A tour of Zürich Altstadt, and a trip to Ulm

Alex came home from school today with a very long face. "Mom," he told me, "something very, very bad happened at school today."

Oh?

"All the mommies came to school today except you."

Oh...oh, oh, oh nein!

I ran to Alex's semester calendar: today was marked "Besuchsmorgan," and it turns out that means a parent's visitation day. Listening to Alex tell me how lonely he was in school, with all the other moms there but not me, I felt worse and worse. I remember the days when parents or grandparents were allowed to come to school when I was a kid, and have vivid memories of my grandparents visiting in Kindergarten, even: as a kid, those were the best days of the year.

And then, when Ella came home and behaved snappishly, it came out that there was also an open day in her classroom, and she, too, was the only one without a special visitor there.

This is far from my finest parenting hour.

But the kids were mostly philosophical about it, understanding that it was an accident (for both of them were as surprised as I was about the special day, and I swear there wasn't a thing about it on Ella's calendar). Ella decided to look on the bright(ish) side. "I suppose it's just as well that this happened. You couldn't be in both of our classes at the same time, and so one of us would have been very jealous and angry."  Yes, at least I disappointed everyone equally.

Instead of being an attentive mother, I was busy taking a walking tour of the Zürich Altstadt, or old city, with my integration class.  And, in spite of the drizzly weather and the subsequent guilt, I really did enjoy my morning.

Some of the original stonework of
the church, rescued from the
Protestant Reformation

The face of the clock measures almost
9 meters in diameter.

Nesting storks, seen from the watchtower.

The highlight was the beginning, when we got to climb the clock tower of St. Peter's Church, which is closed to the general public but, this morning, was opened to us so that we could enjoy a stunning view of the city.

The site first housed a church in the 700s; the current church was built in 1460, and then it was reformed by the Protestants in 1706.  The church is most notable for its clock face, which is the largest in Europe, with numbers and clock hands of solid gold.   Wait until I tell the kids.

Beautiful Zurich

Some awfully loud bells

The steeple of the church, which we got to climb and climb to the top, was used as the city's lookout until the early 1900s: every fifteen minutes the watchman would survey for signs of fire.

(Apparently, in the Swiss city of Lausanne, there is still a watchman, in charge of calling out the hour and declaring the "All's well.")

These days the only thing marking the hour is the church bells, with particularly long chimes at 11:00 (traditionally, to call the farmers in from the fields for lunch; now, to notify the city's hobbits that it is time for elevensies.)  The quarter-hours are also marked by a few chimes: we were made painfully aware of this when we happened to be standing next to the bells at 10:45.  After that, we made a big point of hustling out of the tower to be back on the ground before the hour.

Karl der Große

The saints of Zürich

We next visited Grossmünster, which was originally a monastery. According to legend, Karl der Große (or Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, as you like) commissioned its building when, as he was riding, his horse, of its own accord, knelt at the burial site of three patron saints of Zürich.  Images of these three headless saints are all over the city, to the gory fascination of my children. The saints were tortured and then beheaded in defense of their faith, but they subsequently picked up their heads, walked across their city, dug their own graves, and then buried themselves properly

And who says the Swiss aren't stubborn? And incessantly tidy?

Hildergard and Berta, daughters of
King Ludwig and the first Frauen
of Fraümunster

The brave women
of 1292.

We learned a few other stories of Zürich as well. We visited Fraümunster, the abbey counterpart of Grossmünster and the third of the prominent churches in the Altstadt (all located within a less than a kilometer of one another). Founded in 853, it is Zürich's oldest building. The abby was built by a King Ludwig for his two princesses, and the daughters of other aristocracy lived there as well.  Originally, all of Zürich belonged to these nuns, allowing them to maintain the standard of living to which they were accustomed. (Control of the city eventually handed over to the city guilds in the 1300s, the same guilds that we saw marching in the Sechseläuten parade.)

And then we went up to Lindenhof and noted the fountain commemorating the brave women who lived in  Zürich in 1292, who headed off an attack by the Habsburgs by dressing in their husbands' clothing and posing as a fighting army.

Things are looking up: Ella, reading to her brothers.

And at this point you'll have to forgive me: I realize that, in the last six months, you've read more about Zürich and Swiss history than you've cared to.  But the Swiss love these stories, and it's hard not to get caught up in them when their evidence is all around.

After our tromp around the city, Joey and I had to run home to pick up some last-minute lunch things and meet the (sadly neglected) kids. But conciliatory hugs and the bustle of packing for Legoland healed most wounds; by 2:00, I had three happy kids trailing after me to the Hauptbahnhof.  Dennis was close behind, and by the time he caught up, the kids were nose-deep in a rare treat: new books, English books, that I'd ordered from Amazon.uk.

Joey, meticulously staying in the lines.

When we travel, I like to play a little game called "how long can I distract the kids before they ask for the iPhone so that they can play Plants vs. Zombies." Dennis and I did pretty well this trip: it helped that Ella's really in love with a new author, and Alex and Joey, after their busy morning, were in a contented mood. We made it most of the way to Ulm, over three hours of travel time.  I'll call that a minor victory.

Blueberries and Richard Scarry make for a contented Alex.

My little troopers,
hauling our luggage
through Ulm.

When we arrived in the Ulm Hauptbahnhof, Ella immediately noticed a Pizza Hut, and so, for dinner, we had our first American-style pizza in half a year.  Unfortunately, we took a little too long eating: by the time we finished and walked up the street to Ulm Münster, the famous cathedral, the entrance doors had been locked for fifteen minutes.  We'd made a point of stopping in Ulm so that we could see this church. Yet, although I was disappointed that we were shut out, the exterior alone was worth the overnight stay.

Maybe some day, when the kids are older and a little stronger, we'll return and see the stained glass and climb to the top: apparently, at the end of the final stairway, at the very top of the steeple, there's scarcely room for a single person. It's the tallest church in the world, and, from 1890 until 1901, it was also the tallest building in the world. And, although this Gothic building was completed in 1890, the first foundation stone was laid over five hundred years earlier, in 1377.

Seriously! Five hundred years!

Unfortunately, our day wasn't over with the visit to the cathedral. We still had to find our hotel.  When we booked this trip, we had a terrible time finding a place that could accommodate our apparently enormous family. We couldn't find a single hotel in the center of Ulm that would allow more than two children per room.  And, if there were two children staying, there had to be a proportionate number of adults.  So we ended up finding a Comfort Hotel way outside town.

Funnily, when we got to the taxi stand, we realized that our family is also too large to fit in any of Ulm's taxis.  So Dennis (and thank goodness for Dennis) visited the tourist bureau and figured out how to get to the hotel by public transportation.  Unfortunately, it wasn't clear how close the hotel was to the train stop.  Dennis figured it could be anywhere from 100 meters to a mile.

The theme for the day: dragging our suitcases down long
stretches of road

Ella made this very useful map of
our hotel room.

The latter, it turned out, but the kids were too excited about the prospect of staying at a hotel to care much.  Ella and Alex both remembered how, at the last few hotels we'd stayed at, there were candies on the pillows. Their expectations were much higher than mine for this place, and, as we walked, I fingered the emergency bag of skittles in my purse, planning to dash ahead of them to leave a treat on their beds.  

But there, like magic, were little bags of gummy bears and pez on each pillow in our hotel room. 

And there were magic cupboards, besides!

Sometimes things do work out. But it was well-earned.  Those kids did well today.