport provided an interesting tourist map which included a walking route that would take you to most of the major landmarks of the city. I followed this route and visited St. Peter's Kirche (which had a plain interior), Fraumunster Kirche (which did not allow tourists inside) and then the Grossmunster Kirche. The Grossmunster Kirche also had a plain interior, but you could also climb up one of its two towers and get a great view of the old town of Zürich.

A view of Zürich Altstadt (old town) from the Grossmunster, facing northwest. The tower on the left is St. Peter's Kirche and the building on top of the Limmat river (just right of the carousel) is the Rathaus (town hall). You can't see them from this distance, but the pink building across from the Rathaus has one section called Hotel zum Storchen which coincidentally had several swans swimming around its dock.

A view of Zürich Altstadt from the Grossmunster, facing southwest. The tower on the right is the Fraumunster and the north end of Lake Zürich can be seen on the far left.  

From the Altstadt district, I walked south towards Lake Zürich. I passed by the opera house on the east coast of the lake, which was busy with swans and ducks getting well fed by the tourists, and then walked along the quai to the west coast. This side had much less tourist traffic so I felt like I was getting a more local feel of the city. I spent enough time there to stroll through the Zürich Arboretum as well as check out the very small aviary within the park. The aviary had an interesting variety of birds, most of which seemed calm around the onlookers. The Seebad Enge waterfront bar is only open in the summer, so it was closed when I came across it.

A shot of the Zürich Arboretum.

I then walked back to the east side of the lake and a bit north of there found the Zürich Kunsthaus. I was expecting a small museum and only planned a short visit, but was incredibly surprised by both the size of the museum and the high quality of artworks it contained. This was a moderately sized museum with art from every major style (although less Renaissance and more post-Impressionist art). There were famous works by Rodin, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, and too many other artists to remember. What also made this unique from other art museums that I have visited is that they even had a few famous works by modern artists such as Andy Warhol (ugh), Salvador Dali and Wassily Kandinsky.

At the Zürich Kunsthaus, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, by Vincent Van Gogh.

A modern art work at the Zürich Kunsthaus, Blue-Red by Wassily Kandinsky.

A variety of works by Henri Matisse. The sculpture is Seated Nude (Olga) and the first two paintings from the left are Branch of Ivy and Barbizon.

I spent so much time in the art museum that I didn't feel like I could make it to the FC Zürich football match in time, which is just as well since I didn't buy advance tickets and I was getting burnt out seeing so many matches in a short period (the Frankfurt trip was the previous weekend). I tried to visit the Sweizerisches Nationalmuseum, but it was after 5pm and already closed (doh!), so I just spent the rest of the day visiting a miniature version of Oktoberfest that was setup inside the Hauptbanhof train station. The kalb bratwurst was excellent and fortunately the tacky music they were playing was limited to a small party tent that dampened the sound.

The miniature version of Oktoberfest in the Zürich Hauptbanhof.

So that was Zürich and Vaduz in a weekend. Vaduz was a pleasant city nestled in the Alps with enough sites to make for a good day trip. Zürich did not have a lot of famous landmarks, but the old town can be appreciated in its entirety rather than for its parts. The Kunsthaus was also a pleasant surprise that really raised the bar for what I should expect from an art museum in Europe.

I have another trip planned for this weekend so I'll post details in another week or so.