There Goes the Neighborhood

Sincerest apologies. My blogging frequency of late resembles the Zürich paper & carton pickup schedule (one big dump every two weeks) instead of the glass & plastic schedule (a sensible bit every day). The silence does not reflect a lack of content. On the contrary, there's content coming out my ears (it's not pretty). Hmm, so how to recount the details from two action-packed weeks of 2008..?

At last telling, we had just moved from wonderfully rural Kloten to the wonderful "big" city of Zürich (with its 350,000 inhabitants about 1/10th the size of Chicago), the "little metropolis" as a local called it. Zürich city is divided into twelve districts or Kreise, literally "circles," perhaps akin to Paris's arrondisements but with considerably less notoriety. As tons of luck would have it, we landed in Kreis 7, about halfway up Lake Zürich's eastern hillside. The Kreise are subdivided into neighborhoods, ours is Hirslanden (click the map above to enlarge Hirslanden), analogous to our Roscoe Village neighborhood in Chicago but again 1/10th the size. From there (particularly without a car), life's convenience or lack thereof is determined by the nearest Platz.

Of course, the Platz is a familiar Old World Europe concept [Platz is German, plaza is Spanish, piazza is Italian (not pizza, although that's also Italian), place is French, etc.] meaning the very local town square. As a tourist, the average European Platz (not the magnificent ones like Paris's Place Madeleine or Venice's Piazza San Marco) holds marginal interest. As an inhabitant, I'll say the Platz will make or break you. In Zürich the Plätze (that's plural)--like so many other Swissisms we're learning--are magnificently consistent and provide at minimum the daily staples--always a drugstore, bakery, butcher, café, and small traditional Swiss restaurant, all Mom & Pop places. By my new measure, the individual character of these staples PLUS public transportation connectivity PLUS any "embellishment establishments" determine the all-important overall quality of the Platz. So why are we so lucky with our new apartment? Because our Platz is Kreuzplatz, and Kreuzplatz rocks!

Truthfully we're equidistant from two Plätze, a five minute walk uphill to Hegibachplatz or five minute walk downhill to Kreuzplatz (which would you adopt)? But actually Hegibachplatz is weak, whereas Kreuzplatz has two full grocery stores, an excellent café/nightclub, Swisscom Mobile phone store, post office, wine store, bakery (admittedly not the best), two trams and a bus and (dare I say it??) a Starbucks (although I'm a Starbucks fan, I haven't gone in).

But the good news doesn't stop there. Both a tram and a bus stop not thirty feet from our front door and run like clockwork every few minutes. And continuing five minutes on foot past Kreuzplatz you'll hit the train station Bahnhof Stadelhofen which is HUGE!! Good proximity to a city train station here is like a gold mine inside an oil well, or maybe the other way around. Why? I'm glad you asked...

There are only about six train stations in the main city. They all feed the Hauptbahnhof or main station, from there you can go anywhere in Zürich or Switzerland or Europe. Stadelhofen to the Hauptbahnhof takes 4 minutes. A train line actually runs through Stadelhofen to Stephanie's office building, thus making her commute from the city's south to far north side only 35 minutes door-to-door, including walking and waiting time. The next tram stop past Stadelhofen is Bellevueplatz which not only features the best bratwurst stand in Zürich and Globus gourmet foods but also serves as one of three major transportation hubs in the city, with trams going everywhere. Without a car, I can't tell you how HUGE that connectivity is! It nearly makes me sob with emotion. OK, maybe not quite, but it sure is nice.

And here's the icing on the cake. Everything shuts down here on weekdays by about 6:30pm, Saturdays at 5:00pm and all-day Sunday. That's crazy by U.S. standards--come home just a little late after work one night or after a weekend trip without food waiting in the fridge and you're out of luck. Everything shuts down, that is, except the train station stores which stay open late, even on Sunday. So our Stadelhofen, like all the train stations here, contains a full grocery store. Of course, heaven help you shopping there on Sunday, you'd have better luck surviving a Korn mosh pit or piranha attack. But that's not the point.

So Hobbes (and Stephanie of course, when available) and I are exploring the neighborhood in an ever-growing radius, critically evaluating every Platz and other local feature. We have a nearby homemade pasta factory (makes fresh pastas and sauces every day for take-home), homemade sorbetto factory (slow biz in winter), Argentina-themed wine bar (we're already on a first-name basis with the manager and owner), two large parks, a cheapo local pub with greasy-good schnitzel and better beer, a shop specializing in Hungarian goods (including--hold on to your underpants if you know this reference--Unicum bitters, a black herbal Hungarian liquor akin to Jägermeister but significantly funkier, responsible for dropping an early haze over many a poker contest), a pet store (hooray for Hobbes!), a hiking/camping store (hooray for me!), a large café with great espresso during the day that turns into a salsa dancing bar on Saturday nights (remember an old reference to Bohemia?), and several pizza restaurants, including a take-out outlet of Sam's Pizza, an Americana-themed chain serving relatively authentic deep-dish U.S. pizza.

So that's just a description of our surroundings. Now that I'm replugged in, stay tuned for ad nauseam reports on actual activities..!