Joining a new gym is like starting a new job. You wear clean socks, and are treated extra nicely. In return, you feel the need to make a good impression, which usually means pretending to be someone else entirely. You can’t find things, and don’t like to ask, particularly if your questions have to be in German. This sense of pampered disorientation leaves you unsure whether you’re having fun or not. One day perhaps, I will feel at home here. People will wink and give me the thumbs-up and grin and shout “Yo!”, just like they did to Antonietta, the willowy lady who showed me round this evening. But the odds are stacked against me. Unlike her, I would have … …
Author: andy
It’s a good time to take stock: on the day when two marathons close to my heart (and in the case of Zurich, close to my home) take place, and a week after so many good friends of this website admirably complete marathons in Brighton and Rotterdam. My last run ended so miserably that I couldn’t immediately bring myself to talk about it here. It happened six weeks ago, just days after the last, generally optimistic, post in which I was up and out at sunrise, and looking forward to easing my way into training for a late-May half marathon. In that message, I casually referred to a distant twinge in my left calf — the one that has treated … …
Up at 6:30 a.m. today after a sleepless night. I first did what I always first do – step out onto the balcony at the front of the apartment and take a look at the Horgen Morgen. The Swiss like regular blasts of cold air in their lives. It’s a habit I’ve learnt to appreciate. At least twice a day, someone will throw open one of the huge windows in our office. Up on that sub-zero hillside, it seems like irrational behaviour, but most of us grin appreciatively, precisely because it seems like irrational behaviour. We even gather round the open window in our shirt sleeves, gulping the icy air, stretching, and whimpering with pleasure. It’s a bit … …
The lack of activity in here might suggest zero activity out there. Almost, but not quite true; and less true this week than at any time since we arrived in Switzerland, four months ago. My Garmin strap remains split, so my phone, and Runkeeper, have been called in to keep tabs on anything approaching athletic bustle. They tell me that before this week, I managed just 41 kilometres of disidleness — if I may offer the world a new word. This 4-month marathon was composed of very short joggy-walky jog-walks, and a couple of leisurely flora-centric Sunday afternoon strolls in the dense woodland bordering the end of our road. You’d struggle to detect more than a sprinkle of sweat … …
My confident prediction, that the move to Switzerland would produce more blog posts, hasn’t yet materialised. The truth is, there’s been a mass of stuff to talk about, but I’m still feeling too darned pleased with myself, and there’s a limit to the amount of smarm one can reasonably slart across the blogosphere. But. But allowing a trip to New York to pass without mention seems a bit too much like self-denial. A Swiss myth (and there are plenty) is that the trains run on time. Some do. Many don’t. Which explains why I legged it for the wrong train, and found myself stranded on an empty suburban station, early on a Sunday morning, with no immediate prospect of making … …
It’s not every day you bump into Alan Shearer on the frozen streets of Oerlikon, the slightly seedy suburb of Zurich we’re living in at the moment. Shearer is followed a moment later by Boris Johnson. Then Fabio Capello. No, this isn’t the consequence of too much Gruyere before bedtime. It really happened. I think. But to illustrate the scarcity of the experience, I have to admit it’s never happened to me. The story belongs to my wife, and to yesterday. As a footnote to the anecdote, she added casually that she’d also come up against “that bald bloke”. Via a variant of Twenty Questions, I was able to establish that the bald bloke was Sir Bobby Charlton. Instead of … …
“Wow, this is a really interesting car park!” It’s the sort of thing I think you’re supposed to say when otherwise engaged with recreational narcotics, but I heard myself uttering this unlikely phrase last Saturday in Konstanz, just over the border in Germany. It’s a fine town, and popular with Swiss residents who fancy a break from their own, pricey, restricted shops. The massive, majestic lake, Bodensee, turns our own Zurichsee into an embarrassingly insignificant puddle. There are huge, stern statues to creep past, occasional deposits of medieval architecture to blink at, and somewhere, I’m told, evidence of the town’s Roman origins. And did I mention that interesting car park? We’ve a long menu of cities to sample on this … …
And how rapidly the unfamiliar becomes almost normal. We probably won’t feel in reach of true settledness until we move into our permanent apartment in Horgen in January, but nevertheless, despite being here in Zurich for only 10 days, already we seem to have found, or created for ourselves, a surprisingly comfortable groove. That said, we are leading quite different lives from each other. I’m working; M isn’t. Every day I get to travel 35 kilometres beyond the city, and spend my day 2,600 feet (800 metres) above sea level, in a modern office in a small town at the far end of the long and winding Lake Zurich. High above the lake, surrounded by green hills and distant mountains, … …
Someone asked me today how my German was getting on. Here is the answer: This evening, at the end of my long commute back to Zurich, I called in at a Shell station to fill up with petrol. Despite the 5 empty spots available, I waited until I could fill up at pump number 1, 2, or 3, as otherwise, I wouldn’t have known what to say if I was asked which one I’d used. I’ve been making use of the lengthy drive (an hour or so each way) to listen to Teach Yourself German tapes, but we haven’t reached anything as useful as numbers yet. Tuesday was my first work day. After a 700 mile road trip from Blighty, … …
We’re here, in Zurich. One of my new-start resolutions is to post quick and short messages here, rather than always feel the need to write epic entries — a bad habit that gradually appeared a couple of years ago. I would rather write more frequent messages than agonise over spinning out some dense, meandering narrative. We left England yesterday morning at 8:30. We’d planned to spend the previous evening in leisurely fashion, chortling at Spamalot in Oxford. Instead we opted for a chaotic evening of ‘packing’. This began as a civilised and orderly process of selecting things we would need for the next two months (until our furniture and other possessions join us). As the hours trickled away, it turned … …