First Days in Switzerland

Hallo Leute! (Hi Guys!)

 

After a long Winter break, I finally arrived in Switzerland on Wednesday to study abroad at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Although the main campus of the school is in Zurich, the business school and where I’ll be living is in Winterthur, a town of 110,000 people and a 20 minute train ride from Zurich.

Since moving in a few days ago, I’ve already made new friends from all over the world and explored Winterthur as much as possible. Winterthur is a cozy European town filled with many friendly people, coffee shops, and places to get delicious Swiss chocolate. I’ve quickly fallen in love with discovering new small side streets that are everywhere in the town and seeing what each has to offer.

Even though I’ll probably never get bored of walking around the town itself, the best part of Winterthur might be the scenery and nature that surrounds it. Twice I’ve gone on long hikes through the beautiful forest trails and taken in all of the sights. Both trails offered picturesque views overlooking the town and I was able to get an idea of how fascinating and vast the Swiss wilderness is. Hiking also provided a great way to connect with the people that I’ve met and make some great memories. 

Along with enjoying Winterthur, my friends and I also took the 20 minute train ride one of the days to visit and walk around Zurich. While Winterthur is more of a peaceful town where only locals live, Zurich is a bigger city full of attractions for tourists. For the most part we walked along Bahnhofstrasse, which is the equivalent of Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The street goes through the entire city and ends at Lake Zurich, a gorgeous lake that overlooks the city.

We decided to grab coffee and sweets at Sprüngli, one of Zurich’s most popular cafes. Luckily, we were one of the last groups of people to get a table and as we left there was a long line out the door. Sometimes famous places may be a bit too overhyped, but the coffee exceeded all of the expectations that I had. Even though we were in Zurich for much of the day, there is still a lot more to see and I’m excited to visit the city many more times as I study here.  

Tomorrow I begin the next step of studying abroad as orientation begins. I’m eager to meet even more people that are studying at the school and to begin to get a feel for the school from an academic standpoint. It will be intriguing to see how much things differ from Loyola and how I’ll be able to adjust.

 

Till next time!

Radek