Zurich

As a crossroads of the financial world, Zurich sort of lived in my imagination as a glamorous setting for international intrigue and mystery.  I pictured bankers, spies and various chic people all drinking red wine together and plotting... um...something... against the backdrop of a gilded European metropolis.  However when I arrived late Sunday afternoon in advance of my Travel Channel shoot, I found what appeared to be a sleepy little medieval village.   The shops close early on Sundays, and there were few people out on the street.  Welcome to Zurich:  population 370,000.  Much smaller than I expected.



When I scouted the three main churches I'd be filming the next day in Old Town, I was surprised to see that they were all within about a two minute walk from each other.   
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Here's the Fraumunster, established in 853 as a convent for noblewomen.  The Abbesses of the Fraumunster held most of the power in Zurich until the Protestant Reformation in 1523.






Speaking of the reformation, just across the river is the Grossmunster where the city council voted to adopt Protestantism in 1523.









Back on the other side of the River Limmat is St. Peter's church (to the right of the Fraumunster).  These churches lack a lot of the ornamentation you might see in other houses of worship around Europe.  After reformation, the Protestant clergy ripped out the organs, statues and other Catholic iconography.
















St. Peter's dates back to the 8th or 9th century.  The structure you see today does not.  It was renovated and rebuilt in the 13th and 18th centuries.  The Fraumunster and the Grossmunster share similar stories.  One of the challenges in writing for TV is finding an entertaining way to tell people when a building in Europe was constructed.  There's usually only a few seconds to do so, and most of these places took hundreds of years to reach their present state.  Instead of putting in a dozen qualifiers (ie, "While the choir was completed during the height of the Renaissance, the nave was built under the direction of Horace the Mad some several hundred years earlier"), I usually just say when construction began.



But enough about names and dates.  Here's a pic of yummy Aelplermagronen - a Swiss dish.  It's basically mac and cheese made with Gruyere, fried onions, potatoes and a side of apple sauce.  There were some cafes open late on Sunday catering to scattered tourists and students (Zurich is a big college town).  I had this.  Welcome to Zurich!