Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Around the World: A Saturday in Switzerland

March 28, 1992



I am in Switzerland on a lovely Saturday afternoon.  After a brief stop in Zurich to look around, I was able to get in contact with Sabina, a fellow backpacker I met in India and again in Cairo.

Tourist information in Zurich provided me with a map and a list of museums.  The first one I visited had a display of rocks.  If I was into pebbles, stones and rocks, it might have been interesting.  I was more intrigued by a series of time lapse photographs of changing shadows and colours on a mountain side as the sun set.

Outside the museum is an ambulance distributing clean needles to drug addicts.  Next to the ambulance is a bridge that passes over a creek.  I see someone with a gun chasing another person under the bridge.  Passing pedestrians don't appear to take much notice.  It all seems so commonplace.  That's all the encouragement I needed to leave this part of town.


Just add water...


The second museum, much to my delight, is devoted to coffee.  After a short tour, I am invited to sample some coffee and chocolates.  Full of caffeine and sugar, I return to the train station to catch the train to Grenchen, where Sabina lives.

Sabina meets me at the train station and drives me to her place, a little house on the edge of town.  Outside her house is a grassy hill that leads to an abandoned barn.  Sabina and I are enjoying what's left of the warm spring sunshine, talking and laughing over a few glasses of wine and enjoying the music playing on the radio.  It's all so very soothing.

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"The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more."
~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley