It’s been three weeks since I came to Zürich, as of today, and I am getting more and more used to the life here. The first thing that I got used to is I do not really care much about the bus schedule anymore. The public transportation is amazing here, and there are buses in every 5 mins for the line that I use to commute. So, what happens now is that I don’t really run or struggle to catch a particular bus (I often do that in Germany). Talking more about using public transportation, I realized that my nose reacted to new dusts that I am not used to from all other people. I sneezed from time to time on the first week upon arrival, but now it all disappeared.

The second thing, which I find interesting, is although German is the primary language in Zürich, English is much more common. I heard that even Swiss people talk in English first when they are from different regions. This is quite a big contrast compared to Germany, where I don’t really expect people to speak English when I am out of the office. I still try to use German as much as possible, and say “Grüezi!” (a Swiss dialect for hello) to people, and I like the way it is pronounced! But it’s sometimes very difficult to understand strong accent of local people speaking.

The third thing is that since people in the same group do experiments, they talk a lot about measurements during lunch time. I personally find the topic quite intersting, and I do enjoy overhearing the conversation. But I noticed that sometimes people are too kind that they change the topic to something else that I can also participate…

Next, people love cheese dishes, such as raclette! In every supermarket, I can easily find heating plates for making raclettes and the chesses that are already cut into slices. Certainly, I feel that I am in the middle of mountain cheese culture of Europe.

Finally, beautiful mountains are nearby. During the last week, I took a chance to go to Rigi mountain near Luzern. It was amazing to see mountains covered with snow and shiny like mirrors.