Zurich

The currency is the Swiss franc (CHF), with coins of 5, 10, and 20 centimes and of half, 1, 2, and 5 francs, and bills from 10 to 1,000. In 2026 the franc trades almost at par with the euro (about CHF 0.93 per €). Cards are accepted practically everywhere, but the locals' payment method is Twint, a QR app linked to a Swiss bank account, and it's good to carry a few bills for markets and stalls. 2026 price ranges: espresso CHF 4.50–6; a 3 dl beer CHF 6–8 and a half-liter CHF 8–11; bakery sandwich CHF 6–9; lunch set menu (Mittagsmenü) CHF 22–30; dinner main course CHF 30–50; ready-made supermarket meal CHF 10–15; hostel bed CHF 45–70; three-star hotel for two CHF 200–320, mid-range category CHF 300–450. Tipping isn't mandatory since service became included by law, in 1974: round up or leave 5% when the service is good. VAT has been 8.1% since January 1, 2024, with refunds possible for non-residents on purchases above CHF 300 at the same store on the same day. Hotels usually add a lodging tax of around CHF 3.50 per person per night separately, which goes back into local tourism. Tap water is drinkable throughout the city, including at the roughly 1,200 public street fountains; at a restaurant, ask for “Hahnenwasser,” but know that many places charge CHF 3–5 for the pitcher, and the charge is allowed.

Airport: 13 km, with a station under the terminal

Zurich Airport (ZRH), in Kloten, sits 13 km north of the center and has a train station under the terminal: it's 10 to 13 minutes to the Hauptbahnhof, with departures every few minutes, for about CHF 7 on a two-zone ticket. Tram 10 covers the same route in about 40 minutes and serves the north of the city. A taxi costs CHF 60–80 and takes 20 to 35 minutes depending on traffic, and Uber operates normally. The Hauptbahnhof is the country's rail hub: Lucerne is 45–50 minutes away, Bern 56 min, Basel 53 min, and Milan about 3 hours 20 minutes, and the station has luggage storage, a supermarket, and shops open on Sundays, which in Switzerland is a rare exception.

Trams: 15 lines, the 1990 S-Bahn and the funiculars

Within the city everything runs on ZVV: 15 tram lines, dozens of bus and trolleybus lines, the regional S-Bahn created in 1990, the Polybahn funicular (1889, from Central to ETH in two minutes), the Rigiblick and Dolder funiculars, and the ZSG boats on the lake, all on the same ticket system. The whole city is zone 110, which counts double for fare purposes: a single ticket costs CHF 4.60 and is valid for 1 hour, the short-distance ticket (Kurzstrecke) costs CHF 2.80, and the 24-hour pass (1–2 zones) costs CHF 9.20; on December 13, 2026 they rise to CHF 4.70, CHF 2.80 (no change) and CHF 9.40. Buy tickets on the ZVV app or at the platform machine: there's no on-board sale, and anyone caught without a ticket pays a hefty penalty, no tourist excuse accepted. The Zürich Card (24-hour about CHF 32, 72-hour about CHF 64) bundles transport, museums and discounts. The historic center can be crossed on foot in 20 minutes, there are PubliBike public bicycles and electric scooters with strictly enforced parking rules, and on Friday and Saturday nights a night network runs, with a CHF 5 surcharge.

Look after your wallet and phone at Hauptbahnhof, on crowded trams and at large events such as the Street Parade. Lock your bicycle to something fixed with a good lock. On Langstrasse, in Kreis 4, nightlife mixes bars, legal prostitution and alcohol; harassment and confrontations can occur. Avoid arguments, check prices before ordering drinks and use public transportation or a taxi if a route feels uncomfortable. At night, choose well-lit, busy streets over shortcuts through empty parks. At Oberer Letten, the current requires experienced swimmers; children are not allowed. Check conditions and exits with staff, obey the red flag and do not swim after drinking. On the lake, stay in permitted areas and away from boat routes. Emergency numbers: 112 general, 117 police, 144 ambulance, 118 fire department. Medical care can be expensive; carry insurance covering your planned activities.

Punctuality is literal

There's no such thing as a “fifteen-minute grace period”: you arrive at the agreed minute, and being ten minutes late to dinner requires a message beforehand. Tram schedules are kept to the minute, and people plan three-minute connections counting on it.

Say Grüezi on the way in

People greet each other on entering a shop, an elevator, a waiting room, or sitting down in an empty train car: “Grüezi” for one person, “Grüezi mitenand” for a group, and “Merci, adiö” or “Tschüss” on the way out. Between acquaintances it's three cheek kisses, starting on the right; with strangers, a handshake.

Noise has a schedule

Municipal regulations and building house rules protect quiet hours from 10pm to 7am and all of Sunday: no drilling, vacuuming, washing machines or loud music, and it's forbidden to drop glass into recycling bins during those hours. In many buildings there's also an informal agreement not to shower after 10pm.

Trash goes in the official bag

Household trash is only collected inside the Züri-Sack, the city's taxed blue bag (from 10 to 110 liters; the built-in tax runs from CHF 1.30 for the 35-liter bag to CHF 4.07 for the 110-liter one, and the store charges a bit more), sold at supermarkets and kiosks. Using another bag earns a fine starting at CHF 100, and enforcement officers open the bag looking for an envelope with the offender's name.

You don't cross on red

Even with no car in sight, pedestrians wait for the signal, and crossing on red in front of children draws reprimands from strangers. Nor do you walk in the bike lane: it's a separate lane, and whoever is riding it won't swerve.

The bill splits without drama

The waiter asks “zusammen oder getrennt?” and splitting per person is the norm, even on dates. You don't ask how much someone earns or how much they pay in rent: money is a private matter, even in the city that lives off it.

The federal capital has been Bern since 1848

Thinking Zurich is the capital of Switzerland. It's a common mistake: the federal capital has been Bern since 1848. Zurich is the largest city and the financial center, but the government, parliament and embassies sit 56 minutes away by train.

Boarding the tram to buy a ticket on board

Thinking you can buy a ticket once you're on board, as in so many other cities. In Zurich there's no on-board sale and no turnstile, and checks are random. Anyone caught without a ticket pays a hefty fine, and it goes on your record.

Shopping on Sunday, which the law shuts down

Planning shopping for Sunday. Cantonal law closes stores that day, and only the shops at the Hauptbahnhof and the airport stay open.

Twelve hundred fountains run drinking water

Buying bottled water all the time. The roughly 1,200 public fountains run drinkable water nonstop and are there for refilling a bottle; just avoid the few marked “kein Trinkwasser.”

Züritüütsch isn't “broken German”

Speaking standard German and being puzzled by the reply. Among themselves residents speak Züritüütsch, an Alemannic dialect that isn't “broken German” and isn't written in official documents. Anyone will switch to standard German or English if you ask, but the request has to come from you.

Grüezi / Grüezi mitenand

Hello (for one person / for a group): the standard greeting on entering any place

Merci vilmal

Thank you very much (the French “merci” entered the dialect and is used constantly)

Excusi

Excuse me / sorry: used to ask someone to move aside and to apologize

Chan i zahle, bitte?

The check, please: asked of the waiter, who brings the card machine to the table

Es Stange, bitte

A 3 dl glass of beer, please (the Stange is the standard bar-counter measure)

Uf Widerluege / Adiö

See you / bye: said on the way out of a shop, even without buying anything

The valley, the lake and the two ridges

Zurich sits at the bottom of a glacial valley running from southeast to northwest, at the point where Lake Zurich (88 km², 40 km long, up to 136 m deep) drains into the Limmat at about 406 m altitude; the Sihl River enters beneath the Hauptbahnhof, whose platforms were built over it. Two forested moraine ridges close off the city: the Uetliberg and the Albis range to the west, 871 m at its highest point and served by its own train since 1875, and the Zürichberg with the Adlisberg to the east, about 700 m.

The two banks and the 12 districts

The urban grid follows this geometry: the medieval center squeezes both banks of the Limmat, the left bank holding the Lindenhof, Fraumünster, St. Peter's and the Bahnhofstrasse, the right bank holding the Grossmünster, the Niederdorf and the university slope, while 19th-century neighborhoods spread over terraces up the valley and the trams follow the flat ground. The 12 districts numbered in a spiral result from the 1893 and 1934 annexations, which explains why Kreis 11 lies at the far north and Kreis 2 in the south.

Bise, Föhn and the cloud lid

The climate is temperate oceanic with continental influence, about 1,100 mm of rain a year with a summer peak and afternoon thunderstorms; two winds run the local conversation: the Bise, cold and dry from the northeast, and the Föhn, warm from the south, which clears the sky and leaves half the city with a headache. From November to January the plateau sits under a low cloud lid (Hochnebel) between 600 and 800 m, and climbing the Uetliberg is the most direct way out of it.

The city's culture came from refugees

Much of Zurich's culture originated with people who came here as refugees. In 1916 First World War refugees opened the Cabaret Voltaire and invented Dada; James Joyce wrote much of Ulysses here between 1915 and 1919 and is buried at Fluntern; Thomas Mann died in the city in 1955 and was buried in neighboring Kilchberg. Between 1933 and 1945 the Schauspielhaus was almost the only free German-language stage in Europe and premiered Brecht's Mother Courage (1941) and Life of Galileo (1943), with exiled actors. Local literature has two pillars: Gottfried Keller, who was cantonal chancellor in the 19th century and wrote Green Henry, and Max Frisch, born here in 1911, trained as an architect. The Letzigraben public pool, opened in 1949, is his work.

From the 1895 concert hall to the Street Parade

Musical life runs from the Tonhalle, an 1895 concert hall with acoustics ranked among Europe's best, to the 1891 Opera on Sechseläutenplatz, and culminates in the Street Parade, an electronic music parade held since 1992 on the second Saturday of August that draws close to a million people to the lakeshore. The nightlife axis has two hubs: the clubs under the Hardbrücke, in Kreis 5, and the bars of Langstrasse, in Kreis 4; the Rote Fabrik, approved as a cultural center by vote in 1977 and self-managed since 1980, remains the city's alternative cultural center. In sports, the Grasshopper Club, from 1886, and FC Zürich share the Letzigrund stadium, which hosts the Weltklasse Zürich in August, a track meet held since 1928; ZSC Lions ice hockey plays at the Swiss Life Arena, opened in 2022.

ETH has produced more than twenty Nobel laureates

Zurich is also a city of major universities. ETH, founded in 1855, has more than twenty Nobel laureates associated with its history, and Einstein studied there between 1896 and 1900 before returning as a professor in 1912; the University of Zurich, founded in 1833, awarded Russian Nadezhda Suslova a doctorate in medicine in 1867, the first woman to earn one at that institution. In graphic design, the so-called Zurich School of concrete art and the Swiss typography of Max Bill and Josef Müller-Brockmann established the layout grid, sans-serif lettering and left alignment that still organize posters, signs and websites worldwide. The city also produced Freitag, the brand of bags made from used truck tarps, which two brothers created in a Kreis 5 apartment in 1993 and which now sells from a tower of stacked containers.

Green Henry, by Gottfried Keller (1854, revised 1879)

A coming-of-age novel about a young painter between 19th-century Zurich and Munich, written by a man who was the canton's chancellor for fifteen years. It explains the Protestant morality, economy and distrust of excess that still govern the city.

Die Schweizermacher: The Swissmakers (1978), by Rolf Lyssy

A comedy about two police inspectors who monitor naturalization candidates in Zurich to check whether they're Swiss enough. It was the most-watched film in the country's history and remains the best portrait of what the city understands by “rule.”

Züri brännt (1980), by Videoladen Zürich

A manifesto film made during the 1980 youth riots, with street footage and narration in dialect. It's the document of the rupture that produced the Rote Fabrik, the clubs and today's nightlife in Zurich.