A few days after arriving in Freiburg, our group set off for the first destination of our Reisetrip: Zürich. Only 2 hours and a Schengen-zone border away from Freiburg, Zürich was the perfect example of how similar and yet vastly different all our destinations would be.
Both Zürich (with 367,000 residents) and Freiburg (with 229,000) have a distinctly medieval and cozy feel to them. In each city, Brezels (by far the superior of all German/Swiss/Austrian baked goods) were easily found and hidden alleyways beckoned as we walked the cobblestone streets. With a square or park to stop in every few streets, expensive and international Zürich felt as livable as Freiburg.
Beyond these similarities, however, there is little room to mistake the two cities. For its small size, Zürich boasts a remarkably cosmopolitan feeling—there’s the grand Bahnhofstraße, the view of the Alps from the Zürichsee on a clear day, and a multitude of languages to be heard. Between the large number of tourists and the Swiss German dialect, it was probably here that we heard standard “High German” the least.
Even the medieval architecture and city layout felt different. Zürich’s Protestant history may be what made it feel less ornate in some ways than Freiburg. Beautiful and impressive, Zürich’s churches were also relatively spare, a result of the Swiss Reformation of the 1520s, led by Huldrych Zwingli. Climbing the Grossmünster and visiting the Frauenkirche, we got our first introduction to understanding the influence of different styles of architecture, art, and time periods within the many churches we would visit.
In the Landesmuseum Zürich we learned more about the Swiss national identity and sense of pride, discussing the Grundungsmythos of Wilhelm Tell and the idea of Switzerland as a Willensnation. Discussing the differences between stereotypes of Switzerland and the truths within them that make up the Swiss national identity, we spoke of chocolate, neutrality, and the Alps—and with these things in mind, readied ourselves to go on to our next destination: Sils-Maria.