european illiterati part i

wednesday:

while hurriedly sorting out the last of the packing, a muscle in my back spasmed. not a great start with a four-hour flight ahead of me. passport photo fail: the security agent at the airport took half a minute of staring at me and my photo before quizzing me on my details. i'm me! and any schmuck can memorize someone else's id...

---[a heart-pounding moment occurred soon after we passed through passport control.]

---the flight did wonders for my back and neck, and i got off the plane feeling ten times worse than when we boarded. aside from finishing this month's wired, i got started on achy obejas' days of awe (for class), which begins with one of the most inspiring post-modern takes on the bible i've ever encountered that added wonderful fuel for the non-shakespearean thesis i'm cooking in potentia. considering i've a meeting with the graduate advisor soon, the timing is perfect :)

"welcome to zurich, take an alfa romeo": the car pg's mom was upgraded to by the rental company is just too damned slick. aaah, europe.
so my first impression of zurich is a gorgeous, spacious converted attic bang in the centre of the city's hot-and-happening, with an incredible view over the river and surrounded by churches. poor us! my second impression is of the air here... that olfactory sense of nature whose appreciation is built in to my capetonian genes.

the first illiterate lunch was delicious (old school restaurant, traditional and traditionally beautiful decor and manners), but awkward, and what followed was none-too-exciting milling about the shopping district. on the way back home we bought stupidly delicious liquorice (called goms), and i rested: it was terribly hot by the time i woke up, and i was feeling even more drained and suffering half-dream half-hallucinations. it took a while for me to get out of bed and shower, by which stage i was feeling much, much better.

in the quiet of the night i finally got somewhere meaningful with my seminar. i was right about the effects of being disconnected!

---thursday:

we all slept relatively late, and i woke up to discover that i do, in fact, have internet access. so much for my seminar :P

pg's father took us out for breakfast, where i was fascinated by the simple elegance of a nutella croissant (well, gipfeli, but they're similar enough). pg and i then spent the day wandering, up to the university and down to the lake, then into grossmünster before heading back for lunch. the new waiter fumbled our already off-balance illiterate lunch experience (actually, in this case i was reading the menu correctly and he screwed up, which made me feel better :P ), but the food was as excellent as it was costly and we left satisfied. i then returned to nap, very much aware of the almost constant sirens...

pg and i did some very expensive supermarket shopping in the evening, and were planning on eating our meals on a park bench but walked out into rain... friendly rain, though, a pleasure to walk home through. after dinner, i spent the evening trying to resize / optimize pdfs (the tools available all seem to suck, though), and got tiny bits of my seminar done without actually getting anywhere...

we walked randomly until we found a nice little plaza with a cool cocktail bar, enjoyed the wonderfully cool night drinking and milling about silent, dark alleyways, then came home and got into bed just as the clocks struck midnight.

[continued...]