Europa V, Zürich MMXX

Last but not least, we headed to Zürich to finish things off, and then fly back to San Francisco. We only had a night there, so we tried hard to spend our time wisely. Since we couldn’t make the timing work out for a guided tour, Zach found a self-guided one, and became our tour guide for the day as we walked around the city.

Walking around Altstadt made for good street photography. Somehow, in a single day I ended up taking up ~20% of the photos I took during the whole trip!

This is the sixth and last in a long series I shared throughout January. Make sure check out parts zero, one, two, three, and four, too!

Danny asked me not to take this photo.

I think he wanted me to take this one, though.

I overheard this guy’s conversation, and got transported back to San Francisco. He was pitching some crypto play, and was trying to explain to the person on the other end how a user could exchange their tokens on Binance.

I love the fact that people can build community in public spaces like this one. It reminded me of the checkers and chess players you can see in Portsmouth Square in San Francisco, or Washington Square Park in Manhattan.

I had gotten lost after staying behind taking some photos, so I met the group at the Liedenhof.

I’m not sure why there was a statue of a frog wearing a crown here, but it seemed interesting enough to take a photo.

One of my favorite shots from this set. The human scale of the city was very much accentuated by these alleys that led to the river and to other cross streets.

This is one of my favorite self-portraits in a while.

Every once in a while I’d walk past a window where someone would be tinkering on things. The fact that this happens in the touristy downtown area seemed odd.

Learning about Christianity and its many variants.

Zachary Redmond Hyman, tour guide, and his assistant Benjamin.

A story…

…in two photos.

I hung out here for a while, waiting for that DHL truck to go away, following Sam Abell’s famous “compose and wait.” Eventually, my friends had walked too far and I had to give up.

And for trying to take this photo, I got lost again. This time though, I didn’t try to catch up with the group, and instead walked aimlessly around the city taking photos for a while on my own.

The Opera.

I randomly walked past Hauser & Wirth Publishers. I had never heard of them, but the store looked pretty, and they had a lot of cool art and design books on display. It turned out that the store manager was a Cuban guy, and we ended up talking for a while about what it’s like to get used to a new culture so different from one’s own.

And apparently I was in the cool bookstore neighborhood, because a block away I also found Peter Bichsel’s Fine Books. The store had a lot of cool artifacts and old editions of all sorts of classic books. The shopkeeper (maybe Mr. Bischel?) asked me where I was from, and when I said Costa Rica he said that he’s always wanted to go there because he’s heard it’s nickname of “Central America’s Switzerland”.

Someone on Twitter had mentioned that I couldn’t miss Cabaret Voltaire. The bar/coffee shop was the birthplace of the Dada movement back in 1916.

We kept seeing these “not a Picasso” graffitis all over the city.

The cocktails at Dante were amazing. They also reminded us that San Francisco is not the most expensive place in the world after all.

We moved to a different kind of bar. Shots were taken. After this, some of us went to bed while the rest of the group went to a club.

The next morning, I made a point of waking up early and walking around for a bit before heading to the airport.

At this coffee shop, I learned the German word “Kipferl” is used for croissants. I only knew of it in it’s cookie usage.

I’m curious about farming in Mars, and what it entails.

And so we went back to the airport, and took a ride back to reality.

And so here we are, at the end of a long journey. It was a really fun trip, and I am quite glad I got to do it. Here’s hoping for another one soon, and more photos, too!

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