The Sprengers from Switzerland!!

In my 3rd blog entry (December 1st – The Ghost Walk of Zurich) I mentioned having drinks at the Aelpli Bar with our new Swiss friends from Meilen. They are Paul and Iris Sprenger, a wonderful couple who have ‘taken us under their wing’.

Doug always chuckles when I say I’m the shy one of the two of us. But I am! I’m an extremely shy extravert. I like meeting new people and exploring new venues. I was the one who found and suggested the Ghost Walk. We were the first to arrive that evening, but were soon joined by another couple who appeared to be about our age or slightly older. The tour was being given in English, so I knew they spoke or at least understood English … even American English (vs. British English).

So, while people were arriving, I introduced myself to the woman. “My name is Luci,” I said. She responded, “I’m Iris.” The tour began, and as we walked from location to location, she and I chatted about random things: where are you from, why are you taking this tour, isn’t it cold, and so on--nothing in particular, just conversation. Iris introduced her husband Paul to me, and I introduced them both to Doug. We learned that they lived near Zurich, and they were taking the tour just for the fun of it. They lived just south of Zurich in Meilen, but were fond of “meandering” frequently, just as Doug and I do.

Sometime during the tour Iris said, “Give me your number, so we can get together.” YES, I thought: I had made a new friend! I mentioned it to Doug and when the tour ended they suggested we go for a drink. They knew the city and took us through the cobblestone street to an out-of-the-way pub called the Aelpli Bar, in central Zurich’s Niederdorf neighborhood.

As we walked through the old wooden door and up a few narrow steps, it was as if we slipped through a portal into old Zurich. The pub was small, cozy, comfortably lit, and packed with happy patrons. The music was not piped in, but was live and up close: three accordionists played as they sat on overturned crates, and the waitress wove her way among close-packed tables of customers who sang and foot-tapped along with the melody. We found a well worn wooden table and benches in the back of the pub, and Paul ordered us a bottle of wine.

The next hour or so was magical.

Paul shared with us that he had recently connected with relatives from America. In 1854 these relatives’ ancestor, John Jacob Sprenger, had immigrated to America – to my home state of Minnesota! John Jacob Sprenger’s descendents had done their research, connected with Paul and Iris, and exchanged family information. Just last year, Paul and Iris had traveled to Minnesota, California, Oregon, and Washington to visit with their new found relatives. So they knew Seattle, and had visited many of the places we had. We connected!

Before the night was over, we had exchanged not only phone numbers, but business cards and email addresses, and they had invited us to dinner at their home on the following Sunday evening. They walked back through old Zurich with us; then we said good night and boarded our respective trams. Not goodbye, but just good night, for this would be just the first of several adventures with our new Swiss friends.

Our Ghost Walk of Zurich

I grew up being taken on tours. When I was a child, my parents made the most of every opportunity to TAKE A TOUR. Be it a bicycle factory, the chocolate manufacturing town of Hershey in Pennsylvania, a steel mill, the Ford auto plant, or even a local scenic walk, if a tour was possible, we went on it. And I continued this tradition: in my first job out of college as a youth director at the Merriam Park Community Center in St. Paul, I started a summer program called “Twin Cities Tours for Kids”.

‘Taking tours’ is as ingrained in me as having pumpkin pie on my birthday!

So it was no surprise when Doug and I quickly found a walking tour that we could take here in Zurich. On Friday evening, November 28th, we caught the season’s very last GHOST WALK OF ZURICH!

With ten others, we began queuing up in the dark about 7:30pm, by the fountain in Paradeplatz, which is a tram stop near the oldest part of Zurich. Our tour guide, a British chap who hails from York in northern England, arrived wearing a dark wool overcoat and a bowler hat (also known as a derby, or billycock). He carried a black leather surgeon’s grip and flourished a skull-tipped cane, and we were soon to learn that he was both a gifted storyteller with a deep sense of the macabre and a humorist with a superb sense of timing. He took us on a ninety-minute walking tour of the ancient inner city’s dark alleyways, haunted corners, and church crypts.

These are just a few of the hair-raising stories he told us:

... The city’s headless patron saints Felix, Regula and Exuperantius, who attempted to convert its citizens to Christianity in the 3rd century AD. According to legend, the Roman governor of Zurich (which was called “Turicum” in those days) made them drink molten lead and plunged them into boiling oil. They survived and still refused to renounce their faith, so they were beheaded. That didn’t stop them: they picked up their heads, carried them to the top of a hill, and waited to be buried. The site of their graves is now Zurich's most famous landmark, the Grossmünster church.

... A 14th century city mayor, Rudolf Brun, is buried just below the clock tower. He died a terrible and mysterious death, which some attributed to poisoning. In the 1970s his remains were exhumed and examined, and they tested positive for arsenic. But as the substance was often used in earlier times for medicinal and recreational purposes, the result was inconclusive. His ghost has been seen to walk through walls.

... The folk tale of the ghost of a peasant girl who hanged herself from a beech tree on the Uetliberg hill after being betrayed by the cruel and lustful Duke of Manegg,

... The poltergeist who drove a young family, with their ten-year-old twin daughters, out of their home in the Shipfe quarter.

... The eerie sounds of nearly 70 drowned Christians who fell into the river during a medieval procession over an old wooden bridge, and whose shrieks can still be heard today.

We had a gripping adventure that Friday evening. Doug and I were the only Americans; the others were from England, Ireland, and Zurich itself.

We capped off the evening with drinks at the Aelpli Bar, in the oldest quarter of Zurich, with our new friends from Meilen in the canton of Zurich, who we met on the tour. But that scuttlebutt is for another blog … ☺

To learn more about the ghosts of Zurich … 

Check out this article that appeared in the SwissInfo.ch in 2006
Ghosts Haunt Zurich Streets

And view a clip of the tour on YouTube.com at

Ghost Walk of Zurich