Thursday, December 02, 2010 -

Day Two

Woke up at 11 am today to get ready for work, which I guess is around 4am here in Züg. Its begun snowing over the morning here…the great big tree that sits directly below my hotel room is completely covered in snow, looking like something from a Tim Burton movie.

I set out my clothes, take a bath and get some reading done before heading down for some breakfast. The cheeses, cold cuts and waxed meats in Switzerland are great, I am planning to eat my weight’s worth in salami, pepperoni and chorizo by the time my trip ends.

After getting some instructions from a bald Swiss guy reeking of cigarette smoke and alcohol, I take a bus down to Baar, Züg where my work place is supposed to be. Apparently my workplace is in a sub-district of Baar which is a sub-district of Züg, which is one of the sub-states of Switzerland. Needless to say, I somehow overshot my location by 5 bus stops and had to re-trace the bus route back to my work place in zugersträusse based on the directions of passerbys. After 25 minutes of walking, I reach my destination.

The office building itself looks great. All sleek and modern, decked out in metal and glass. A piazza greets you once you pass the reception area and I reach just in time for our weekly Monday meeting with the 8 office branches. I walk into the piazza full of people, dressed like the Michelin tyre man and try to blend into the crowd. The head of the office in Seoul gives us an update of the opening of the new office branch and the current political climate over there, I almost manage to look semi-interested. Almost.

I bump into my co-worker from Singapore mid-way through the presentation and shortly after we get introduced to the marketing services team in Züg. My direct boss, Réto Börlin is a great guy, real warm and friendly without any airs to him and I meet our fellow team mates, Manuéla Korner and Cornelia Hüber. Cornelia gives me a tour of the place.

The place is great; big video conference rooms, color-coordinated office system furniture, a built-in kitchen for preparing client lunches and half of the third level is a really nicely designed cafeteria with a great view of the mountains. Its probably my favourite part of the place and a great place for having informal discussion sessions with colleagues. The pantry area is stocked chockfull of bottled drinks and I laugh at the fake Starbucks coffee logo on the wall; its called Wiestlibucks coffee, named after one of the founders of the firm, who’s apparently some kinda coffee nut.

After a few training sessions and spending a quarter of the day getting IT to work out the kinks at my temporary work-station, I knock off at 7 plus. All shops in Züg close at 7 pm and 90% of the eating places too so I decide to go back to the hotel and eat my fill in waxed meats and cheeses at the hotel buffet breakfast tomorrow morning.

To be Continued…

8:08 AM


Wednesday, December 01, 2010 -

Since its helluva Boring here in Switzerland and I'm stuck here for 2 weeks... well I'm back to blogging again...

I'm gonna just write about my first day in Züg and blog about any other interesting anecdotes during my trip here....and for the heck of it and to emphasise on the dreariness of the place, I'm writing the whole thing in a super-dry,cynical, first person narrative alà Raymond Chandler in his Pulp noir stories...LOL...anyway here it goes:


My plane touches downs in Zürich airport at around 8 in the morning, Swiss time….15 mins short of me finishing my in-flight movie; ‘Despicable Me’.

The cold hits me the moment I disembark as I shuffle down to the inter-terminal rail that takes me to the customs counter and the baggage collection area at the other end of the airport.

I make my way out of the departure hall and down to the next building to get my train tickets to Züg, the Swiss train schedule and location map looks more complex then Genghis Khan’s family tree…. A half dozen transportation companies offering a whole range of routes with more travel packages then I can fathom. 450 Swiss francs for a single person train pass? I didn’t know that Day-light robbery had been legalised in this country. I grab the 99 bucks special pass, a ticket to Züg and get the hell out of there.

The train ride takes 45 minutes, my `second class’ cabin is almost empty, I set down my luggage and slump into my seat. The train speeds pass countless tunnels covered in graffiti, snow covered trees and semi-constructed buildings. Railway tracks snake off in a dozen directions as far as my eye can see….everything looks bleak and dreary from my seat.

The whole place looks like communist Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. My train reaches its destination, I walk out and it finally hits me that I’m basically at the Ass-end of nowhere.

Züg, Switzerland is a small, quaint town in Switzerland, where any semi-interesting activity of any kind ceases by 7 pm Swiss time.....shopping malls are closed, restaurants calls for last orders at 5.30pm, entire rows of shop houses are closed for the day by evening…

I somehow forest-gump my way to the hotel, Lowén. It’s situated by the lake; a 4 star hotel apparently…I shudder to find-out what a 2 star hotel here looks like here….maybe the cardboard box that was used to package Wenjun’s new 3D flat-screen TV??

I unload my stuff and take a long hot shower. The TV in the room has 43 channels; 42 channels are in Deutch and 1 in English and its CNN. Damn. After watching 5 minutes of Spongebob in German…I give up.

There’s a flea market going on in the square below my hotel; I grab my camera and head out. Fur coats, boots, gloves, waxed and preserved meat, local treats and huge wheels of two dozen types of cheeses are all on display. I even see a couple operating the amazing Cheese contraption they had at the swiss café in Raffles city, I buy myself a plate of cheesy goodness and fall in love all over again for a second time.

After that, I go exploring with my camera. Apparently 90% of shops are closed on a Sunday; it looks like the set of Residential Evil 2 movie here. I make my way across the back-alley shop houses behind the hotel and see some bizarre procession going on, with grown men and women dressed in medieval wear, capes and wooden axes being led into a 140 year old church. I take a stroll to the pier, photographing ducks and seagulls and proceed all the way to what is supposed to be the most ‘Happening’ place in Züg; their one and only shopping mall called Metalli.

Well, the only thing ‘happening’ about this mall is…Nothing. Its closed on a Sunday. Dammit.

I go across to the shops near the railway station to see if I can find anything of interest. I find a DVD shop there…Salvation at last I thought to myself….To my abject horror, I found out that every single DVD in the store is dubbed in German. Double Dammit. So are the magazines. TRIPLE DAMMIT.

I back-track and head back towards my hotel area for dinner, I settle on a small café near my hotel and order a plate of Pasta Carbonara, it costs 22 Swiss Francs, the small glass of flat Coke that came with it costs 4.50 Swiss Francs. Apparently that’s the standard rate for food here; ain’t no food courts here.

I slink back to my hotel, huddle under the sheets and go to bed, the next day is a working day and I still have to figure out how to decipher their Public transport route system....

To Be Continued...........

5:34 AM