Day 6: Zurich – Kyburg and Winterthur

This morning we got up again around 8 o’clock, and had our breakfast of yogurt and granola. By 9:15, we were on our way to the train station. The plan was to visit both Kyburg and Winterthur today.

We first travelled to Kyburg. We took a train to Effretikon, and got off at a tiny train station (only 3 or 4 tracks). We made our way over to the bus area, and had a very confusing conversation with the driver about whether or not our Swiss Passes were valid for the trip (he didn’t speak any English, and our German isn’t good enough to understand someone talking really fast and using big words…). Turns out they weren’t, and we paid 4.10fr each per way (so total of 16.40fr).

We finally arrived in Kyburg around 11 o’clock. The trip involved quite a few tiny alleyways, but the bus driver had no problem managing the small streets. The bus stopped in the middle of the little town, and we got off and looked around. There were no signs to be seen, so we just started walking in a random direction. We found the castle fairly easily.

Inside the castle was a museum featuring exhibits demonstrating the castle’s life and the life of its inhabitants over the years. This castle was built sometime around 1100, and went through many phases over the years. For many years, it was home to royalty in the Zurich region, and was a part of the Zurich army. Around the 1850’s, the owner of the castle wanted to sell the castle to a construction company that would disassemble it to harvest the materials, but a group of historians objected. Later, the castle was auctioned off, and a number of private owners lived in it, making various renovations to suit their needs. Most recently, in the 1900’s, the castle was converted into a museum after a large amount of restoration work.

A view of the kitchen:

A part of the museum demonstrated the building process of a castle. Jeff tried to lift one of the blocks as a part of the interactive exhibit.

Outside we could see a sundial that had been painted on the side of the building... but the time was very wrong.

When we were finished with the museum, we headed outdoors and had our lunch just outside the castle. Today we had sandwiches with bread (left in the free food section of the hostel’s kitchen), swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato. Best sandwich we’ve had since we got here! (the pre-made sandwiches sold in the grocery stores really don’t have much to them…)

After lunch, we headed to the bus stop and caught the next bus back to Effretikon. From there, we took a train up to Winterthur.

We arrived in Winterthur and headed directly to the tourist office to find a map. Jeff hasn’t quite figured out how to react when someone starts talking to him in German, so it usually takes people a while to figure out that we have no idea what they’re saying. The lady in the office was very helpful once she switched to English, and overwhelmed us with maps of the city.

Once we had a map, we headed to the local art gallery, which featured the paintings of Monet, van Gogh, Mondrian, and various Swiss artists. We both enjoyed the old collection, but quickly came to the modern art section (which was at least the size of the old collection, if not larger), and got bored pretty quickly. Clearly, neither of us are very good at “understanding” modern art. But Jeff was great to have with me when we were looking at all the older paintings – he’d studied them in highschool and recognized some of the more famous paintings, and could point out the subtle details in each.

After going through the Kunstmuseum, we decided to pop into the Naturmuseum that was a part of the same building. We really confused the ticket people with our SwissPasses; there was only one person that knew what it was, and everyone else kept telling us that it wasn’t valid (until the spoke to the person that knew). One person even came up to us when we were in the art gallery, and thought we somehow got in without having tickets, when we had clearly showed our passes to a lady 20 minutes prior. Anyway, the nature museum was pretty clearly meant for children, but we enjoyed walking through it. They had a pretty impressive fossil and rock section that was enjoyable (but nothing the size of what we have at the ROM).

When we were finished up with the museums in Winterthur, we began walking some of the streets of the old town. The town was mostly just shops, but there were a few fountains that were interesting. Jeff filled up our waterbottle at one of them.

We briefly visited the local church, but unfortunately it was closed, so we could not go inside. We took a picture instead.

We scoped out some gelato for a break. It was pretty hot today, and both of us needed a break. Mary re-applied her sun screen, and we continued walking around town for a bit.

When we decided we were finished, we headed back to the train station to find a train home. This was around 4:15pm, and boy was the station busy! The first train we tried to get on was all full up, so we ran over to another platform and caught another one. At least there are a lot of trains that go to Zurich!

We arrived back in Zurich around 5 o’clock, and went to a store that sells cuckoo clocks (no luck; I haven’t seen any that I particularly like yet). Then we came back to the hostel and made dinner; salad with lemon and grated carrot, and pasta with carrot, tomato, Swiss cheese, and Gouda and grated cheese from the free food corner.

After dinner, we plan on getting a Apple Fritter (that seems to be sold at every restaurant that has any sort of dessert, so it MUST be a Swiss tradition, right?), and heading early to bed. We need to pack up sometime tonight/tomorrow morning, as we leave Zurich tomorrow to go to Vaduz in Liechtenstein. Check-out is at 10am, and we can’t check into our next hostel until 5pm, so I expect it will be a very long day of carrying around our packs. 

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Turns out that Pommes Frites is fries in German, so we ended up walking to the coop and purchased an apple/raspberry muffin for dessert. I’m not sure what made us think that Pommes Frites was an apple fritter.. perhaps we had dessert on the mind.