Arrived in Zurich

Hello, my name is Ryan Pei and I am a rising junior at Rice University in Houston, Texas, majoring in electrical engineering. My hometown is Los Altos, California, and for 3 months of the summer I will be doing research at ETH Zürich with Dr. Hierold of the Micro and Nanosystems group. I arrived in Zürich Monday, flying from San Francisco, and began working yesterday. From first impression, Zürich seems like an amazing city to live in. The city itself is very beautiful (I will try to include pictures later once I get a better internet connection), and the public transit system is convenient. The weather is nice; I’m glad that I did not come in the winter. The people are friendly, and everybody I’ve met so far speaks English. I was afraid that I would have trouble since I do not speak any German, let alone Swiss German. It actually amazes me that Switzerland manages to be one of the top countries in the world for technology and science when they have to also be able talk about their work in so many different languages.

ETH itself is a beautiful campus, located on a hill overlooking the city and the lake. It has buildings throughout the city, sort of like the universities I’ve visited in Boston back in the US. I live about 30 minutes away from where I’ll be working in a “Studentenhaus” on the outskirts of town, and there almost everyone speaks English as well.

There is a lot of advertising for the upcoming 2008 Euro Cup. They seem pretty serious about their football around here. It’s a good thing the Olympic Games in Beijing will be held later in the summer, as I think people here would actually rather pay attention to the Euro Cup matches if they had to make a choice between the two.

I can’t wait to see the rest of Zürich. Apparently there is a work holiday this coming Monday, so I will probably use this longer weekend to explore the city.