Gerold's Garden

In-between the railroad tracks leading to Switzerland's largest train station and  the legendary Freitag flagship store there's another special place. It's called Frau Gerold's Garten, and it's an outdoor self-service eatery. 

Founded in 2012 by a German former investment banker turned design student, the project was intended to be a temporary pop-up project as a convention center was planned to be built on the site. 

The heart of the urban garden a conglomerate of 15 stacked sea containers with a bar, seating steps, terrace and colorful fairy lights. All around, tents, boxes with trees and benches form a beer garden. 

Designer stores offering fashion and small items outside the mainstream are housed in black portacabins. And planted wine barrels and wooden crates are squeezed into the back corner:

Raised beds provide up to ten percent of the ingredients for the restaurant. Zucchini, chili, herbs and radishes give hope that more than just bratwurst and pasta salad was going to be served in the future. Everyone was invited to help with urban farming: The aim was to become a meeting place and platform for the neighborhood. There are very few volunteers though, the majority of the maintenance and gardening is done by professional landscapers and gardeners.

The longer you're looking around, the more details you'll detect, take these garden gnomes, for example. They are enjoying their cheese fondue in the shade of this (bonsai?) tree.

I don't know what this garden gnome below has done to be locked up in the aviary?

The buildings in the background are a thrift shop (red) and the Prime Tower. 

If you’ve ever been to Western Europe you may have noticed that there aren’t many skyscrapers. There are some tall buildings in London, Frankfurt, and the Défense neighborhood outside of Paris, but otherwise everything is pretty built to fit in with the old buildings of the cities.

I don’t know what made developers build the Prime Tower in Zurich, Switzerland, but fact is, they did. It’s on a former industrial campus, and it looks kind of cool. It’s not that high. 126 meters (413 feet), and it has 36 floors

Travelers in Switzerland - and all over the world for that matter - are familiar with information boards that tell them which mountain peaks can be spotted from this location. This display describes the different train models that run on this route ;-)

Thanks to the various plants, Gerold's garden has also become home to a number of amphibians, birds and insects. A true urban island. This wine barrel is a wild bee habitat.

Goldfish receive fresh water from the watering can. We didn't stay long enough to find out how the water gets into the can? Is it not fresh water at all, but water that is repeatedly fed up through the hose?

So overall a very nice enterprise. Accessible by public transport or car (the surrounding parking spaces are above average, however, especially as this is supposedly an outlying district), Gerold's Garten offers something for different groups of people. Occasionally, small concerts are even held here. 

Although it also offers a certain amount of food for meat eaters as well as for people who eat vegetarian or vegan food, for me as a Freiruum visitor, the gastronomy offer in Gerold's Garten should be expanded.

Would you like to visit this place? Is there anything like this in your town?