Before I left from San Francisco on this trip I met up with some former YouTube colleagues Lim and Jesse for lunch right next to YouTube headquarters. I told them about my big bike plans. Lim coincidentally was about to move Zurich for a new role at Google. We casually planned to try to meet up as I was riding through Switzerland.
That time came in early October. At this point I was feeling especially grateful all the people I met over the years while working at YouTube, some of them have been mentioned in this blog: David, Tim+Steve, Mika, and now Lim. YouTube has basically been the college fraternity I never had, and I’m really appreciating it as time goes on
Lim had only been living in Zurich for a few months at this point and she was definitely more of a local expert than I was, so I was excited to have her as my guide. We hadn’t really hung out much outside of a work setting. I was initially concerned because she seemed very expressive about her lack of interest in athletics (which I love) and at the same time I expressed my dislike for board games and video games (which she loves). What are we going to do together?
Fortunately Lucern had plenty of answers to that question. We checked into a spacious and well-decorated AirBnB with a shared room with two beds. Lim came prepared with a list of things she wanted to go do. We were in the middle of Switzerland, the most beautiful country in Europe.
I was feeling pretty tired of making decisions by this point – riding requires a fair bit of logistics and I was just feeling tired of it. After a few hours of exploring Lucern it became pretty clear that Lim was doing all the driving. I brought it up with her.
Me: “Do you normally like being in charge of itineraries?”
Lim: “Yes! Especially when I don’t trust the other person to make good decisions.”
Me: “Uhm, wait so don’t trust me?”
Then we took a funicular up to Mount Rigi, which has a panoramic view of the region. When we bought our tickets from the Lucern tourism office, the guide took a look at the webcam from Mount Rigi and said, “it’s foggy, but I think it’ll clear up by the time you get up there.” After ferry ride, funicular ride and a short hike, we got up to to the top only to find it pretty foggy. We had about 30 seconds of good views from the radio tower atop of the mount.
So we decided to do another cheesy tourist idea instead: cheese fondu of course.
The next day we had a list of museums to hit. We went to The Glacier Garden of Lucern and The Swiss Museum of Transport.
We finished the day with the best damn pizza I’ve ever had at La Bestia from the chef that recently won the Pizzaiolo World Cup in Rome. He lived up to his title for sure.
I’ll remember this weekend for a long time. It was fun to get to know Lim more and it was hard to leave Lucern without strongly considering moving there or anywhere in Switzerland really.