Zigzagging around a turreted old-town area that feels like a film-set version of a medieval hamlet, I’ve fallen for Zurich faster than a cuckoo clock marks the hours. But while Switzerland’s largest city also offers crenellated Alpine vistas, charming trundling trams and a dangerous surfeit of chocolate shops, I can’t help feeling there must be more to this place than well-preserved good looks.
Fortunately, the other side of the tracks isn’t far away. Zurich West – a former industrial quarter where everything from boats to beer was once busily manufactured – has abandoned its gritty past to become the city’s new cool-ville. And while not every derelict factory is now a swanky bar, the presence of young, Macbook-wielding locals echoes Vancouver’s hipster-hugging SoMa area.
I start my rainy, late-afternoon exploration with some chin-stroking contemplation at the Museum of Design, a repurposed concrete block where silent student types are milling around looking intense. There’s a fascinating branding exhibit here showing how Swiss products are marketed globally: the owners of Lindt & Sprüngli chocolate, for example, dropped the Sprüngli moniker overseas because it’s too hard for lazy foreigners to pronounce.
An under-construction highway overpass here acts like the old town’s Limmat River as a handy navigational tool. Keeping it in view, I duck into cavernous former factories such as Schiffbau and Puls 5, now colonized by restaurants and theatres; peer at a half-built, 126-metre glass tower that will be Zurich’s tallest when it’s eventually finished; and peruse a string of yet-to-open indie shops being socked into the arches of a lofty railway viaduct. There’s also some admirable graffiti, including a creepy Nosferatu stencil that calls my camera from its bag.
But the best symbol of Zurich West’s post-industrial esthetic lies just around the corner. Occupying a narrow stack of 17 rusty-looking shipping containers artfully meshed together with a steel staircase, the Freitag store is a mecca for global coolsters. Launched in 1993 by two graphic-designer brothers, the company hand-makes messenger bags from recycled truck tarps. Waterproof and virtually indestructible, they’re also achingly hip; if you stroll Main Street with one of these, salivating locals will follow you for miles.
Since my coolness quotient is routinely compromised by budgetary realities, I resist the urge to splash $250 on a bag – although I briefly examine one to see if a laptop might fit inside without crushing my chocolate stash. Instead, I hike to the store’s top floor for a panoramic cityscape view from the windswept deck. Despite growing gentrification, Zurich West is still in transition, and I spot several crumbling factory plots waiting patiently for their industrial-chic makeover.
Back at ground level, it’s a short stroll to a former soap factory that’s now home to a large cinema, several trendy eateries and a modish brew pub called Steinfels. Sliding into a ’60s-style easy chair under a tangerine-hued lampshade, I sip on a hoppy house lager and peruse a candlelit scene of pixie-cute young women and their studious-looking 20-something boyfriends. With heavy nighttime rain now lashing the windows, it looks like the perfect spot to carefully taste test the entire drinks list.
