Swiss milk?

Last night after work, I got to spend the evening with Mark and Matt, 2 of the webmasters here. We started with a small tour of Zurich, walking around the small streets of old town. It was very cool to see these narrow streets, each one lined with several restaurants, shoppes, and in some cases, strip clubs :)

Matt is a very good tourguide, he was also the one to give us the previous tour when I visited Zurich last year. If he ever needs a career change, I"m sure he could give tours of Zurich for a living, haha.

We ate at a restaurant that Matt said was good - and though it was very Swiss, the ambiance felt oddly enough like a late night Denny's run with beer involved. I had a veal sausage and roesti, tasty stuff! After dinner we walked aroud a little more and ended up at a small place called the Aelpli Bar. So - first, backstory.

The reason Matt wanted to take us to this bar was in order to give Mark a taste of childhood. When Mark was very young, he went to this bar and was given a milk drink to try. He described it as akin to unfiltered sake and milk - above all else, he described it as fricking delicious. We were in search of that long lost, but not forgotten, drink.

Matt led us back into the smaller streets of old town, then turned down a crazy, shady looking alleyway, and already I thought that we would be going to some dive bar that served weird milk. Sure enough, the Aelpli Bar was in the middle of this tiny alley, and did look quite dive-ish.

I was way wrong. When we walked in, the first thing I noticed were the faces that looked back at us. We were easily the youngest people in the bar by 30 or 40 years. It was packed with older people, sining older people. The music in the background? A Swiss band playing, among other things, an accordion. Everyone was singing traditional Swiss songs or children's songs. WHHAAAAAT?

If you ever come to Zurich, go to this bar. Think of the cheesiest, oldest stereotype of Switzerland you can think of. I'm guessing it involves people in lederhosen, old white people singing and swaying back and forth with steins of beer, accordians, the Alps, snow, and a St Bernard with a tiny barrel of whiskey around its neck. 

THIS WAS IT. 

It was the most bizzare thing ever, but it was really cool. We all tried the Aelpli milk, and Mark wasn't lying, it was delicious. Oh, and if you're thinking that my stereotype left out some sort of elk horn from the Ricola commercials, Mark has one in his office. :)

Now it's back to work. Man, I love the Zurich team!

Inept Bartenders

Monday: Into the office at 8:50am. Out of the office at 8pm.

Long day, but still good. After work, Alex and I went to a place next to our hotel named Vapiano's  It was an odd experience. when we walked in, we were handed a plastic credit-card type thing and we welcomed in very hurried German. Ok, so we have a card and no one sat us at a table. Great.

We wandered upstairs and tried to order a drink. The bar tender was serving an older man who ordered some sort of drink involving Schwepps Bitter Lemon, lime, and rum. Oh man, this poor girl did not know how to mix a drink. It made me want to jump behind the bar and save her the embarrassment. The older man waiting was obviously saddened by his lame drink, but was still nice to the girl who was trying her best. I think the oddest part of her drink making was the fact that she must've used 3 or 4 latex gloves in the process - she would put on a pair to cut the limes, and she used another pair to pour the rum. What?

And what purpose did the cards serve? You swipe them at the bar when ordering drinks or food, and it adds any orders to your tab. You pay at the end, kind of like getting to the end of the cafeteria line where you need to pay for all the food you put on your tray while in line. An interesting idea, but very confusing considering I had never seen it before and was given a card with no explanation on it as soon as I walked in.