Today was to be a Zürich day, so we got up extra early at 7 o’clock and I listened to the Radio 4 6 o’clock news (remember we’re an hour ahead here). After a relaxing breakfast we walked to the station to catch the Zürich train just after 9am. This got is to Zürich just before 11am. The station is a terminus, an enormous barn of a place. The picture just shows the entrance hall. There are 18 main platforms and lots more below for the subway. I supposed if they’d called it the metro then a Swiss banker travelling on it would be a metro-gnome!

We left the station and headed for the river Limmat that flows through the city to Lake Zürich. Somewhere down here is the spot where Felix Manz was executed by drowning in 1527 for being an Anabaptist and a plaque marks the spot. This was one of the sites we were looking for, but the Wikipedia entry, with photograph, was not at all clear. I spent an hour searching last night for more information, but every site I found referred eventually back to the Wikipedia page. We hoped there might be some information about it at the other main site in the city, the Grossmünster (not named after Karl der Grosse, whose statue is embedded in a wall nearby—it means Great Minster). Lots of tourists were walking round and in it, some in organized groups. The two main doors, one on each side, depict on the entrance door various scenes from the Bible and at the rear scenes from the religious life of Zurich. I haven’t identified them all yet, but the lower right hand corner depicts Carolus Major, Defensor et Rector Ecclesiae (Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emporer in the 9th century, demonstrating the view that it is the role of the Emperor or the state to defend the church). Inside it was smaller than I’d expected, at least half the length of Westminster Abbey. Zwingli had stripped all ornamentation from the building during the Reformation, but murals around where the high altar would have been have been uncovered, though not really recognisable. It is clear from the enormous height of the building that it was designed to provoke awe in an ignorant populace and make them realise that their only hope of salvation was through the Roman Catholic priesthood. Zwingli and the Reformation swept all such thinking away, though I think it a pity that he didn’t go the whole hog and abandon the building for religious purposes, as they did with the Wasserkirche over the road by the river, and made clear that religious buildings were “meeting places” and not “houses of God”. For a small fee we could have climbed the tower, but couldn’t see the point.

Across the road, buy the river, was the Wasserkirche, which was considered a hotbed of idolatry and so was turned into a food store and later a library. It is in front of this that the statue of Zwingli stands. He’s holding a Bible and a sword. We might be tempted to think that the sword is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Ephesians 6), but in fact it is more likely to be the sword of the state “for he does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13). Zwingli was involved in spreading the Reformation not just by preaching and persuasion but also by force. In 1529 he put a food embargo on several Roman Catholic cantons. They responded with war, and at the Battle of Kappel, in October 1531, the unprepared Zurichers were defeated, and Zwingli and many city council members were killed. I have read somewhere that the Roman Catholic victors cut up his body and scattered it so that his remains would not be venerated! Zwingli’s work was carried on after his death by Bullinger, who’s statue is on the wall of the Grossmunster.

We headed back in the direction of the station, still looking for the Felix Manz memorial. On a bridge over the Limmat, close to the Schipfe, were a number of temporary shops, including a kebab shop. I had a doner, with coffee, and Marianne a cheese salad roll, with coffee, (the sugar was in small packets with Bible texts on!) After eating and drinking we walked down to Schipfe and found the memorial. It is in fact on the river’s edge opposite number 43 Schipfe, an area where boats used to tie up. The precise location is 47°22'24.87"N 8°32'31.07"E (below the branches of a tree), which you can put into Google Earth or Google Maps. I have updated the Wikipedia page. The text is in German, but I think the Wikipedia entry about Manz gives the English. It also gives a heart-warming account of his death. A longer version can be found in the Anabaptist Martyr’s Mirror, their version of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I have a copy if anyone wants a look.

We got back to the station and took our lives in our hands crossing the road to the national museum. When we got there we saw that there was a subway we could have used. And then discovered that the museum is closed on a Monday! So back to the station. What to do. It was about 2pm and we could have just come straight back, but Marianne looked at the map and said “let’s jump on a train to Chur/Coire in south east Switzerland. As it happens that is Heidi country (“Ah! now we see what you were talking about at the start!”). The train wends its way through very pretty countryside, much of it by lakes and always with mountains on either side. We passed through the station at Maienfeld, which is where Heidi lived. Taking photos from a moving train is not a precise business, especially on electrified lines. You may find a tree appears just as you press the shutter release, or, more likely, you get a mast in the middle of the picture. This one was taken just past Maienfeld and is typical of the scenery.

When we got to Chur we couldn’t find any way to progress further. The only trains seemed to go north or south or be the narrow gauge scenic trains, pictured here. Se we decided that the best bet was just to return via Zurich, especially as there was a faster train than the one we had come on about to depart. It was another double decker and this one had a toddler’s play area upstairs. I missed half the journey back as lack of sleep began to take its toll. Indeed, perhaps that was why I couldn’t find a Yverdon train (though they run every hour) at Zurich, and so we got another double decker through Berne to Lausanne, arriving about 3 minutes before the Yverdon train left. By the time we got to Berne I was feeling like death warmed up. Weary, and with a headache I just wanted to go to sleep. But once we finally got to Yverdon at about 1915 I felt a lot better and declined the offer of pain killers. Plenty of fluid and spaghetti bolognese probably had something to do with it. Then downloading all the pictures and writing this before bed. Shall we do the same kind of thing tomorrow?