The infuriating thing was, upon being informed of our predicament, Park Hyatt, our all-time favorite hotel, was no help at all, charging €130 to send a car for us.
We had originally booked three nights there but decided to check out the very next day to move to another hotel, the Dolder Grand who had graciously sent a hotel limo to move us from Park Hyatt in great style.
Now, about the Dolder:
Toni Hinterstoisser, GM of Hyatt Regency where we stayed very happily for a week in Amsterdam, mentioned the Dolder in connection with his recommendations for nice places to have dinner in Zürich, our next stop. We'd never heard of it before and we promised to check it out.
Staying at the Dolder is like living inside an art gallery. The public areas are filled with art. The entire building is art, both the original 1899 Gothic part where we chose to stay, and the two new contemporary-styled wings by Norman Foster.
Light pours in from everywhere. A fabulous metal grill, laser cut to a design like a pixilated forest, wraps around the property.
Lift lobbies leading from the garage and the back entrance near the Dolderbahn stop are littered with sculptures and art installations.
I see an Anish Kapoor disc on a lift lobby wall.
A giant Jean Dubuffet sculpture can be glimpsed standing outside in an open carpark.
A huge Andy Warhol Retrospective runs the length of the wall above the Reception Desk.
Rene Magritte's Curtains stands beside the back door to the main lobby.
There's Fernando Botero, Joan Miró, Salvador Dali, Henry Moore, Zaha Hadid, Takashi Murakami, Sylvester Stallone...wait, did I say Sylvester Stallone? Moving right along...
At lunch on the terrace overlooking Lake Geneva and the distant Alps, I realize for the first time that this hotel is both famous and infamous. Maximillian in Reception has just brought me an iPad with a complete list of pieces in the art collection.
At some point, I lose my place in the hotel website and, trying to find my way back in, I chance on several internet articles about the hotel's owner, billionaire Swiss financier Urs Schwarzenbach whom I'd never heard of before.
Immensely wealthy. Plays polo with Prince Charles, owns polo team with 600 horses, some kept in Australia, some in his 650-acre Culham Court base in Henley-on-Thames in England. He also owns an entire village in Buckinghamshire, a shooting estate in Scotland, a 19th century palace in Marrakech, holiday homes in St Moritz and the south of France...
In early April, Swiss tax authorities raided the Dolder, seizing several paintings from the Reception area in the presence of hotel guests. The resulting vacant wall spaces are now hung with framed funny rubbish pieces presumably made by friends of the hotel.
Big tax dispute with Swiss authorities ongoing...this has been widely reported in media...and I was totally unaware I'd be staying in such an intriguing property...how very exciting!
