This trip to Zurich is sponsored by Google... i.e., it's a work trip. But since work is fun, this turns into a pretty awesome opportunity. Been here a few days and just going to blast this post with pics. Not feeling like typing too much.
Funny thing... this morning at breakfast in the hotel, I noticed a familiar face. I *thought* it was someone I met at the Cambridge office, but it was actually a fellow named Nao, whom I met when I visited the Tokyo office last year! He's here with some team members for a group "gathering", as he said. Nice guy. Small world!
S2 train from the airport to the main station. I think it looks like a sub on the inside!
Nice comfy bed. And tiny little bathroom with clear shower walls. No reason to close that shower curtain!
Another view of the bed.
Random night shot in the Old City.
B2 Hotel and Spa library/cafe. This hotel is about 50 steps from the Google office, which is convenient. The lights are old wine bottles!
Some more views of the Old City.
Back in the hotel lobby.
The library is about 3 stories tall.
Mouth of the river in the Old City.
Random building along the river mouth walkway. I think those are bronze plates there. Interesting.
Alps in the distance.
Looks like Maiden is going to be in town. Will have to arrange for another work trip.
Mini fridge in the room. The important thing here is the box of chocolate. It lasted about 20 hours.
And this is a little shop which sells sheets of chocolate! If I had any way to transport this stuff, I'd empty the store!
Main station downtown.
It's kind of hard to see, but that's a little water taxi heading under the bridge. The bridges are quite low, so it seems the water taxis had to evolve to fit under them. It's amazing seeing evolution in action!
Just some cute side streets in Old Town. Everything's cobblestone here. Walking 5 hours on cobblestone is kind of rough on the feet.
So, the flight from JFK was on an old 767. Look at those controls! Dials!
Here's the 20% area where we're camping out here in the Zurich office (ZRH, as we say in the industry.) It's modeled after a cave/tunnel. The far wall on the right is actually the tunneling machine. You can see the fake rocks in the back corner, and a hint of them on the top right. They look quite realistic. So realistic that they had to put a Do Not Climb sign up.
Here's the walkway down to the 20% area ("20%" at Google refers to the policy where Google allows us to work on side projects, pretty much whatever we want, for up to 20% of our time. Just need manager approval. It's a pretty awesome idea.) Yes, that's fake construction tape on the walls. One of my coworkers from Cambridge is here, and he said he saw the tape and thought this was really a construction zone.
Here's an interesting lighted Google logo on the wall on the way to the 20% area.
Here we have a sample of the free ice cream that's just sitting there in the freezer in the cafe. Just slide open the door and take what you want. How do they expect me to control my ice cream intake with this just sitting there for the taking?!
Here we have the fresh orange juice machine. They load it with oranges on top, and it juices them on the spot. The BEST juice ever.
And here is the slide from the 1st floor to the cafe below. Fully functional, as I found out last night. They also had the new hires slide down during the introductions at the Friday afternoon office meeting (every week, every office has catered meetings/get-togethers).
