The requisite food picture

On this, my second full day in Zurich, I certainly have eaten well! This picture is from a very fancy restaurant that is in an old factory. They've barely done anything to the factory site so it still has some old machinery, peeling paint, and dusty windows, but amazing upscale food. This was my dessert: a dense chocolate cake with sour cream ice cream, a very thin slice of dried apple and another very thin slide of dried orange, one blueberry and one raspberry, plus some whipped cream for good measure. Dinner began with a lovely salad with fresh greens, a delicious dressing, and very thinly sliced veal. My main dish was a Swiss classic called "rosti" which is basically some small fried potato pancakes. However, my dish came with sliced avocado, arugula, roasted red onions, balsamic sauce and probably a couple of other ingredients that I forget. Lunch today was at the psychology department, which shares a building with information science. They have a small snack shop, and a very nice cafeteria with delicious selections of real food. I made a salad and had that with a wonderful hard roll and the same kind muesili, fruit, and yogurt that I've been enjoying for breakfast. It was astonishing to find healthy, appealing food being made fresh and served to students and faculty in a university facility that has mostly faculty offices and a few classrooms. OK... enough about food!

I gave my presentation this morning and it seemed to be very well-received. I talked for a solid 90 minutes but was able to keep the audience with me. Afterwards, a theologian gave a reply, followed by questions from the chair of the psychology of aging faculty, a brilliant man I talked with more while sitting next to him a dinner tonight. He is good friends with Linda Clare, who I visited in Wales last year, so we connected on a lot of topics. There were at least three theologians involved in this meeting, the medical director of Zurich, and assorted psychology professors, gerontology researchers, and graduate students -- about 30 people in all. How amazing it was to give a psychology talk and reply to questions about eschatology!

Mike McCullough gave his talk this afternoon on his research on forgiveness and gratitude. He's a brilliant and very active scholar, now in a sabbatical after 7 years at the University of Miami. We chattered all the way from the hotel to the psychology department about music, because he plays a fretless bass in a 7 piece blues/funk band. We were talking animatedly about the Grateful Dead, Phish, Wilco, Patti Smith, and Leonard Cohen (who he saw on this tour while in Netherlands).

So, a little bit of rock & roll, a lot of solid gero-psychology/religion/spirituality, and much good food. All in all, a pretty good day, despite my sleep deprivation!