In Zurich, Switzerland, we spent some time visiting the local Google office, including some fun lunch food.
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| A happy eater |
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| 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.
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| Daughter versus mother! |
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| Two games at once! |
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| Pinball happiness |
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| 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.
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| The river runs through it |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Strata coming together |
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| Samples of rocks from different strata |
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| 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.
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| NASA InSight Martian Explorer |
Another exhibit goes through the formation of the universe, from the Big Bang to star formation to planetary formation.
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| 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.
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| The funicular station |
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| The train |
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| Riding inside |
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| Getting to the top |
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| The other train on the tracks |
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| 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.
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| Pretty much the same view of the river |
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| The Bahnhof (train station) |
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| Weird art in the Bahnhof |
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