Seefeld doesn’t suck

I’m getting a little better about going out and enjoying this “beautiful” weather we’re having. If I just pretend it’s summer I can usually stand to leave the house without bitching and moaning to everyone I see about how much I love snow and WHERE DID WINTER GO? I have to admit it is fun to be out and about in Zurich on a sunny, clear day.

The other day I spent the afternoon wandering around Seefeld, a neighborhood along the lake which contains a mix of beautiful buildings, interesting shops, and hip bars and restaurants (well, hip for Zurich, anyway). I started with a little walk in the park by the lake, near Zürichhorn (a horn-shaped piece of land which juts out into the lake), soaking up the beautiful surroundings that I take for granted much too often.

I met a friend for lunch at Ginger, a relatively new sushi bar which is non-smoking. Most Zurich restaurants are so smoky you can’t taste your food, so the non-smoking thing is very big (although disappointingly rare). As if that weren’t enough to make me love the place, it has one of those mini conveyor belts running around the bar that the little plates of sushi travel on. Who came up with this method of sushi presentation? And why does it delight me so? Moving sushi – does life get any better?

Later in the afternoon I met a couple more friends to try out a new wine bar, D-Vino, which has popped up in Seefeld (next to Yooji’s, yet another moving-sushi restaurant – can you believe there are two?). We learned from one of the bartenders that this was a sort of trial prototype wine bar, brought to you by Denner, a low-end supermarket chain which sells lots of wine (it balances out the Swiss retail universe, since another supermarket chain, Migros, refuses to sell wine at all). At least the same people who design Denner stores didn’t design this wine bar, since the interior was actually quite nice. And more than half of the bar was non-smoking. So at least I’ve found a good place to go drown my sorrows about the lack of winter.