Walks along the Limmat, to the Kunsthaus and finding “YHWH” in a church
One of the American-born women at Or Chadash suggested that we could eat a decent, reasonable, breakfast near the Limmatplatz which was only a few blocks away from our hotel or at the new development at the Viaduct. So, after Mark paid for another day’s parking on the street, we set off for the day.
The setup at the Markthalle in the Viaduct is rather high end, suggesting a significant transformation of the neighborhood. We were not familiar with Johannesbeeren, red currants from the gooseberry family.
We did enjoy a good breakfast. Mark checked out the local version of hashbrowns and Debbie the Swiss muesli.
It was odd to see shops for surfing gear up in the mountains far from any waves.
Crossing the Limmat at the Dammstasse, we walked back into town along the east (or right) bank of the river. We enjoyed a glorious sunny day with sweetpeas
berries
lilac
and sunglasses
growing along our path.
We made a point of stopping at the Platzspitz the point of land where the Sihl and the Limmat join. A spot that had been a favorite of James Joyce who lived in Zurich where he wrote Exiles, published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and began serious work on Ulysses.
Walking thorough the train station, we crossed the Bahnhoffbrücke, down the Limmatquai and then up into the Old Town over to the Kunsthaus where we ate our picnic lunch. Inside we saw the largest collection of Giacometti sculptures we’d ever encountered. And then room after room of amazing 20th century masterpieces. Even the corridors and exhibition halls were beautifully designed.
We then walked down the same street when leaving the Dolder two days earlier. Mark recalled being stopped at a traffic signal and seeing a philatelist which seems quite rare since the development of the public Internet, email and the self-adhesive stamp. A few months earlier Debbie had learned of a series of stamps produced by France that dealt with chocolate, featuring Bayonne. Unable to purchase them online, we stopped into the shop. Sure enough, we were able to score our stamps and others as well. (A couple of them are even “scratch and sniff”!)
The woman at Dor Chadash who had told us about the Viaduct also suggested that we see the Calatrava-redesigned underground station at Stadelhoffneplatz which was only a few blocks further along, near the quai. And so we continued on. We needed to ask a few people where to go and what to look for, but we found the site. It’s not as impressive as any of his bridges and we expect that the station at the World Trade Center he has designed (even with modifications will be much more expressive. We have now seen Calatrava’s work in Bilbao, Jerusalem, Seville, Valencia, (and while it’s not on his list of notable works, we think we saw a bridge by him in Lorca, Spain) and Zurich where he has one of his corporate offices.
On our way back to “our” side of the Limmat we bought a cone of Mövenpick ice cream and once again (for the last time this trip) crossed the Quaibrüke, taking our picture facing the opposite direction, into town.
We aimed for the churches indicated by the two towers between our heads in the photo above.
The steeple over Debbie’s head: Fraumünster church which holds stained glass windows by Chagall and by Augusto Giacometti (second cousin to Giovanni Giacometti, Alberto’s father). They don’t permit photography in the church (which did not stop the woman sitting next to us), but you can see some photographs of the windows here. These windows, while lovely, were clearly didactic and much more like the windows at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. We both preferred the Chagall windows we had seen in Mainz.
The steeple over Mark’s head is of the St. Peters Kirche and boasts the largest clock face in Europe (at 8.7m in diameter), visible from this distance. Not that we cared a great deal about that. We had been more impressed by the clocks in Prague. What was of interest in the St. Peters Kirche was this above the pulpit:
Yes, indeed, that is the Tetragrammaton. And, the quote is from Matthew 4:10:
The full text of Matthew 4:10 is:
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
However, as is clear, Matthew quotes Deuteronomy 6:13:
Thou shalt be in awe of the LORD thy God, and worship only Him.
אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ תִּירָא, וְאֹתוֹ תַעֲבֹד
Mark does not know much German, and our reading of Gothic typefaces is even worse. However, he can count, and it seems from the number of words and what we can understand of the German, the only part of Matthew 4:10 that is painted above the pulpit in this church is actually Deuteronomy 6:13! It was probably inappropriate to quote from the Torah, but quoting from a Gospel text quoting Torah was a safe way to sneak in the new Protestant way of thinking.
A few meters from the plaza in front of St. Peters Kirche on, or under “Thermengasse” Mark explored a tiny narrow “street” consisting mostly of stairs, the remains of a Roman bathhouse found in the 1980s. Mark made sure (by getting on his hands and knees and reaching the camera under the grating) to take a photo of the little pillars that once held up the false floor for heating:
We had seen pretty much everything we had set out to explore in Zurich, including, even the Zunfthaus zur Meisen. But they had no chocolate pots.
Tired from a long day of walking and exploring, we headed back towards a café we had seen the day before. We walked back alongside St. Peters Kirche on Schlüsselgasse and a within few meters we were surprised to see a lovely little independently owned chocolate shop named Truffe.
We had a good conversation with the owner Elisabetta Capei, who told us about a couple of other chocolate shops in other towns we would be visiting. We said Auf Wiedersehen and continued on our way.
The café was near Kappelergasse and Fraumunstergasse. We ordered a little cheese tart, some tea and coffee and sat inside the little garden square in the building’s courtyard. A few minutes later, another couple (much younger than we) arrived and also sat enjoying the water in the fountain, the green and the birds. We asked if they would take our photo, and we took theirs as well.
We walked back to the hotel in time to change into Shabbat clothes before heading over to Or Chadash for Shabbat services. We made Kiddush with the congregation, explained a bit more about our “culinary” tour of Switzerland and then returned to Bubbles for dinner, only to learn that they open early and close early as well.
On the way back to the hotel, we ate at an intriguing (and decent) Italian restaurant: Il Cooperativo. Another site describes it as: “The Cooperativo is a typical middle-class restaurant of the fourth district. In summer, the huge street terrace is an inviting place for a drink or a meal. Interesting people, particularly from politics and the union, meet regularly here.” We arrived shortly after dusk. The evening was beginning to chill as we ate quietly that last night in Zurich.
And what a night it was! While the previous nights had been nearly silent, this night was loud and raucous with people yelling, bottles breaking, music blaring. Though the noise caused us to awaken a few times in the night it (perhaps because of all the walking and fresh air we had through the day) did not keep us awake.
