I've managed to locate an Internet cafe (Quanta Virtual Fun Space) in the Old City, so I bought an hour of access with included apostrophes to give me something to do while I wait out the rain. I'd keep wandering around the cobblestoned streets despite it if my wind-proof ultra-compact Totes umbrella had not become a wind-smashed ultra-compact Totes piece of creap. It's been gray and drizzly in Zürich all week, but the weather is supposed to improve tomorrow, so I may take the train to Bern to see the medieval city and buy some cheese from the nearby Ementaler region.
How to be willfully and persistently a foreigner in Zürich.
Step one: wear a t-shirt, without anything over it. Even a colored t-shirt. While wearing my logo-less colored tees under my casual work polos makes me more sartorially European, wearing them by themselves simply isn't done here. After wandering around Bahnhofstrasse for awhile I felt like I was out in my underwear. This was mitigated by my brown shoes and dark socks, but not by much.
Step two: go to Coop City--a sort of a combination Target/supermarket--and buy a large quantity of chocolate. The only other people I saw with multiple blocks of the stuff were two young women from England, who were being given chocolate advice by a native fellow who seemed quite keen on demonstrating his chocolate knowledge.
Step three: while wearing the aforementioned t-shirt, wander around carrying the chocolate in a translucent plastic bag. This makes you a person in his underwear carrying an easily-observed large amount of chocolate and, therefore, Not From Around Here.
So, I scuttled back to my hotel room to drop off my sweet cargo and change into a polo shirt. I felt much better after that.
The Old City is the Bohemian-style portion of Zürich where, if you're inclined, you can find funky shops and strip clubs, or buy marital aids and suits made entirely of hemp (or Hanf, as they call it). This last shop drew my attention because of the large potted Hanf plants at its front door, the sort of thing that would get you arrested and your shop confiscated in America. In addition to the hookas, the fibrous wallets, shirts, hats and pants, there was a small fridge chock-full of various drink-products with added Hanfy goodness. Hanf wine, hanf beer, even a Hanf-ified version of Red Bull. I bought a Hanf beer on Friday night...damned if it didn't give me a bit of a Hanf-head. Fortunately I had snacks available.
This afternoon, while wandering around the New City on the other side of the river, I ran smack into a loud, exuberant, rainbow-colored, bass-thumping Gay Pride parade--June is Pride Month, but it's been many years since I made an effort to get to New York or DC to join in the festivities, and I'd forgotten about it.
Before I came to Switzerland I did a bit of reading on the culture, to avoid being too ugly, and the author mentioned that the "typical" Swiss traits of conservative orderliness are more often found in the older citizens. The Pride parade, as it passed raucously by, blocked an intersection, and right at the front of a small line of cars was a tall, white-haired man in his late sixties or early seventies, standing in front of his maroon Subaru wagon, completely flummoxed. It was all over his face: who are these people? What are they doing? He was pacing towards the parade crowd, then back to his car, chewing his lips and scratching his head with an attitude of annoyance and confusion. Eventually he accosted a group of brightly colored lesbians who rebuffed him and threw candy at him, further adding to his dismay. He never quite reached true apoplexy--that simply wouldn't do. But this crowd, with its loud, thumping music, its bare-chested, leather clad men, its boldly-pierced women, and its spraying jets of festive shaving cream, was clearly something that offended his sensibilities.
Not because they were gay.
Because they were blocking traffic.
I saw a solitary man on the other side of the street holding a sign and taking pictures of the parade-goers as they passed by. He was facing away from me, and I thought, "Ten to one that sign's about Jesus." There was always a group or two along the Pride parade routes in the states, telling us how we were all going to hell and that God really, really hated us.
After the parade passed, I saw that his sign had been printed by Amnesty International, and had something to do with the human nature of love. On a side street behind him, spraypainted on a building in two colors, were the words PISS IN BUSH.
Which, given the nature of the parade and its high proportion of various fetishists who were demonstrably into various activities involving various fluids, could have meant any one of a number of things...but probably didn't.
Other than something about Zürich never being "red" spraypainted in large letters on a tarp covering a scaffolding, that's the only political sentiment I've been exposed to here.
And that's just fine with me.
I've got about ten minutes left on the access meter, here, so I'm going to proofread this a bit, post it, and head back out onto the cobbles. The rain's let up, and hopefully it will stay that way until I meander back to my hotel, across the river.
