Advertisement
Published: September 25th 2007
Buy the ticket, take the ride
Dr H.S. Thompson
With ticket in hand, I suddenly see a paradox in Hunter's statement.. How much of the ride is what you make of it? How often is the ticket just the licence to get started?
This time my "ride" is with the Eng. Geologists here at ETH, and it's going to last for (probably) the next 3 years. I have a seat (with a table), a card to get me cheap(ish) food at the cafeteria, and a guarantee of money that should cover everything else - I hope!
I was kinda homesick last night, I lay awake till 4am listening to the midday Sunday show on RadioActive streaming over the internet... Good memories. It's the evening here now, and I haven't really left this couch all day. Getting to sleep at 4am didn't help, and nor does recovering from a cold... but what really doesn't help is the the lack of purpose, no friends, no money, not even a place to look at moving into. It's hard work starting fresh, this is my third time in 4 1/2 years, I just wish the last time wasn't 9 months ago :/
I've been pretty fortunate
though; Doris, a friend from my trip through Mongolia discovered I was moving to her city and gave me the best Swiss welcome I could possibly ask for. She picked me up from the station, gave me a bed for a few days, and importantly cooked me some good swiss food 😊 I've also had a week out on an expenses paid exploration of the Swiss and Austrian Alps with various collegues from local universites - trying hard to think professionally while wondering at the incredible place i'm to be working in. A Zurich local I met on the internet who speaks perfect Australian offered me a couch at her place for a few weeks; and I've been loaned this apartment by Freddy (a PhD student from Ecuador) while he's away for two weeks, pretty generous after only knowing me for 6 days!
The Swiss landscape is impressive - cows, bells, big mountains, grass... Zurich is the most well organised city I've ever been to - but it should be eh? Clockwork. It's an interesting vibe in the city, it's 45% foreign and I'll guess that half of those are the rich financiers driving round the lake in their
Ferarris. The other half must be the students fighting with me for the extremely limited accomodation. Mixing the traditionally conservative Swiss, the extravagant rich, and (I assume) liberal student faction has made it pretty hard to figure out who's running the place.
Anyway, 3 years is a long time, way too long to just sit back and take what comes...
I guess the inspiration for this blog is the reoccurring comment from non-Swiss that the natives are "boring". It first cropped up in the train to Zurich, when a spaced out Israeli woman was telling me how bored she'd been after living here for 10 years - amusingly, her rambling monologue was spiced up by an American-Swiss guy, who turned round to agree with her, and then comment that any place lacking suicide bombers would probably quite rightly seem boring to someone from Jerusalem! They had a good "chat" for the next 45min that culminated in a bit of baggage barging as they both exited at the same stop.
Everyone only gets one shot at this journey, how they chose to make it is up to them.. The ONLY time someone can complain about the way their
journey's turned out is when they're forced to fit to someone elses society - something that is happening far too much around the world, but something the Swiss can
never be accused of.
I'm looking forward to seeing what I can make of this 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.174s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 19; qc: 114; dbt: 0.1023s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
