Uetliberg - the hill that took my 'breath' away

May Day - we thought of staying home the entire day as we were told that there'd be some sort of strikes or demonstrations going on in town. It sounded a little scary when one of his colleagues described about the smashing of windows or car windscreens, burning of cars etc. But we were also being assured that as Zurich becomes more touristy, the demos were sort of confined to some areas and like SG, they too had to register before they hold their demonstrations.

So we decided to travel to Uetliberg again since it's not situated in town and we've yet to reached to the top the other time. To avoid going to the main train station which is located in town, we walked to Sihl City and took tram 13 which took us up midway.

Before we took the tram, we went into the Sihl City shopping mall hoping to see some shops open. But all we could do was to 'window shop'. If you notice, the lights of some shops are still on. Think there's a staff in Luthy doing some stock taking.


As we walk out we couldn't resist the 'Cheese Chilli Nuggets' which was on the ad outside BK...so we bought a pack to try. The cheese is ok, not too strong and has a hint of chicken taste; and the chilli is green pepperoni if I'm not wrong. Taste quite good with a tint of spiciness, thou a little too salty. Fr 5+ for 6 pieces of small nuggets, kinda ex huh? The burger was twice the cost as compared to SG but of course it's European size as well.


Here we are at the mid-point of Uetliberg. Here it looks pretty much like a farm with people growing flowers, rearing chickens and horses, but yet to see any cows. Gotta look out for the poo poos left by the horses on the way.

Uncle Tan apparently can identify which are the freshly made ones...





We caught another fat cat again but it was too fast for us.

It's sunny yet when the wind blows, it's brrrrr.....cold.

Don't we wish that we'll have such nice fields and flowers in Singapore too?

The small houses along the stretch of roads we took. The clouds seem to be very low and close. Uncle Tan said because Switzerland is located pretty high up, hence the sky seems closer to us. Is he correct?

Even the small sheds have a separate area for the farmers to have a cuppa with their friends. Is this how life should be? We were wondering if these were just merely sheds or whether they were also home to these farmers.

Seems that we can't have enough of the green meadows & yellow flowers huh ;p

Saw many joggers, hikers and even bikers along the way. Not to mention the doggies too.We found it surprising that majority of the Swiss are slim (apparently I also had difficulty to find S or XS for those sales items) despite their rich food. We came to realise that probably their weekend activities had sort of burnt their calories away. In fact, whilst we were panting away on our way up, the Swiss did not have much difficulties and were up pretty quickly. Guess they are used to the climbing.

I remembered one occasion where my friends and I were struggling to climb a flight of never ending stairs up in Bern, this young lady made her way up in a nifty, and she was smoking away at the same time.

Breathing in the fresh air and absorbing the sun's warmth. Hmm...fortunately the light and the 'soft skin' mode of the camera didn't manage to expose my reddish and blemished skin hehe ;p

Speaking of which, I had a shiokadoodoo time squeezing whatever that's on my face the night before. I squeezed whatever bumps or the small dark spots around the sides of my nose. It was soooo shiokz! I guess it was easy getting them out because of the dry weather and it's spanking clean now. Anyone keen for a facial by me? haha ;D

We walked about 3 over hours in all we reached a campsite instead of the peak...argh!!! And still another 20 mins walk to the train station in order to get down. I wasn't in a good state that day cos my 'good friend' finally has visited me that week. So you can imagine how tired I was...in fact I felt sleepy when I was up. It was really a 'breathless' journey.

The views of the Zurich 3/4 up Uetilberg.

We finally reached the train station. But to reach the peak was another 5 mins walk up the stairs. Told Uncle Tan to go ahead as I could go up there another day as I doubt I can take the stairs up all the way in my current state.

Some of the pictures he took when he reached the peak.

The restaurant at the peak. Uncle Tan said to have dinner here and after that to walk down the hill since it will still be bright at 8pm. Ya, but the walk down would mean nothing left of my dinner liao ;p
The tower where you could have a 36o deg view of the whole of Zurich. Seems that in Switzerland, you need to do a lot of climbing. Just the no. steps up the stairs I have easily accumulated over 500 in a month?

We were too tired to make our way down to take the tram back, so we decided to take the train back to the main train station thinking that the demo should have ceased by then as it's about 5.30pm. We assumed that they would also follow the "Swiss way" of ending the day by 5pm.

Demonstrations
We saw in the newspaper and also heard from Uncle Tan's colleague the next day that there was a demo at Langstrasse in the afternoon where a Merz had ramped into a couple of pedestrians, causing one to be seriously injured. I saw the news where one fella was dragged underneath the Merz. I wonder how he is now.

There was also burning of bins and trams going to that area had to cease operations till it was cleared up. I guess it happened in the late afternoon cos when we transferred at the main train station, we heard a couple of sirens and saw police cars and ambulances speeding to the direction where Langstrasse is.

As mentioned in my earlier blog entry, Langstrasse is like our Geylang, a red light district and the people staying there came from a mixture of countries.

Anyway, we made our way back safely and we saw the street at our apt full of fallen flower petals on the street.

I remembered once when I was on my way back after my grocery shopping, the flowers from the trees came flying down because of the wind and rain. Though cold, the moment sort of freezed in time as I was amongst the flowers when they came flying down, somewhat like a scene like in the movies haha ;D
Indeed, it was a beautiful sight and an unforgettable moment.