24/7 Shopping in Zurich
For expats who come from where 24 hour shopping is the norm, it takes some time to adjust to the limited shopping hours in Zurich. For a long time the particular exception was gas station convenience stores which were open 24/7. No longer. Zurich officials have long (for 20 years) tolerated these 24/7 gas station convenience stores, but now the federal government has banned them from being open 24 hours a day. Specifically they must be closed between 1-5am. For expats coming from more laissez-faire economic environments, these rules on shop opening times are usually easy to learn, but challenging to adapt to and difficult to understand. What used to be easy can now seem daunting. Expats might ask "where should I t go if I urgently need some medication?" or "what if I want to pick up a
last-minute missing ingredient for a Sunday meal?" While all of your local shops are closed on Sunday, there are options for Sunday shopping besides gas station convenience stores. 24 Hour Pharmacies There are 2 24 hour pharmacies in Zurich. From experience, both have multilingual pharmacists that speak English well. Bellevue Apotheke - Theatrestrasse 14 Bahnhof Apotheke - Bahnhofplatz 15 Sunday Shopping For whatever reason, shops located inside SBB owned property are allowed to be open on Sunday so one can get some Sunday shopping done at both the main train station (Zurich Hauptbahnhof) and Bahnhof Enge. Zurich Hauptbahnhof (aka ShopVille) - 9:00 - 20:00 Sunday ShopVille has a wide variety of shopping from groceries, to clothes and electronics. Most of the shops are quite small so they have a limited selection. A full list of shops and a map is located here(German). Bahnhof Enge - 10:00 - 20:00 Sunday Similar to ShopVille, but with much fewer shops. The main shop here is Migros, the large grocery store chain, but there is also a copy store, an electronics store and a bakery. A list of shops and individual opening and closing times is here (German). Holiday Sunday Shopping As we are starting to get into the holiday season, it is important to mention that the rules regarding Sunday shopping are relaxed before Christmas for certain shops and shopping centers. The rules here are confusing, but it seems the shops can choose to be open no more than 3 Sundays. For example, the large shopping mall SihlCity will be open Sunday November 29th, December 6th, skip a Sunday and then be open again Sunday December 20th from 11:00 - 18:00 .
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