Our last day in Switzerland! Also my last day in Europe after five weeks abroad. That’s a long time! It was not our most efficient day by any means, but we did see lots of stuff.
To start with, we decided to head down the shore of Lake Zurich to check out a famous statue by Jean Tinguely, the artist whose work we began our Swiss adventure by admiring in Geneva.
Unfortunately, the statue had been completely surrounded by a temporary screening complex for a summer film festival.
The fact that we could see any part of the sculpture at all is a testament to how big the thing is, and how impressive it would probably have been if we could actually see it.
From there we headed up to visit the Pavilion Le Corbusier, one of the last works by the famous architect. It was closed. Very impressive from the outside, however.
After two semi-strikeouts (we did, after all, get to LOOK at the big building) we headed back up the tram line to visit the Kunsthaus, which is a major art museum. Absolutely phenomenal collection – we took one look at the map and realized we were going to have to be very diligent about picking our targets if we didn’t want to just spend the entire rest of our trip at this one museum.
A prospect we seriously thought about, to be honest.
From an exhibit sampling the history of computers being used to make art, this is a clock consisting of four displays – a mechanical flip-dot display, LED, LCD, and then TFT, showing the evolution of display technology over time.
This is a piece by Alexandra Ekster , a name I’m going to have to try and look into more.
And so much more. Leigh and I could have easily spent the rest of the day in the 20th century collection alone.
One other extremely thought provoking exhibit had to do with the history of the museum and its collection as it related to a man named Emil Georg Bührle. Bührle was an extremely wealthy man, an avid collector of art, and a passionate supporter of the museum. Problem is, he was also an arms dealer who used slave labour to make weapons for the Nazis.
Which raises the extremely complicated question – what are the implications for works in the collection that were acquired by Bührle? In particular, works looted from their rightful owners, or works of dubious provenance, for whom there is no obvious inheritor today? Or even works that were more or less legally purchased, but in a massively coercive environment? (Picture from Wikipedia)
Renoir didn’t cause the holocaust, but this work is now inexplicably tied to those events. What are the implications of displaying it with, or without, giving that context?
The exhibit thoughtfully presents a number of perspectives on these issues, without necessarily resolving the questions – it seems to be at least partially intended to be the next step in the conversation over what the next step AFTER the conversation should be.
OK, that’s pretty heavy. Without downplaying the seriousness of the issues, (and seriously, go look into the online version of the exhibit – it’s very good) let’s continue our day in Zurich.
We grabbed some lunch, and then headed back DOWN the lake again to see the interior of the now-open Le Corbusier pavilion.
The building was just as cool on the inside as it was on the outside. Lots of neat midcentury stuff going on.
And then we decided we hadn’t seen quite ENOUGH modern art yet, so it was off to the museum of design, helpfully labelled in my favorite font that tells you you are in the future:
There weren’t a lot of exhibits on display, but we enjoyed the hallway of movie posters, (none of which I remembered to photograph,) and an exhibit on the influence of club legend and event organizer Susanne Bartsch
By this point, museums were starting to close, but we still had energy left, so what else can we see? How about the Polybahn?
This is an extremely short funicular railroad (under 600 meters) designed to take students up the hill from the area of the main train station to the ETH Zurich university. (Which used to be called the Polytechnic, hence the name.) It’s short, but it’s also almost straight up, so definitely a good thing to have. And the view from the top is nice, too.
As a bonus, it was located about half a block from our AirBnB. Given that the total travel time is 60 seconds, the next morning it made perfect sense to grab a coffee and ride up to the top to enjoy the view while drinking it. I’ll post that picture here, because the weather was nicer than on the 16th.
Once we took in the view, we decided to nip up the street a few tram stops to pair our earlier trip to Einstein’s apartment with one formerly belonging to Schroedinger. Now, this one is still someone’s home, so you can’t go inside or anything, but you can check the current status of the cat.
Alive. Excellent.
It wasn’t QUITE dinner time yet, but there weren’t a lot of other sights we were desperate to see, so instead we decided to go hunt down one more destination geocache. We found it, but we also found a pretty nice view while we were there.
That’s a pretty nice shot, innit?
At this point, we WERE starting to get hungry, but no so hungry we didn’t have time to wander around a bit and consider our options. We poke our heads in the door at the surfing restaurant (i.e., there was a wave pool, and you could watch people surf while you ate), but ended up at a delightful place that seemed primarily populated by locals called “Les Halles.”
And with that, we headed back to our AirBnB to pack and crash. Maybe we got ice cream, but then we definitely packed and crashed.
The next morning, after my little jaunt up the Polybahn to drink my coffee, it was off to the airport and home. This was an absolutely amazing set of trips, but after five weeks, hoo boy was I ready to get home.
Now we can just go back to posting about cooking for a while.