Visiting Google and ETH

We've now been here two full days, and are mostly over the jetlag.

Friday was centered on visiting Google, about a 5 minute walk from our temporary apartment.  We arrived in time to join my new team for lunch, and then got a tour of the office.  Each floor has a theme: Jungle, Sports, Bunker, and many more, with lots of fun decorations.  Here I am next to a Street View car outside the office:

That evening we went to the Google Picnic at a park overlooking Lake Zurich.  We had some great conversations with friendly Googlers from Canada, China, Germany, and Sweden.  So far I haven't met anyone in the Google office  who is actually from Switzerland!

Yesterday (Saturday) we dropped in on Crossfit Zurich and had a nice chat with the owner.  We were relieved that it is not terribly expensive, so we will start workouts there early next week.

Then we did some grocery shopping at a big local "Coop" supermarket.  It's very different from Seattle, but we were able to find lots of great food, even organic.  It is more expensive than Seattle, but not too bad.  The only thing we're really missing so far is good peanut butter!

After lunch we went over to the university (ETH) and scouted around, finding the buildings Claire will have classes in, and figuring out the best ways to and from the University from the other side of the city.

We ended the day with a bike ride out along the river to the "Viadukt", where there are some very high-end food stores, like some of the fancy shops at Granville Island in Vancouver.  We found some peanuts (hand-roasted from Cameroon), sampled some very nice organic beer & cheese, and were given a little jar of hot mango chutney from a very friendly Swiss woman as a "welcome to Zurich!" gift.

The plan for today is to relax and "be touristy", and then visit the "International Protestant Church of Zürich" this evening.