Hiking Mt. Pilatus at our one year anniversary!

Claire and I have been in Switzerland one year as of today!

We finally did one of the most popular day trips from Zurich, yesterday, with a group from IPC: the Mt. Pilatus round trip, going up from Luzerne by gondola (and also hiking up 874 meters of the final stage), and then taking the cog railway down the other side, and then back to Luzerne by boat.  Pictures of that are below.

With one year behind us, I thought I'd do a "best of" / "worst of" summary of what we think of Switzerland so far. Of course, what we miss most is our families, and also our church community and friends at Mars Hill Seattle.

But, considering Switzerland specifically, starting with the 5 best things:

1. People are friendly.  We had been warned that the Swiss are very reserved, but we've not found that to be a problem.  Also, Zurich is full of ex-pats from other countries, so we frequently find ourselves in conversations with interesting people who (for example) grew up in Sweden and then worked in Hong Kong for 10 years and have a girlfriend in Spain but live and work here... 
2. Fantastic transit system. Almost anywhere we want to go at nearly any time, there are good, fast transit options, all in one well-coordinated network.  Buses typically leave from train stations just a few minutes after the train arrives, so you can connect quickly and easily.  Everything is on time, of course. We have the SBB (Swiss Bundesbahn) app on our phones so can easily check schedules and even get tickets on the go.
3. Great health care system, easy to use even in English.  We've unfortunately had a lot of experience with it.  There's also a neat network of "Vita Parcours", each of which is a kind of trail-running + 13 exercise stations with jumping, pullups, rings, and more along the way, so it's easy to stay fit. Lots of people run and bike.
4. Beautiful scenery full of excellent hiking, walking, and biking trails everywhere, wonderfully marked and well maintained.  It's nearly impossible to get lost.
5. Efficient and friendly government services.  Paperwork you'd expect to take hours and days of frustration in the US is accomplished in minutes with a minimum of fuss.

And the 5 worst things:

1. Far too many people smoke.  We put up with the stink of cigarette smoke every time we wait at a transit stop, walk down the street, and even in the evenings at home it blows through our apartment when our upstairs neighbor stands outside for his evening smoke.  It's disturbing how many young people smoke and how much cigarette advertising there is.
2. Eating out and other services are really expensive.  We easily pay three times what it costs in Seattle to eat out, have a cup of coffee at Starbucks, or get a haircut.  Of course, the upside of this is that even hairdressers and baristas can afford to live in Zurich, get three weeks of vacation per year, and the same great health care as everyone else.  But Claire cuts my hair, and everyone bags their own groceries in the supermarket.
3. We can't easily buy a lot of food items here. Jalepeno peppers are a year-old memory.  Mexican food is one shelf of "Old El Paso" products in the supermarket.  Fresh salsa? Forget it.  Hot sauce?  Only Tabasco and Sambal Olek.  There's lots of beers, but they're mostly the same-tasting boring lager style. Ales are mostly imports, and there are no IPAs.  We really miss PCC markets in Seattle!
4. Beyond food, many other products are unavailable or overpriced. There's no Amazon or anything like that for Switzerland, and very little competition, so clothing, electronics, sports equipment, books, and more are overpriced or not available at all.  Internet shopping here is like internet shopping in the US in 2000.
5. Learning German isn't easy here. Our sincere desire to gain some fluency in German didn't even last a year.  The problem is that people's first language is Swiss German, not real German.  So you rarely hear people speaking German. When interacting with Swiss people, when they realize you don't speak Swiss, they switch directly to English.  That makes it hard to practice, and removes a lot of the motivation.

Overall, the positives outweigh the negatives, and we like living here.  It has been a good year, and certainly went quickly!

And now some pictures of the Pilatus trip:

Half way up Pilatus, where we got out of the gondola and started hiking.

The hike started out easy, through grassy cow pastures

But then it got steep, and stayed steep for a consistent hard climb, 874 meters up

Here's most of the group from IPC we were hiking with

The little chapel is where we stopped for lunch, with great views down both sides of the mountain.

The view from the chapel - the gondola coming up from below, across a huge chasm

The same gondola as the previous picture, continuing up into the clouds

And so did we, more slowly

Near the top, we joined a loop trail around the peak of the mountain which hangs off the cliff...

and also goes through several tunnels

And finally we reached the hotel.  Two hotels, in fact, as part of large complex with restaurants, gift shops, the train station, the gondola station, and full of busloads of tourists.

After a snack we took the cog railway (steepest in the world, they say) down to the lake on the other side of the mountain.

It was less cloudy on this side, and the views were excellent.

We relaxed in the sun for an hour on the way back to Luzerne, a nice way to end the hike.

The paddle-wheel boat had an exposed crank shaft where the huge pistons of the engine were driving the wheels. 

If you find that last picture interesting, here's a video I made...