The words ‘trendy’ and ‘Zurich’ have rarely gone together in English. ‘Boring, banking and gnomic’ are the descriptions more likely to attach themselves like barnacles to Switzerland’s economic engine and largest city.
But if a yawn-inducing reputation still precedes it in many corners of the world, contemporary Zurich appears to have outgrown those stereotypes.
Mingling with the exuberant crowds along the cobbled Niederdorfstrasse, watching an upright pin-striped banker zip home on a Segway scooter and spying various German-language ‘cool guides’ to this compact metropolis of 342,000 people, visitors might think it’s time to divorce the dull image from the reality.
True, with a couple of church clock towers rising above the medieval houses lining the blue-green Limmat River, Zurich initially creates a pleasant but not particularly earth-shattering impression. It’s clean, has a subtle, mountain-ringed beauty and doesn’t shout about its huge wealth. Popular philosopher Alain de Botton, who was born and spent a happy childhood here, calls it ‘one of the great bourgeois cities of the world’ and admits not everyone will take that as the sincere compliment and tribute to egalitarianism it’s meant to be.
However, it doesn’t take long to unearth what high-profile resident Tina Turner has termed Zurich’s ‘life-loving’ side.
At the lake on its southern edge each summer, people can be seen escaping the 42-hour working week, swimming, sunning themselves and having barbecues with friends. There’s a Mediterranean feel as teams of young men, black and white, play football near the eye-catching Le Corbusier pavilion (the famous Swiss architect’s last building) and the old-fashioned, wooden-pier ‘baths’ – such as the Frauenbad/Barfussbar, Seebad Enge and Utoquai – offer therapeutic massages, saunas and after-hours drinks.
In a city where the dour Protestant reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) once preached austerity in the twin-towered Grossmunster cathedral, groups now play frisbee in verdant parkland, while the paths are lined with cyclists and in-line skaters. Police have even patrolled the lakeside districts on roller-blades this past summer.
Scotsman Colin Tivendale, who works for technology and finance recruitment company Swisslinx, remembers being smitten on moving to Zurich three years ago. ‘For people who grew up here it’s just normal – living well, eating slightly healthy, the trams being on time, new things springing up all the time – but if you arrive from the UK you think ‘Oh my god, do people actually live like this?’
Someone from Mercer Human Resource Consulting must have been equally impressed. For five years the firm has rated Zurich’s quality of life as the world’s (sometimes joint) best.
The highlight of the party calendar is the mid-August ‘Street Parade’, a techno music celebration whose attendance figures have progressively overtaken Berlin’s now defunct Love Parade and even London’s Notting Hill Carnival to become the biggest in Europe in the past two years.
Now as autumn sets in, trendsetters are retiring to their prime stomping ground of Zurich-West. Near Escher-Wyss-Platz, a few tram stops west of the main train station, this once unappealing industrial quarter is now a base for new enterprises and a happening nightlife scene. Around the Technopark, a complex for IT start-ups, former warehouses are now occupied by eateries, bars, clubs, galleries, fashionable shops and cinema. The Schiffbauhaus, a former factory, houses one stunning bar/restaurant, La Salle, a panoramic bar called Nietturm and jazz club Moods. The one-time Löwenbräu brewery has been similarly converted. In fact, ‘Zuri-West’ stretches some way eastwards from its core ‘Kreis (district) 5’ back into the area around Langstrasse, where trendy bars like Acapulco and Liquid, restaurants like Cinque, Josef and Lily’s Stomach Supply and cinema club Riff Raff all mingle with kebab shops and the red-light district.
A few years ago, based on this nightlife boom, Wallpaper* magazine bravely declared Zurich Europe’s hippest city. ‘It’s as urban as Switzerland gets,’ says Marc Rudolf, of the Greater Zurich Area, an organisation designed to attract business to the region.
According to Rudolf, the transformation from a sleepy town to a vibrant ‘little big city’ has occurred in the last ten years, with the freeing up of brownfield developments for other uses and the liberalisation of restaurant planning laws. This allowed more pavement tables and late-night openings, and soon saw the number of dining, drinking and entertainment venues grow by more than one third to today’s nearly 2,000. ‘Many illegal bars have become legal and improvised theatres have become established. Zurich is also Switzerland’s cultural capital, leading young arts trends,’ asserts Rudolf.
Of course, though, however hard it now plays, Zurich very much remains a working city. Rudolf is keen to point out that the city and canton have a hinterland in technology, medicine and biotech. However with financial services such as banking and insurance at the core of its economy, Zurich punches well above its weight in all respects.
The Swiss Federal Office of Statistics calculates that the financial sector employs about 75,000 residents in the entire surrounding Canton of Zurich, or 10 percent of the workforce, while generating 30 percent of cantonal GDP. In both cases, this is twice the national average.
Similarly, according to the local Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper recently, the canton is home to about 16 percent of the Swiss population, but contributes 25 percent to the national coffers. More than 25 per cent of global asset management occurs in Zurich, prompting The Economist’s moniker of ‘the world’s piggybank’.
With Germany one of its largest trading partners, the Swiss national economy hasn’t been immune to knock-on effects from the sluggish eurozone. However, Swiss growth has been keeping about a half a percentage point ahead of its neighbours’, according to the OECD, and as Tivendale puts it ‘the fundamentals are just so strong’.
The Swiss have been seeking out new trade with Asia and the US, but at the same time finally feel comfortable enough about the European Union to vote earlier this year for closer political ties (although a second vote later this year will finally confirm this).
The year 2001 was Switzerland’s annus horribilus, when the national airline Swissair went bankrupt and there were scandals about both alleged terrorist and WWII Jewish bank accounts. However, the national psyche seems to have recovered from those body blows. ‘2001, what was that?’ jokes Rudolf when quizzed about the subject.
Today, expat Tivendale says he appreciates the understated, low-key manner of the Swiss and, having also become ensconced in the football and paragliding scenes, believes the more you delve, the more ask people for personal tips about Zurich, the better the place gets.
Certainly wandering down the much-vaunted shopping street of Bahnhofstrasse – which isn’t quite paved with gold but has bank vaults of the stuff running beneath it – you appreciate the quiet self-confidence of the place.
Sometimes, though, it’s still hard not to smile about how comfortable it all seems. In one of the city’s many free public toilets, someone has defiled an otherwise relatively pristine white-tiled wall by neatly scribbling ‘Ich liebe das Leben’ (I love life) in small letters. Another piece of graffiti near the ETH, Switzerland’s famous Federal Institute of Technology where Einstein once taught physics, reads: ‘Schön ist Zürich’ (Zurich is beautiful). Even its disaffected youth seem unwilling to complain too much about Zurich these days.
5 things to see and do
The Fraumunster Cathedral – marvel at Marc Chagall’s extraordinary stained-glass windows
The Kunsthaus – stick-figure sculptures by Alberto Giacometti are one highlight
Fluntern Cemetery – pay your respects to James Joyce or admire nearby views
Uetliberg – another panoramic view, stretching to the Alps on a clear day
A lake cruise – relax on a steamer on Zurich’s expansive lake
5 places to stay
Hotel Plattenhof (044 251 1910; www.plattenhof.ch; Plattenstrasse 26) New design hotel, with low beds, in a vaguely Japanese style, plus mood lighting
Hotel Greulich (043 243 4243; www.greulich.ch; Herman Greulich Strasse 56) Stark, off-white rooms laid out in a row like bungalows
Bar Hotel Rössli (044 256 7050; www.hotelroessli.ch; Rössligasse 7) Cosy but stylish central hotel
Hotel Zurichberg (044 268 3535; www.zuerichberg.ch; Plattenstrasse 21) One 19th and one award-winning 20th century building, atop a hill with fantastic views
Widder (044 224 2526; www.widderhotel.ch; Rennweg 7) Eight former houses now contain jaw-dropping luxury rooms, plus a bar famous for its jazz music
5 places to eat
Tibits (044 260 3222; Seefeldstrasse 2) Gourmet vegetarian buffet with benches for solo diners
La Salle (044 258 7071; Schiffbaustrasse 4) Huge glass cube serving upmarket mainly Italian cuisine
Angkor (043 205 2888; Giessereistrasse 18) Wooden carvings, chic clientele and south-east Asian cuisine
Blindekuh (044 421 5050; Mühlebachstrasse 148) Eat in the dark and get a small taste of what it’s like to be blind
Kronenhalle (044 251 6669; Rämistrasse 4, corner of Bellevue) Formal old establishment with original works by Chagall, Kandinsky and Picasso on the walls
5 places for a drink
Hard One (044 444 1000; Heinrichstrasse 269) Trendy wine, spirits and cigar lounge, with panoramic windows over Zurich
Jules Verne Panorama Bar (044 211 1155; Uraniastrasse 9, entrance through Brasserie Lipp) Sixth-floor bare decorated like the inside of a hot-air balloon basket, with excellent views
Kaufleuten Bar (044 225 3340; Pelikanstrasse 18) The small lounge attached to Zurich’s ritziest club
Wings (044 268 4055; Limmatquai 54) Kitschly decorated with the cutlery, crockery and airline seats of defunct national carrier Swissair
Giesserei Werkstatt (044 205 1010; Birchstrasse 108) Sophisticated new cocktail bar, a bit off the beaten path
