#zuerich

Zürich in Black and White

Die Rosenbrunnen in Zürich

To start with, some geographical context: Zürich is a major city in Switzerland that sits on one pointy tip of Lake Zürich, a long banana-shaped lake formed by glacial carving. Zürich has two rivers, the Limmat and the Sihl, which join together within the city. The Limmat is significantly bigger, deeper, and connects to the lake in the city center, you'll see it on a lot of tourist photos and postcards.

The first thing that's interesting about this imo is that the Limmat flows OUT of Lake Zürich, and does not flow into it. The Limmat is literally birthed by the lake fully-formed as a medium-sized river. The Sihl on the other hand does not connect to the lake at all, despite pretty much flowing alongside it for many kilometres.

The Sihl, a modest river from humble alpine origins, has seemingly every opportunity to enter the lake but it can't, it's literally barricaded from entering by the glacial hills that surround it like bodyguards.

Instead, just as it might finally have a chance to connect to the lake, it gets swallowed up by Big Lake trust fund poster child Limmat, a river which is in every way prettier and more popular. The junction point is actually quite a nice place to hang out, and it's interesting to see the difference in the waters. The Sihl is brown because it's worked its way across the terrain picking up sediment, starting from a stream, and the Limmat is a clear and purified green, full of lake fauna and flora. There's also a nice cafe there and it's a good fishing spot.

The final punchline of this to me, besides mercilessly dunking on the poor Sihl, is that the Limmat itself ceases to exist very soon after. It spends a mere 35km being picturesque before being itself swallowed by the Aare further down the line lol