Flying from New York; settling in to Zurich
When flying trans-oceanic we don’t mind taking the redeye. It’s time to sleep in any case and we might as well use that time traveling. We’ve flown through Heathrow a number of times and are beginning to recognize it… into Terminal 3 (American Airlines) then out from Terminal 5 (British Air). The new shuttlebus that takes us from one to the other drives a regular route, but always seems a maze. We went through passport control and security with plenty of time to sit and relax before our second flight. Mark noticed a man his age sitting opposite him in the waiting area using his iPad. They struck up a conversation about the device. He’s a long-time PC user who has been enjoying the iPad as a popular fiction reading device.
For some reason, we were not booked in the same row on the flight to Zurich. Mark ended up in the row in front of her between Rodger Sykes, President & CEO of mmicsolutions and Susanna, an attractive young mother with her ±1 year-old lovely daughter on her lap. She engaged Mark in conversation and did not let up (except for a quick visit to the WC, when she let him hold the baby as she climbed out of her window seat) until we arrived and deplaned. The daughter of a French mother and Italian father, she had grown up in Libya and other places in the Middle East; is married to an Egyptian who does not like Egyptians; lives in London, but has a home in Zurich, often visits Monaco and other such places. Mark could not keep track of it all. Debbie remarked that it seemed that he had met his match! During her WC visit, Sykes and Mark had a couple of minutes to chat. He had a MacBook Air on his lap and had recently been “converted” from a PC. Of course, I told him about Nisus Writer Pro and gave him his card. When Susanna returned she told us that we must visit a particular shop near Lausanne and mentioned the name. Mark wrote it down a bit garbled, but we did not make it there.
We worked our way through baggage claim and customs with no hitch then found the car rental desk where our reservation was waiting. Debbie started Gertrude (remember, Gertrude Penelope Schwartz is the name of our GPS device) as Mark took care of one last detail and we were ready to go. Mark had printed out the street addresses of all our hotels as well as Google maps directions. However, those are notoriously hard to read while driving in a strange environment. We’d much rather “depend” on Gertrude. While it took only a few minutes for Gertrude to realize “she” was in Zurich, she kept losing satellite reception. The signs leading us to the center of town served us well.
It had rained earlier and it threatened rain for the next couple of days. The sky was overcast and gray, even so, discounting that, our first impression of Zurich was that it is a very gray city. The buildings, most no more than five stories high are made of gray granite and sandstone. Some of the apartment buildings on the outskirts of downtown have been stuccoed and painted a dull dun or green. In selecting our hotel for Zurich, Mark had studied the maps of the city rather extensively. He probably looked at 10 different hotels, plotting their location in relation to the synagogue, the only other place in Zurich that had a “must get to” designation. Mark knew where the train station was in relation to the hotel, where the main streets were and where the art museum was. But, he had no idea which roads were pedestrian only and in which direction one was allowed to drive or turn. We arrived at the train station and he knew we could not be far from the hotel. However, we drove through the main shopping area and around the edge of the area of our hotel for about a half hour before Gertrude finally located the precise spot. At one point we drove past what we were sure was the red light district and then Gertrude led us directly to it; the Rothaus. We checked in, put the car in an outrageously expensive underground lot (available for that night only), put our bags in our room and asked where we could find a decent place to eat dinner. The fellow at the desk pointed us to a nice little restaurant bar about 100 meters up the main drag. To get there, however, we needed to pass a number of sex-toy stores, a few raunchy bars and at least one XXX rated movie theater. I ate my first and only plate of spätzle. Debbie used her best German and we “interviewed” the waitress learning as much as we could about the neighborhood and our first experience with Swiss francs (nearly equivalent in value to the American dollar). We returned to our hotel room near 10:00 local time, in time to check our email. Mark’s Mac would not turn on delaying writing details for these reports. We turned out the lights early enough for a “normal” nights sleep. After a couple of hours, the street sounds decreased to nearly nothing. In fact, when Mark awoke a couple of times during the night he was surprised not to hear any sound, no traffic, no sirens, no voices, no crickets.
The views out our window:
Notice the skull and cross bones opposite the Swiss flag.
Note the sex clubs on our side street.
