Recently I applied for a job on LinkedIn for a role in Zurich, Switzerland. I didn’t expect from it, it was more out of curiosity on what would happen. After a few weeks I performed two Skype interviews where the company wanted to finally meet myself for the third and final round. So, from the Friday 18th August until Sunday 20th August, we travelled to Zurich to make the most of it.

We woke up early on Friday morning as I had to be at the interviewing offices by 10am, therefore we caught the 8am flight from London City Airport direct to Zurich, fortunately with the time difference we arrived at around 9:15am which allowed us to get to the hotel and then rush to the interview.

My Friday was pretty much a right-off as I had to work, I arrived at the offices and proceeded to have a short introduction to the team and the offices. Then I was assigned three tasks which I needed to present (via a PowerPoint presentation) to a panel of 6 people. This was at 3pm, I managed to escape at 6pm in the end.

Izaskun was in the hotel, working hard too as it turned out she had some issues at work too. So Friday we didn’t really manage to get out and about apart from a leisurely stroll into town which was good to see how quiet it really was. We walked around the main lake followed by some side roads but overall not much was happening, we were tempted to go get a bite to eat but didn’t see anything that particular took to our fancy, so we ended up eating at the hotel which was overall nice but pretty basic.

The next morning (Saturday) we were able to wake up a bit later, much needed from a long day on Friday. We ventured to the swimming pool, which we pleasantly discovered was a roof top pool with great views over the city. After that we also discovered the other series of hot and cold pools, as well as the spa. It was much bigger than we thought and pretty different from what we expected as we thought there would be large pool where we can do a couple of laps but these were more for leisure use. No complaints as they were lovely.

After that we managed to meet up with a fellow South African, Nele, who know lives in Bern which apparently is an hour train ride away.  She brought her new(ish) boyfriend who is a local Swiss, which was very interesting to hear his perspective on life in Switzerland, especially describing the Swiss as coconuts and other nationalities (those who are more talkative) as mangos (i.e. having a soft exterior).

We proceeded to walk around for a few hours, even sampling some local beer which was very good. We also endured a thunder storm which turned out to be pretty chilly but overall we saw the town centre and explored the little side streets. After our exploring we walked the young couple back to the central station and said our goodbyes and proceeded to walk back to the hotel, in which is started to rain

Our last day in Zurich we decided to go to the pool again, check-out and explore the large park that is situated just west of the centre of the town centre. The park is big, which run all along the lake so it boasts great water views and probably acts a bit like a beach or central place to meet in the town. We even walked past a Chinese garden which is situated within it, and in true nature it had a Chinese take-away stall.

Before we knew it we needed to head back and start preparing our trip back to the airport, we walked back to the hotel, collected our bags and headed to the train which will take us to the airport. We arrived at the airport in good time, in fact we arrived over an hour early due to my reading the time in UK time (as opposed as local time) but we were truly lucky this time as we had access to the business lounge, so after a search for it we managed to relax and get some free food (which always tastes good when it is free).

In a short time span we were up in the air returning to London, having had a great weekend and many thoughts on whether this place is somewhere we could see ourselves living in the future. Time will tell…