Zurich - a travel adventure excerpt

Flying from Dulles in Washington DC to whatever the name is of the international airport in Zurich I kept waiting for feelings of anxiety and nervousness. I was hoping that this would be like the proverbial descent into stardom, that waiting masses of admirers would greet me at the gate, like the Beatles arriving at JFK, screaming my name and waving signs.

But I arrived alone, with no one to even greet me. The porter did smile and the customs agent wished me a pleasant journey.

“What is the reason for your visit?”

“I’m going to hike around the continent and-”

“Pleasure,” he said.

STAMP. He handed my back my passport.

“Enjoy your trip. Next!”

I wandered from the area looking for a map, instructions of some sort that would give me a clue as to my next step. I was in a brand new country, across an ocean I’ve never seen, with people who I couldn’t understand. I was ready for anything.

I found a train going into town, an express straight to the train station I would get to know so well. At the time, I had no idea of that, so I hauled my pack on board, rested it between my legs and watched as the train wisked through the fields surrounding the city. I saw little through the windows.

The day was cloudy and almost wet, but not quite. The air was pregnant with moisture, as if any minute, fat thick raindrops would fall from the sky like little bombs, exploding in icicle freeze bombs. After an over night flight, you notice things like that. What you fail to notice is the degree of tired you are at the time. You think that being a young, virile American male, with hoards of screaming admirers that failed to show up at the gate, you can tackle trekking across a brand new country with ease. Nature invented certain fail safes for idiots like me.

The body will accept not sleeping on a plane in the crowded regurgitated air and cramped kennel like quarters.

It will accept the limitations placed on it from lack of food, sufficing to survive on peanuts and cola, tiny finger sandwiches with wilted lettuce and half cooked Beef Wellington.

It would even agree to march through crowded train stations, day after day of hiking down uninhabited country roadsides, infrequent naps caught in train compartments.

But what the body needed before any of this was rest.

Nature would take care of that by shutting down all unnecessary functions, including deductive reasoning. What do you do in America when you are travelling and tired? Pull off the highway to a small cheap motel, crash on the bed in front of a faded color television set and sleep for nine hours. What do you do in Switzerland when you are getting ready to travel but need rest and can’t find a cheap motel just off the highway, television or no?

You find a bed and breakfast, sleep from three in the afternoon until breakfast the next morning and hope that the privilege doesn’t break you toward the end of your trip. All battles and excursions should be carefully planned to the most minute detail to limit the amount of funds wasted on frivolity. In the most dejected state of tiredness, sleep is not a frivolity.

I was lost in a new city, uncomprehending the three maps in my hand and pocket and too tired to ask for directions. I wandered down a dirty alley, past a series of empty plate glass windows and stumbled into the first bed and breakfast I could find.

How was I to know it was in a red light district? I slept through the most exciting night of my trip.

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