The greatest asset that Zurich has is it's massive, beautiful lake. It's positioned almost directly in the center of Zurich and as a result the city centers most of its leisure time around it. If the sun is shining you are duty bound to spend it near the waves of Zurich's lake and who were we to disobey?
We started the day taking a two hour tour of the lake. It was great to see the varied landscape and beautiful houses but eventually it all starts to run together. The greatest part of all of it was that the tour was free thanks to our Zurich Card. If you are ever in Zurich buy one of these, it offers you free transit in Zurich and neighboring areas and access to a ton of museums and all around interesting things to do. The whole thing will run you about 30 euros, so it ends up paying for itself.
The rest of the day was spent in various museums and cultural exhibits, sounds boring but it was actually very good. Keep in mind the purpose of this trip is to learn about the various cultures and ways of life, I want to understand and relate to the thought processes of locals. And buy a Swiss army knife because what type of American would I be if I didn't indulge in a countries greatest stereotypes.
7:00 approached and it was time to meet our host for the next few days. Reflecting on the moments approaching the front door I was probably more nervous than a 15 year old boy on his first date with Megan Fox. I rang the doorbell and silently prayed that Melanie(I remembered her name haha) was completely sane. Footsteps shuffled down the staircase leading to the door and we were greeted by an amiable blonde-haired middle aged women. AWESOME! She led us up to her flat, showed us to our room and sat down to chat for awhile. Turns out that Melanie is a school teacher nearby and does couch surfing in order to connect with and learn from other cultures. She had never hosted any Americans before so she was really excited to spend some time with us. She went so far as to create a welcome sign and lay out local maps and brochures. You could immediately tell that Melanie has one of the biggest hearts around, I am looking forward to talking with her and learning from her in the next few days.
After meeting and chatting with Melanie for about thirty minutes the group(still consisting of all five members) decided to go out and try some typical Swiss cheese fondue. First thing to know about dining in Europe, you seat yourselves. We walk in and sit down at a nice sized five person table. The waiter greets us and begins talking about specials and whatnot...in German. I highly recommend at least a rudimentary understanding of each countries language you plan on visiting. Nothing is worse than a huge raging language barrier. Luckily, most service positions know intermediate English so we were able to order two dishes of fondue for the table. We enjoy our meal together(Swiss fondue is amazing, you have to try some) and ask for the bill. Here is where the trouble begins...As it turns out we ordered four orders of fondue in two pots. Issue here is one pot of fondue is about 30 euro. Thank you language barrier. I immediately try and talk to the manager and see if he is willing to reduce the cost for us since it was miscommunication. No dice. Looks like we were footing the 170 euro bill(with drinks and soup). At this point I look at Matt and see the vein in his forehead pulsating at about 3000 mph, or however many damn kilometers that is. Shit, he's about to lose his cool and flip out on the waiter. Here's the conversation:
Waiter: "Is everything ok, sir?"
Matt: "No, nothing is ok. We ordered TWO pots of fondue, I don't want to pay for four."
Waiter(pleading at this point): "Sir, I can't do anything about that. My manager said you ordered 4. You can try talking with him again if you like."
Matt(face the color of a ripe tomato): "Yea go get him"
The manager walks over to the waiter who informs him of the error. He says something in German in hyper speed and then runs to cower in the kitchen from the angry American. We are making friends by the minute in Zurich.
Waiter: "The manager says you ordered 4 I have to charge you"
Matt is about to say something, when I hand the waiter 50 euros(our portion of the bill) and tell him it's time to leave. We get out of there and Matt is still fuming. You can see the steam billowing out of his ears and into the night sky..."Dude he just scammed us like we were tourists" "Matt, we are tourists" "Yea, but that's not fair" "Life's not fair Matt" "Ugh". Then we got ice cream(which was 5 euros a scoop by the way) and calmly returned to Melanie's place to sleep.
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