Last night we attended a "Welcome to Zurich Information Night" held at the equivalent of City Hall in Zurich for all new residents. We were told one of the purposes of the event was to encourage new residents to become more engaged in the community. The presentation began with a welcome message spoken in Swiss German, German, French, Italian and Romanche (all of the major languages of Switzerland) as well as in English, Russian, Spanish and written forms of Asian languages. Believe it or not, just 4 people spoke all of those languages. Actually, each of them spoke at least 4 languages throughout the course of the presentation. In a country where so many languages are spoken (4 main languages), it is often necessary to learn more than one language. 

After hearing a bit about Zurich and its make up of 400,000 residents, 1/3 of which are immigrants, mostly from Germany, we headed outside to join one of the 6 or so walking tour groups. Of course we joined the English-speaking group which was one of the smallest groups. As you can imagine, the German group was the largest. Our tour guide walked us around old town and told us stories about the area. We passed the gnome shop shown in the picture. (I thought one of my sisters whose nome was buried in the mounds of snow would appreciate this window display.)

The evening ended with a reception and the chance to meet other newcomers. We connected with a Swiss woman who worked in a statistics department for the city and was interested in learning about the information night. We also sparked a converstation with an Austrian young man who is on an internship here in the biomedical field for a year or so. 

We are grateful to have been welcomed into the city in such a gracious fashion.