Ice Skating in Zürich

I’ll take a short break from the Euro Trip story to tell you about my first time ice skating.

I went into Zürich last night with a few other guys from IAESTE to go ice skating at the Dolder Ice Rink. The rink itself was so much cooler that I was expecting. Not only is it an open rink, but in the centre they had a massive lit up Christmas tree. On one side there was an ice hockey game and on the other some curling was taking place. It was a very cool set-up considering it’s not even Winter yet.

Ice skating itself was surprisingly easy. If you know how to roller-blade, you know how to ice skate. I haven’t done rollerblading in a long time (since the Frenchville skate nights in primary school probably) so it took me a little while until I was confident again, and stopping is a little bit different. All and all though I found it fairly easy.

Eventually we got tired of skating round in laps, and played various versions of Ice-skating tiggy. This caused me to have my only stack of the night, trying to be tricky and evade the guy that was about to tag me. On the other hand I was quite proud of my evasion skills on many other occasions in which I was able to get away from seasoned skaters. In the last half an hour or so I tried doing some tricks like spinning and stuff and was starting to make some progress before we had to leave.

The location of the actual rink is an amazing one, it’s on a hill looking over Zürich and the lake, and was next to this fancy hotel/apartment thing that we were told costs $16,000 a night. The bad thing about the rink, was it is a long way from Turgi when you are coming home at midnight on a work-night, so I think next time I will find one a little closer to home.

Also I should mention that this afternoon I bought some roasted nuts in Baden from one of the many stalls that have started to pop up in the last month or so. They were pretty expensive but I wanted to see what the fuss was about, as they seemed to be getting a lot of business. They were quite good, they tasted a bit like Macadamia nuts, so imagine them roasted a bit and that’s what they tasted like. I forget what the type of nut was called, something also starting with M. Still it’s a pretty cool idea, more interesting than a hotdog stand.