Zurich

Where to start?

First apologizes for the lateness of this post. Its been a hectic week.

For those who don't know I'm in Zürich, Switzerland for two weeks for work. One of the products we support is developed here and we are visiting the developers.

I flew out of Seattle on the 8th only 9.5 hours after landing from my trip back to Wisconsin. My first flight was from Seattle down to San Francisco, then San Francisco to London, and finally London to Zürich. I had to take this circuitous route to get an affordable business class flight to Europe and to get there by Tuesday.

Seattle to San Francisco was uneventful however its turns out that you have to leave the secured area to change terminals in San Francisco so I had to go through security again to get into the international terminal. The international terminal is quite impressive. It is two stories and is quite spacious.

Flying business class is nice. You start with your own jet way onto the airplane and the seats are the same width as domestic first class seats and recline quite a ways with a foot rest that pops up too. We were served a nice dinner and then everyone pretty much went to sleep. I was having a hard time getting comfortable enough to sleep, but I did manage an hour or so. During the flight there was a table with snacks on it that you could help your self to if you were hungry. Then about an hour before landing they served breakfast.

I arrived in London about 6 in the morning local time and had about two hours to make my connection to Zürich. I wasn't sure if this was going to be enough, but it turned out to be plenty even though I had to change terminals. However with another terminal change I had to go through security one more time. I checked in for my flight and headed for the gate. I found a departure board and it just said "Please Wait" for the gate next to my flight. So I waited a bit and it hadn't changed. After a half an hour or so I figured I must be in the wrong part of the terminals since there were only a few people around. So I wandered into the other half of the terminal and I found a departure board that had a sign saying the gates would be posted 30-40 minutes before departure. So I hung out in that part of the terminal which was pretty much a mall and waited for my gate to post. It got to be about 2 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave and they finally posted that it was going to be delayed 30 mins.

The gate for my flight was finally posted and about the half the people sitting around me all got up and headed for that gate. The boarding procedure is different there. They take your boarding pass and you wait in the gate until they till you to board then you go straight onto the plane. I had managed to get an exit row seat, but it turned out not to have any extra room. Luckily it was only an hour and 20 minute flight so it was tolerable.

Swiss air was nice. They did all of the announcements in German, French, Italian, and English. They also gave you a chocolate bar before you got off the plane :-)

Zürich Airport is nice and I had no problems at immigration. They just looked at my passport and sent me through. My bag came out and I headed through the custom door for "nothing to declare" and I was out. I headed down to the train station and started trying to decipher the schedules. The line for the ticket window was quite long so I just bought a Airport to City one way ticket (4CHF or about $3). I IM'd Bart on my blackberry and he told me which train to take and which stop to get off at and he met me at the station and showed me to the office.

I took about an hour to get myself collected and then we had some meetings before heading out for dinner. We went to a place called Zeughauskeller and I had some nice traditional Swiss food. Then we finally headed out to the house we were staying in. At this point I had had maybe 6 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours and hadn't had a shower in almost 36 hours. So I took a badly needed shower and went to bed.

So that sums up a very long day one. Feel free to post questions in the comments.