I am 22 years old; about to be 23. This means that for five years I have been flying business and first class on my moms passes.
I only found out one week ago that business and first class passengers get free alcohol. I’m not sure if I can forgive my mom for forgetting to tell me this little tidbit.
I did, however, get lit on the flight home from Zurich. I feel as if I’ve redeemed myself. Slightly.
And that, in a nutshell, was Zurich. Series after series of funny, now classic, inside jokes that seemed as if they were never-ending and which kept us going from the minute wheels were down until the minute they were back up 25 hours later. I initially started this post by typing out a list of funny things that occurred, because they were many and plentiful. However, after about the tenth item I typed, I realized they were all only funny if you were there and that the only people laughing at this post would have been myself, Mom, and Jeff. So I scrapped that and reverted back to a post form that never fails…recapping the highlights of the trip.
We landed around 0700 after a completely sober trip on my part. This turned out to be a good thing, because I think I experienced and appreciated Switzerland a little bit more while sober compared to being drunk. Jeff and I had been sitting in first class, so we managed to shoot off the plane first and beat the crowd to the Customs line. After having my passport glanced at and swiped, I began to walk away before I remembered about the stamp. You see, most of Europe doesn’t even stamp your passport anymore since there’s really no security reason to anymore. Everything is swiped, scanned, and digitalized so that the stamps are now a formality. Well, I like them dammit, so Ive started asking for them everywhere I go.
Once through, we met up with my mom and at my behest, caught the train into town instead of opting to ride in the hotel shuttle van. The way I see it, Ive only got one day in the country and dammit if I don’t want to ride their public transportation at least once. But I must say, their rail system dominated any other Ive ever ridden on. Clean, smooth, efficient.
One thing kept confusing me. Everywhere I looked, I saw German words. Signs, advertisements, even spoken around me. I finally leaned over and asked Jeff why everybody was speaking German and he looked confused. “Don’t they speak Swiss here,” I asked, and that’s when the laughter came. Apparently Swiss isn’t even a fucking language, but I sure as hell thought it was. I mean, every other small country over there practically has their own language…Portuguese, Czech, Romanian, Dutch…so why the hell were the Swiss so lazy and not able to come up with their own? Needless to say, though, asking if there was anybody who could interpret Swiss for me became running joke # 29 of the trip.
But back to the German point, it surprised me how German the town was on the outside and how stereotypical Swiss it was on the inside. For instance, all the buildings were very German, very Prussian. I eventually expected to see the Reichstag pop up over the horizon. The insides of places though were very sleek, very modern, very Ikea. Kind of what you expect from a modern, European country and I have to say, the mixture of the old school architecture and the new school furnishing was actually pretty cool. I could definitely get used to that.
Anyways, once my keen sense of navigation got us on the correct train (after translating the Swiss in my head, no less!), we made our way to the hotel and dropped our bags off, changed clothes, and shot back out the door. We grabbed a few coffees, walked along the streets for a while, and finally decided to take a short train ride up to the foothill mountains to do a little hiking. Remember, these were the foothills of the Alps, so you could replace the phrase “foothill mountains” with “exact replica of the Rockies” and you’d have just about the same thing. The hike itself was long since we took the planetary trail, which basically meant every kilometer or so they had a monument to one of the nine planets. But the hike was worth it for nothing other then the amazing view it gave of the city and of the Alps. We started the hike around 1400 and didn’t finish until after sunset, so the entire time we had a shot of the sun setting behind the Alps and the whole time I couldn’t help but stare at them in pure awe and simply marvel at their sheer size. Every time I glanced at them, it was a humbling feeling just to imagine trying to cross them on foot as we were doing in the small foothills. And yet all I could keep thinking of was Hannibal cutting right through them, circling around behind Rome during the Second Punic Wars. I kept thinking about how he somehow led an army of 38,000 men through them and, oh yeah, how he brought along a few thousand elephants just to make it a bit challenging. And yet here we were, looking at a map, trying to read signs in Swiss with nondescript arrows, racing against the sun, and wondering if we were gonna make it. You’ve heard it before, but its moments like those that make me thankful I studied history.
Once we made our way down, we caught a train back into to town, went shopping at an arts and crafts fair for a few hours, and called it a night. While at the fair, we of course bought as much Swiss food as we could and one such delicious beverage we consumed was gluvine. Basically, its hot, spiced wine that I loved. My mom and Jeff hate it, as did just about every other crew member we asked about it later on, but I for one found it soothing. I’m usually not a fan of wine nor warm alcohol, but I could definitely see why it could be appealing to those in Switzerland, what with all the freezing ass weather and hypothermia and whatnot.
Like I said, after that, we went back to the room, woke up the next morning, and flew home. That was my Zurich trip in a day. There’s no better way to experience a place and I can’t wait for our next trip (Argentina?)
And if you hear any stories about me drinking all the Jack minibottles on the flight home, puking in a barf bag, and then bringing it to my mom in the first class galley, don’t believe them. Totally exaggerated / made up.
