Craig's Blog: Zurich

Zurich First Impressions

So I've been in zurich for 3 days now, though it doesn't feel that way. (Before that, I was in NY for a week, which was wonderful as always. I saw friends, had an impromptu mini high-school reunion, and in great NY tradition spent a lot of time at meals.)

I've been working pretty hard, so when people come to visit, I can take time off and not feel bad. :-) Lots of people here work late into the night, actually, since that's prime workday time in California. The office is almost entirely engineers -- also, almost entirely guys -- some native Swiss but most from somewhere else, either elsewhere in Europe or transplants from Mountain View. There are about 20 people in the office in total. It's nice to be in an office again which is small enough for everyone to each lunch together. (Which we do.)

A few things I've noticed so far:

1. It's snowed almost every day I've been here. Unlike in the northeast, the snow hasn't become all brown and ugly! It's a beautiful thing to see. Mostly this is because they don't salt or sand the streets, I think. In general, there's little driving here; the city doesn't have a rush hour (except on the trains).
2. In swiss apartments, the bathroom is divided into two rooms: one small room for the toilet, and another small room somewhere else for the shower. I'm slowly growing accustomed to this.
3. Despite my worries, everyone here speaks English, from the supermarket cashiers to the Ikea delivery men (don't ask). I was walking with someone from work who grew up here, who ran across a school friend on the street, and they greeted each other in English.
4. There are lots of Italian restaurants here. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as Switzerland borders Italy. The waiters all speak English too.
5. I've not had much chocolate yet, but even the generic supermarket cheese is really, really good.

What's Zurich Like

Some photos of my first few days in Zurich:

Zurich Ski Trip

Last weekend-ish was the google ski trip in davos. (Now when I read about the World Economic Forum, I can put a face to the place!) The town itself was actually pretty ugly; apparently most swiss ski resorts are. I'll have to find my quaint chalets elsewhere.

The mountains were beautiful though, and the skiing was great. I finally reaped the reward for all the snowing it's been doing here recently! Skiing in CH is different than in the US, because the mountains go way above the treeline. So most of my skiing was done in these wide-open spaces:

The apres-ski is also different than what I'm used to, where everyone ends up entertaining in their hotel suites/condos/rented houses. That doesn't really happen in switzerland ever, and certainly not for skiing. Everyone goes out. One big problem with that is that everyone smokes, as well. All my clothes got really stinky. On the plus side, the way we went out was via sleds (our hotel is on a big hill).

This ski trip was the first time in my life where I ate fondue and didn't feel like I had a big, stringy rock in my stomach afterwards. Swiss food makes more sense, when you eat it while skiing.

The goal of the ski trip, to have Googlers bond together, was entirely successful, at least from my end. Yay ski trips!

"It's Better in the Summer"

In an exciting change of pace, it's not snowing while I'm writing this blog entry. It's raining! I'm hoping this is a portent of spring to come. I'm trying to get used to the fact that when it's 5 degrees warmer centigrade, that's actually a lot.

Last week I explored Switzerland, making it to: the quaint medieval towns of Schaffhausen and Stein am Rhein, the oddly-commercial-for-a-medieval-town of Berne, the teeny town of Murten (for a carnival that the web said was happening but the physical evidence said was not), through Berne again to the vertical town of Fribourg, and then through Berne yet again to the ski town of Zermatt, where I skiied and took approximately 200 pictures of the Matterhorn. Finally back to Zurich (guess through where), which included a trip to the local supermarket for chocolate bars.

Given that I hate travelling alone, this implies I had visitors: Melanie, my best friend from high school, and her husband Mike. Yay! In addition to visiting quaint medieval towns, seeing strange fountains -- the swiss have a thing for fountains --, eating lots and lots of chocolate and cheese, and skiing in the alps, we finished off the trifecta (5-fecta?) of swiss tourist tradition by witnessing some traditional swiss horn playing. All this was tied together by a convenient and punctual train system. So Swiss!

This sounds like a lot of fun, perhaps, and it was. (Though I'm happy to have this weekend to recover from all that adventuring.) Even so, our trusty Rough Guide would invariably, for every place we visited including ski-village Zermatt, say, "It's best visited in the summer." I guess that just means I'll have to do this trip again in a few months!

My Daily Bread

Some folks have wondered what I actually do day-to-day, workwise. I often wonder this myself. :-)

A lot of what I do isn't that different from what I'd be doing in Mountain View. I spend a lot of time on email, advising for the various projects I'm advising on, or answering questions about code I wrote long ago, or fixing bugs I notice (or are pointed out to me). The big difference here is I do most of this work late at night, when Mountain View is awake.

I also spend a lot of time working on my mail project, which is open-sourcing part of Google's codebase. This involves actual programming on my part, to extricate the code from the bowels of Google so it can live on its own, and to work on bulletproofing it so it works on different systems and with a minimum of fuss. It's a time-intensive process, even for the smallish projects we have so far. So far we've had lots of downloads and only a few complaints of things not working, which I'm hoping means our preparation work was successful. I'll definitely be doing lots more work in the coming months, though, to finish the bulletproofing. Nothing unearths problems like code actually being used!

All the above is the same work I'd be doing no matter where I am. I also do Zurich-specific stuff. A lot of this is to cement the ties between the Zurich office and the rest of Google -- already high, as many projects here span offices. For instance, I've given talks to discuss Google's visions of the future, and talks that look the other way, telling stories about our past. I've talked with engineers here about their projects, and helped people hook up with appropriate people in other offices who might be able to help them with problems.

A special interest of mine at the Zurich office is hiring -- I figured that while I'm out here, I can give talks and interviews and what-not to help with recruiting. So far we've spent lots of energy doing the preparation for that, figuring out strategies and so forth. It makes me feel like I'm in a small company again!, trying to work out the first principles that will make us successful in the long term. Our goal with the Zurich office is to get all the top engineers (for us) in Europe, working at Google Switzerland. That's a lot of territory to cover, but as our plans come together I'm excited to see what might happen.

And I'm also here to lend an outsider's view of the offices here. Sometimes living in Switzerland too long blinds you to the important things about living here. For instance, we have TGIF every friday, but until last week we had never had a chocolate-tasting TGIF. How could this be? So last week we went and bought 20 different types of chocolate bars (not nearly all of them: next time we could pick an entirely different set of 20) and some appropriate wine and beer to go with them. OK, so I felt a little ill afterwards. But sometimes one must make sacrifices in the pursuit of knowledge.

Little Things

A few weeks ago, my friends Christophe and Tessa came to visit, and we went to Italy. It reminded me how much more fun it is to travel when you're with cool people. Haggling with street-sellers in Florence is more fun when you're in a group, and Cinque Terre is more fun when there's actual kissing going on at the kissing chair.

My friends are gone, but I'm still compelled to travel, figuring that I'll never be better situated to explore Western Europe, and with a Eurail pass burning a hole in my pocket. So last weekend I travelled -- alone -- to Berlin.

The big advantage of traveling by myself is that nobody cares if I want to spend 30 minutes in the Netherlandish Art section of the Gemuldemuseum -- seeing in real life what I had before studied in school -- or if I want to walk to seemingly every corner of Berlin. I got to see imperial sites (Egyptian museum, churches), WWII sites (Reichstag, Jewish Museum, book-burning memorial), and Cold war sites (Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin wall). I saw all the construction downtown, and tried to tell by the architecture when I was in East Berlin and when I was in West Berlin.

The downside of traveling by myself is all the little things that went wrong got to me. There seemed to be a lot of them. I had reserved my hotel over the web in what was billed as the rich, residential part of town, which it may be, but if so then my hotel was bordered on each side by rich, residential strip clubs. I didn't feel better when the proprieter insisted on payment in cash (it actually turned out to be a very nice place).

My biggest irritations were consistent misplan. For instance, I would decide to put off going to someplace until Sunday, only to find it closed on Sunday. Or I would visit two neighboring museums in the wrong order, visiting the one that closed late first, and the one that closed early -- well, not at all, since it was closed by the time I got to it. Or I would walk right past a memorial I meant to see (how could I miss it?) and then have to trudge all the way back to it. At one point I muttered to myself, "Subway line 6, subway line 6" repeatedly as I proceeded to locate on the map, and then walk to, subway line 8. When you only have a weekend, 45 minutes to recover from a subway mistake is a long time! Then on the way home I not only got off at the wrong train station (though one close to the right one), I left a library book on the train.

That was almost a week ago, and now time has put it all in perspective -- well, not the lost library book -- and I remember more the amazing Egyptian Temple room in the Pergamon museum and the funky Turkish neighborhood in East Berlin, then all the troubles I had getting to those places. But I can't help thinking that having travelling companions would have helped me put it in perspective at that time!

Regardless, I figured I'd learn from my mistakes and do better next time. So, tomorrow I leave (alone again) for a weekend in Rome. I found a hotel, got my train reservations...and only then thought to check what the weather is like in Rome this weekend. Ah well, maybe I'll do better next next time.

Paying for My Mistakes

It was at about 3:30am this morning, on the night train from Rome to Milan, that I began to get homesick. Not for California in particular, or Switzerland, or even Florida. Basically, I was homesick for anywhere that wasn't on that fucking train. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen: riding through the night in a packed, six-person, no-bed, second class train cabin is no fun at all.

How is it I've come to know this? Well you may wonder, especially since I had in hand a reservation on a cozy couchette bed -- I had never thought to apply those words all together before -- on the night train from Rome to Zurich. The basic problem was I wasn't on the night train from Rome to Zurich, due to my inability to consistently read a 24-hour clock. By the time I made it to the train station, in what I thought was plenty of time for my train, said train was an hour outside Rome.

Having missed my train, I had two choices. One was to try to find a hotel room for the night and try to get home the next day. But finding my first hotel room had been hard enough, due to all the Pope stuff, and I didn't relish wandering around Rome at 11pm looking for another one. So I took the second choice, which was to take the remaining overnight train of the day -- it turned out to be going to Milan -- and work on getting from there to Zurich in the morning.

So I went to the ticket booth and asked to change in my now-useless couchette reservation for another one on the Milan train. Can I just trade my reservation for a new one? "No!" The ticket man was pretty emphatic. "The train left! Ticket, it no good anymore!" He tore my ticket up into pieces. No arguing the ticket isn't good anymore, now. Perhaps I could get another reservation, then, for the Milan train? "Too late for making reservations. Ask the conductor, maybe places left."

I wait for the train -- here the action, picking up, switches to the present tense -- which arrives in due course and is immediately mobbed by the entire remaining population of the train station. I see lots of passengers, but no conductor. I decide to just get in at a random car and figure it out from there. This car is all second-class seat-cabins, which are tiny rooms with six seats, three facing three. They're kind of like airplane seats, only less cushiony, non-reclining, and with negative legroom (since you have to share your tiny legroom space with your neighbor opposite). But luckily I find a cabin with only one other person in it! We can both spread out across a row of seats, making our own couchette! Who needs a conductor, anyway?

As it turns out, *I* need a conductor, if for no other reason than to tell me the train car I'm in is not actually headed to Milan. I, silly thing that I am, thought that if you have a single train, it would go on a single route. But not so with night trains in Europe. Halfway through the night, they have a big train-car swap meet, where all these trains get together and swap their cars around. So, while some cars on this train were headed for Milan, others were headed to God-knows-where. I was on one of those others, a fact I found out just by sheer good luck when my cabin-mate mentioned the fact. Well, more like sheer pretty-good luck, since he didn't happen to mention it until 30 seconds before the train was scheduled to leave.

On further careful, but quite quick probing, I discover the Milan cars are quite a number of train cars down the track. I have 30 seconds to get to one of these cars. I rush out the train, run down the track, and ask everyone I see, "Does this car go to Milan"? Twenty seconds to go, ten. "Milan? Milan?" Finally someone nods yes, and I jump on. Three seconds to spare.

The situation in this new train car is entirely different from that in my first train car. It's still 6-seat cabins, but these cabins are all packed to the gills, which more people are hanging out in the main aisle that the cabins open up to. I struggle down the aisle, dodging the aisle-people and peeking into each cabin I pass. All full, so I go through to the next train car. ("Does this car go to Milan?") Same story: full cabins, packed aisles. There's still no conductor to be seen. I struggle to the next car. ("Does this car go to Milan?") No space there either.

Finally I find an available seat. I have to decide: do I take the seat, or do I press on, hoping to find a couchette car, or a conductor, or even a first class cabin (which my eurail pass entitles me to)? Seeing all the people, and not knowing how many more Milan cars there are on the train anyway, I decide not to press my luck. I settle into the seat to wait out the night. (I never did find out where the aisle people were planning on sitting.)

Eventually, the train leaves, and we six try to sleep, each hunched over in our chair. I play a game where I try to figure out where I can put my legs so they don't run into the other 5 sets of legs in the tiny cabin. My feet are all pins and needles from walking all over Rome, and nothing is comfortable. The seat's like a rock. I shift around for a while. I'm clearly not going to sleep, even though I'm exhausted. The minutes drag on ("It must be 1:30 by now! Oops, it's only 12:45.") to the beat of one of my cabinmates, who it turns out snores. To top it all off, thanks to a busker in Piazza Navona I had encountered earlier in the day, I have the theme song to _Titanic_ running in a loop through my head. Performed on the pan flute.

But it's not until 3:30 that the air conditioning conks out. (I think it stopped because the train had no power during the 30 minutes they were reshuffling all the train cars to go to their respective final destinations.) Everyone else -- certainly the snoring guy -- is asleep, and the tiny cabin has no ventilation and six sources of body heat. My water bottle is long since empty. I can't reach the window without treading on 2 sets of legs, and I can't reach the aisle, which might lead to water or at least a cooler part of the train, without treading on 2 other sets of legs. I'm trapped, and it's 100 degrees. It's then I start composing, though only in my head, this narrative.

Finally, all the cars rearranged, the train moves again, the A/C sputters back to life, and eventually, eventually, it's 7am and the train is in Milan. An hour later I'm on an empty train to Zurich -- ah, to prop up my feet! ah, to lean back in my seat! -- and gosh if the time doesn't just fly by until I'm home.

This isn't to detract from my Roman holiday, even if the weather reports were spot on when they said it would rain both days (though they were wrong when they predicted a "light" rain). I kept to museums as much as possible, which was an excellent strategy, since the museums were probably the most amazing I've ever seen. (I kept taking pictures of the Roman frescos, some made with marble and as full of color as the day they were made, and so much more imaginative and playful than the 'public' busts and art.) Getting from place to place was a bit of a bother, though. I could choose to either wait for the bus in the rain -- bus stops aren't covered, and alas the subway doesn't go to most tourist sites -- or I could walk in the rain. Usually I got to do both.

But luckily, each day, the rain eased up by 5, giving me a perfect opportunity to roam the cobbled alleys, drop into a pizzeria or two (or three, or four) for a slice, and experience life as the Romans live it, all while the train with my name on it glided silently into the night.

Passover

I threw a Passover seder last week, which illustrated basically that I'm not good at estimating turnout for parties, and I'm not good at estimating food needs for parties. But not to keep you in suspense, the story has a happy ending.

Our tale begins thus: having been in my Google apartment for 2+ months, three bedrooms and no roommates, I decided I should really get my butt in gear and throw a housewarming party, even though this kind of entertaining at home is not really done in Zurich. Passover provided the perfect opportunity. I've thrown a passover seder for 3 or 4 years, and was looking forward to doing one again. Lots of people here have never been to a seder before, and quite a few didn't know what one was. So besides being a meal it was a good educational opportunity as well, fitting the spirit of the day.

I got me a co-host, a friend of a friend here who is not only Jewish but who comes from the Ancestral Homeland (namely, New York). She's here on a Fulbright and brought a whole new dimension to the guest list, which ended up consisting of a) the entire Google Zurich office, and b) ten or twenty (non-Swiss) folks from the local university.

A seder is, at heart, a dinner with a very special menu, so after writing up the guest list we went food shopping. (I had to leave work early, knowing all stores would close by 7.) We had no idea where to go -- unlike in the US, Swiss supermarkets don't stock ethnic holiday foods. Where to get Matzah, or horseradish, or Kosher wine? All we had was a pointer to the Jewish section of Zurich. I hadn't even known there was a Jewish section of Zurich -- Switzerland has not been a historic Jewish sanctuary -- but once we got there, sure enough: black hats, sideburns, yarmulkes, the whole bit.

We stopped by a random stationery shop and asked where to buy passover food, and got instructions to the big Passover Warehouse over by the train tracks. It is the greatest sadness of my trip so far, that I forgot to take pictures of this warehouse. It really was like being in the shipping district, with the trainyards right behind us and the goods piled to the ceiling. They had lots of passover food -- all of it imported -- and we bought more than enough. I think Lisa (my co-host) was a bit hungry when we went shopping. Also, excited by the chocolate-covered Matzah.

As I so cleverly foreshadowed earlier, more than the 20 expected people RSVPed yes. In fact, our final attendence ended up being 35 or so. I was a bit alarmed as the RSVPs rolled in: my common room can comfortably seat maybe 15, and who knew about the food? Plus, I had to do almost all the cooking, since Lisa was out of town until an hour before the seder started.

So I went shopping again -- it turns out some things, like turmeric, are just impossible to find in Swiss stores -- and set down to cook. I spent about 8 hours cooking, and when some guests came early ("can I help out?), I set them to cooking too. One poor soul I had peel and chop a dozen apples, which took her like an hour. (We ended up needing 4 of them, just one sign of how far off I was in judging guest appetites.)

The guests -- and my co-host! -- trickled in fashionably late, and it turns out a common room that fits 15 can actually fit 35 if you're sociable and willing to use a mattress or two for seating. I liked that, actually: while one of the noisest passovers I've ever been to, it was also very communal. People were really into it, even willing to read the hebrew prayers -- I told them what they were saying, first! -- and, sometimes, trying to sing along to the songs. There were even some kids there, making for an exciting search for the afikomen.

Cleaning up took two days, because in typical Swiss fashion, I was forbidden from running the dishwasher after 10pm. I still have some wine stains on my mattress I have to try to get out. But there ended up being enough space, more than enough for food, and an excess of fun. Isn't that what Passover is all about?

Beer and Chocolate

I ask the receptionist at the hotel in Amsterdam, "Is it supposed to rain either of the days that I'll be here?" If you don't know how she answered that question, you haven't been paying attention to this blog. But once again the weather-folks got it wrong, entirely failing to predict the period of hail.

This undoubtedly affected my view of the place. Keukenhof gardens were perhaps the most amazing gardens I've ever seen, but I enjoyed them much more in the fleeting minutes of sunlight than when it was pouring rain. Likewise, it's possible the Van Gogh museum wouldn't have been such a cafeteria-line experience if the weather had been nicer. Actually, going lock-step in a line through a museum has its advantages. It forces you to spend longer looking at each picture, since you can't move to the next one even if you wanted to!

Better than Amsterdam, though, was the Northern Belgium part of my trip. Partly this is because I was privileged to witness the Procession of the Sacred Blood. The Sacred Blood!! This is apparently blood caught in cloth from the crucifixion of Christ, and is Brugge's big religious relic. They parade it around town once a year, which happens to be when I was there. (The next day Brugge had nude art day. The Procession of the Sacred Blood is described in a guidebook as "colorful yet somber," which is probably exactly opposite of how nude art day was, though I don't know since I wasn't there, not finding out about it until later.) But mostly Belgium was so good because Belgian food places a big emphasis on a) chocolate, and b) beer. I made it my mission to figure out which was the best instance of each of these, in Brugge and Ghent and Antwerp. But really all I figured out is Belgian beer tends to have more alcohol per serving than the beer I'm used to. Oy.

One is constantly reminded in the low countries that they've been recovered from the sea. Canals and rivers are everywhere, even if sometimes they're made of flowers: