Zurich, Switzerland

In Zurich, Switzerland, we spent some time visiting the local Google office, including some fun lunch food.

A happy eater

Google ice cream looks a lot like Ben & Gerry's

The game room has plenty to recommend it, including a foosball table, an old-fashioned Star Wars pinball game, and old-school Street Fighter.

Daughter versus mother!

Two games at once!

Pinball happiness

Brothers fighting each other!

The day was rainy, so we went over to FocusTerra, an exhibit at the ETH Zurich. On the way, we crossed the Limmat River that runs through Zurich. 

The river runs through it

A fancy building along the way

FocusTerra starts with a long hallway with almost everything in German! I was worried the kids would be extra-bored.

A lot of information

Inside, we discovered a fountain. As if we had not seen enough water with the rain and the river! It actually perked up the kids.

Indoor fountain

The geology exhibit focuses on the formation of the Alps. The European continental shelf intersected with the African, forming the mountains. Earthquakes do happen in the Alps, though not many people are impacted because of the lack of population density.

Strata coming together

Samples of rocks from different strata

More rock samples

A nearby display shows a Martian lander called InSight that is studying the geology of Mars. It is measuring core temperatures and recording marsquakes (I guess they can't have earthquakes there). The scientists in the building work with NASA to analyze the data that comes back.

NASA InSight Martian Explorer

Another exhibit goes through the formation of the universe, from the Big Bang to star formation to planetary formation.

Universe formation

As a last treat, we took the Polybahn up the hill to get a better view of the city. It was a fun ride for our youngest.

The funicular station

The train

Riding inside

Getting to the top

The other train on the tracks

View of the street below the train

Safely back on ground, we crossed the river again and headed to the train station to get back to our base of operations in Bern.

Pretty much the same view of the river

The Bahnhof (train station)

Weird art in the Bahnhof