Zurich, Switzerland

"Switzerland is a place where they don't like to fight, so they get people to do their fighting for them while they ski and eat chocolate." 

---Larry David

As the old cliché goes, Switzerland's a great place to visit.  The weather during our short stay was perfect, warming to a sunny 75 degrees Fahrenheit when the morning sun burnt off each day.  Switzerland feels very international, with four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansch. German is the primary language for about 2/3 of the population, but everyone we encountered also spoke English.  The Swiss seem to always be efficient, pleasant and neatly attired.

Like everywhere else we've been in Switzerland, Zurich is clean, well-maintained and tidy.

Beautiful, historic buildings can be seen in every direction in the teeming metropolis, because Swiss neutrality kept them out of all wars since 1815.  Whereas in many other places in Europe, great cities and villages suffered terrible damage in World Wars I and II, sometimes with buildings being rebuilt to resemble to the original structures, in Zurich, the seventeenth and eighteenth century buildings as well as more ancient buildings are the originals.

Natural features enhance these human enhancements.  The lovely river Limmat flows through the center of town, as rivers do in many great cities, and its source is Lake Zurich, a large blue lake with the Swiss Alps providing a jagged backdrop.

Water access for trade made Zurich a strategic location historically and to this day.  On a hill along the Limmat, the Romans established Turicum, a military camp in present day Zurich that offers visitors to the park on that site sweeping views of the river and city below.

Zurich remains an important city, with a strong financial sector, and based on what we saw, the people living and working there are prosperous.  The "Gnomes of Zurich" seem to be doing very well indeed.

So, what's the down side for travelers?

It's expensive.   Especially to eat.  For example, combo meals at McDonalds start at about $14 per person.  Big fresh-baked pretzels for $2 seemed like better deals and were readily available, earning our business a couple of times.  Later in the trip, we would visit Speyer, a German city about 200 miles from Zurich where pretzels were invented.  Similar pretzels at sidewalk stands were 50 cents there.

Sodas at restaurants run about $5, and with beer and wine starting at only a dollar or two more, they seem like better relative deals.

At a charming sidewalk and riverside cafe by the Hotel Zum Storchen, Julie's white wine and my Feldschlösschen beer, therefore, were logical choices.  We each ordered home-smoked chicken sandwiches for $14 each for our 4 PM late lunch/early dinner.

The drinks were refreshing, and the view terrific, but our sandwiches left a lot to be desired, although I guess you could say "you get what you pay for."  The sad truth is that when traveling abroad, we inevitably order the cheapest food that might satisfy our immediate needs, and therefore seldom have any really good meals abroad.

The sandwich turned out to be a dry, grainy bun with a single thin sliver of overly smoked chicken and a single lettuce leaf that added a touch of color but no flavor.  Whatever the light brown condiment on the bun spread thinly on one the middle of the bun was, it did nothing to add moisture or flavor, so I asked for some mustard.  It should be noted that in Switzerland, it is common for additional condiments to come with an additional charge, but I splurged.

Other than sandwiches, most items on the Storchen menu were $30 and up, which is still on the cheap side for a nice café in Zurich, and in all fairness people eating those dishes seemed happy with their choices.

Why is the food so expensive in Switzerland?  When we were in the countryside the previous day, we were impressed by the neat, green farms.  Rather than huge agribusinesses like those which dominate farming in the US, the average farm size is 52 acres.  In addition to providing food, these family farms in Switzerland are required to preserve the countryside and receive subsidies from the government for doing so, obviously adding to the bottom line price.  The pastoral farms definitely add beauty to the landscapes and break up cities. 

I think back on Orange County, California, when I grew up there and fondly remember orange groves, strawberry fields and cow pastures along the roads when my family headed for dinner at Arnold's Farmhouse in Buena Park or to my dad's friend Rex's house in Costa Mesa.  It's great that Switzerland had the foresight to stop Zurich from overflowing into a megalopolis sprawling in all directions. 

Whereas only .6% of North American farms are organic, 11% of Swiss farms are designated organic, and organic inevitably costs more because of lower net harvests and additional time required by less efficient fertilizers and pesticides.  Then again, Swiss farmers, including all organic and non-organic crops, provide only about 40% of their own country's needs, while North America feeds much of the world.  While only a small percentage of their land is devoted to organics, North America actually produces 45% of the organic food worldwide. 

In summary, I believe the primary reason food prices are higher in Switzerland is that Europe in general is "protected" from cheap American food.  For anyone who believes strongly that agribusiness is evil, Switzerland would be a natural home.  Because capitalism allows us to vote with our dollars as well as our feet, however, we can choose to buy organic or inexpensive food for our own families without leaving America.  The Swiss can only choose expensive or more expensive food, and from what I saw, vegetables are treated like garnishes, so I can't see how they're getting nearly the same nutritional value from their meals.

By far the best meal I had in Switzerland was a bratwurst (I doubt it was organic and definitely wasn't vegan) on an undersized hard roll that we bought along the banks of Lake Zurich.  It ran about $9, and we skipped the $4 Coke Zero, but I have to admit the freshly grilled meat was better than the similarly sized 1/4 pounder at Costco which comes with a free soda for $1.50.

By the time we had walked from the train station along a path of historic highlights to Lake Zurich where aromatic smells wafted from the grill of the sausage stand, it was past noon and we still hadn't had breakfast, so instead of a sidewalk café we'd envisioned for our morning repast, we sat on a concrete bench without a table to scarf down the treat.  We did have a lake view, but had we known what awaited down the lakeside walking path, we could have eaten our meal while listening to a busker who somehow had hauled an upright piano down by the water's edge to play lilting melodies.

Food and sodas aren't the only expensive commodities in Switzerland.  Window shopping indicated that clothing and other consumer goods also run two or three times as much as similar products in the USA.  Name brands were predominant, so perhaps in the suburbs some WalMart-like alternatives have lower pricing for third world produced knockoffs, but we saw no evidence of that. 

One great deal was a little bag of Swiss gingerbread cookies covered in white icing that I bought at a drug store in Winterthur for less than a dollar (.80 Swiss francs) and carried in my raincoat as a snack throughout my time in Switzerland, eating one every time a $3 donut or $5 waffle tempted me as well

By the time we were riding the train through the scenic countryside (and incidentally passed the Feldschlösschen brewery built to resemble a castle as "schloss" would imply) to Basel the next day, I was eagerly anticipating the wonderful meals with plenty of vegetables that I would enjoy on our river cruise.