A home of intentions

August 21^st, 2007

Lately when I look at someone I have come to know – I feel the desire to weep because when looking at them, I see how beautiful they are. I felt sad to leave Jan today – just as I did when I left Lysette.

He came with me to the train station and bought me a box of these special little sandwiches from the Sprungli Company that have the lightest taste and texture. I hugged him goodbye – feeling like the world has become a little better of a place because two strangers had built a home of trust and respect out of nothing but our intentions.

On the train to Munich there are straps dangling down from the bags of backpackers above my head. There are sweatshirt sleeves and helmet straps all swaying above me. The girls in the group of seats next to me have messy hair and miss matched shoes, laughing about each others flaws and loving it. In the seats facing me there is an old woman watching her crossword puzzle and a younger woman who has decided to live her life looking old.

My hostel is big with nice, clean bed sheets and down comforters. I happen to be the only girl in a room of 5 other men. We all went to a Jazz piano bar and talked for hours.

A little solemn.

August 20^th, 2007

I’ve been playing Tetris a lot in the higher levels, I noticed a trend – when you do the right things with the pieces given to you, the game is very smooth and it is easy to continue completing rows. When you do one thing wrong with a piece by not thinking about its proper place or being careless, it takes about 10 pieces after that to correct the one mistake. Sometimes after 10 pieces of recovery, the game can even be lost. Today my trip feels a little like I have been careless with the placement of the pieces – I should have gone with Karin to the mountain yesterday and gone to museums the day before that. I have had two days now with nothing much to do but wander around. Hoping to find good food, instead I found something over-priced, but tasty none the less. I found the perfect tea room & patisserie…I love when I do that. I think now I am completely out of Francs. Perhaps it is the gloomy weather – but I am having a very difficult time being happy today. I was invited by a stranger in the restaurant to come to a dance club tonight – Maybe I will go – it is my last night in Zurich. Jan’s house is located right in the middle fo the Orthodox Jewish quarter, and there are many Hassids walking around. I have been told that they have so much influence in this area that on Shabbat, they actually close an entire road to traffic.

I tasted hazelnut oil today – wow that is a treat. It was so special, I can imagine how good it would be on a salad or drizzled on bread. I’m not quite sure what to do now – we’ll see where my adventures take me next. If I could do anything right now, what would I do? Curl up with a good book in Barnes & Noble with my brother, or take a drive from Utah to Northern Arizona through the indian reservation.

The streets are moist and darkened from the rain and I catch my reflection in the jewelry shop windows, noticing how long my hair has become. How much time have I spent away from my home and my family. How will I be different upon my return. I will have lived for 23 years when I come back in October. I have come to see how short life really is. There are so many lifetimes to be lived on this earth and for some, spending it in one place is good enough.

The land is always here and the people will always be the same and the slightest change in environment or emotion can make us feel like the world has shifted.

Thoughts

8/19/2007

Today Karin and I were to meet at Jan’s house so we could climb the mountain together – but I believe last night we were so tired that we got our meeting place confused. I waited for her until an hour after our meeting time and fell asleep a little on the bed.

I took the bike out (It was a Sunday so there was not much to do) and explored, peddling my way through the town. I found a garden, with a small stream to sit by and write. I found the other side of the lake (which seems to be more residential) and by the time it turned into evening I got the idea to go back to the Orange Cinema to find Karin and maybe watch another film.

By sheer chance, Karin had lent me one of her Orange Cinema employee shirts – so when I arrived at the theatre, I walked past ticketing and VIP completely undetected – it was kind of like wearing the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter.

This time instead of sitting outside, I sat with Karin and the other servers behind the bar, watching “Knocked Up.” I had to avoid the occasional customer who would come to me in German asking for something. I enjoyed free brownies and sparkling water with a big grin on my face.

After the rain had stopped, I took my wet bike back home and while I was riding past the Zurich Lake…I felt intensely lonely. The lake was so beautiful; it was black with the colored lights of the boats and homes reflecting their warmth on its current. The sky was vivid black-blue with clouds still visible underneath the crescent moon. My heart felt like it was being pushed under leagues of water and I knew that at that moment I had no one to share this place with. I didn’t even want to look anymore because I couldn’t understand the value of doing so. I kept pedaling and tightening my stomach to stay warm and thought of how my trip would have been completely different if there was someone there to observe with me. I keep forgetting that there is an important reason for me to be alone at this time: It is so I can appreciate and discover the things that I alone can bring to this world, and also to keep myself open to all the possibilities and directions which might come to me.

You be strait trippin if I aint on da vip list yo

8/18/07

I woke up this morning to a note from Jan saying that his friend Karin will pick me up this morning at 10:15 to take me to Yoga class. She arrived exactly at 10:15 and she had a kind, friendly face. I rode off with her on Jan’s bike and I enjoyed a full, German-speaking yoga class with her. Thank goodness I’ve been to enough yoga sessions to know what was going on without having to understand. After class, taking our bikes a little further to the pristine Zurich lake, passing a giant purple Ferris wheel – I felt like I was at home and she had been a neighborhood friend from around the block. She introduced me to all of her co-workers and we laid by the lake in the grass, feeling the sun – and talking.

She took me to a botanical garden – which was one of the nicest I’ve seen. There were three domes in the middle of the park, showcasing flora from the other more-extreme climates. There are a particular species of plant called “Living Rocks” which are used to receiving only 10mm of water per year. They actually look like tiny human brains.

The next time I saw Karin that evening was at her job – She works for “Orange Cinema” Which is an outdoor movie theater event sponsored by Orange Mobile. I got in for free and watched their premier of the movie “The Departed.” Orange had set up an entire movie theatre outside overlooking Lake Zurich. Behind the movie screen I could see reflections of boats moving slowly across the water, and occasionally a shooting star. The air was crisp and cool but cozy.

I helped her close up her area at the end of the night and we rode our bikes over to Jan’s work – which is a popular dance club. We walked up to the bouncers amongst stylishly dressed 21 year olds with our hair in pony-tails wearing sweat shirts and tennis shoes. They weren’t about to let us in, but my name of course was on the guest list. The venue was actually very beautiful and with the loud house music, it appeared to be something from a vampire movie. It looked like an old theatre for opera with balconies and long red curtains. I prefer to dance by myself, and I tend to zone out a little bit, and whenever I looked up, there were always a circle of guys watching me – but not approaching.

I rode my bike home around 3am and crashed in bed. The cities to me seem all the same - As my grandfather used to say "A town is a town is a town" – I imagine that each place means something different to each person at different periods of their life. Because I am alone, the things I appreciate are kind people and cheap food. So each town seems a little bit the same – only differentiated by the friends I make.

Wear a Bro

8/17/2007

I woke up at 7:15 to go have breakfast downstairs with Oliver and his class-mate Christina. They are working together in the library for 8 hours every day, they are also Salsa dance partners and I could sense that they liked eachother.. We had a beautiful breakfast together, I really liked Christa – and then we all went our separate ways. Jan (the guy working at the hotel on the first night) offered a place for me to stay at his house and this morning I got on the tram and made my way there. He was so nice to me and although he was still half-asleep, he told me where to go in town and he even gave me the sim-card from one of his phones for me to use while I’m here. He gave me the key to his house and I feel so trusting of him. Its easy to tell when people have good hearts. Jan is an architecture student who works two jobs, One at the hotel, and the other at a popular dance club here in Zurich. I think I might come to the club tonight.

Feeling free and excited about Zurich, I began walking around. I found the chocolate shop that the woman told me about and I bought her a big bar of dark chocolate (72% cacao). Zurich lake is speckled with swans today and the water looks glassine. There are people walking all around, Swiss people don’t have a certain look about them because if you look on a map, Switzerland is a tiny round country surrounded by Italy, Germany, and France – so the people look like they are from everywhere. I have only been greeted in German. It seems popular to grab something cheap to eat and sit by the lake, watching the boats, red flowers, and people go by – which is exactly what I did. Wanted to share two travel tips about undergarments that I have found:

1. In Pickpocket rich countries, put your money and credit cards in your bra. – You'll definitely notice if someone decides to pick there... and if you're thinking "hey that's not fair...I'm a man, I don't wear a bra!" you can always wear a bro ;)

2. You really only need two pairs of underpants when you travel. at the end of the day, wash your underpants in the shower and wear the other pair the next day.

I was so excited when I went to the supermarket because I found a Mexican food section! I bought tortillas and salsa and at Jan’s house I made us breakfast burritos with rice, eggs, sour cream, salsa and avocado. It turns out that Jan’s parents are from the Czech Republic and Mexico – so I was right on the money by cooking what I did. I love learning about people’s lives and how we all have such different passions and circumstances.

Intimidating English

8/16/07

I explored the old town today many times and discovered a bakery selling gorgeous pastries. There are so many to choose from and often the contents are unknown…I learned from my Mom that the best way to figure out what to eat in this scenario is to ask the heavier-set clerk behind the counter what their favorite is. The response is almost always a shy giggle and a finger pointing over to something scrumptious. Hannah and I shared pastries that melted away between our fingertips and half-litres of delicious Swiss milk. She is so much fun to travel with because she just goes along with the flow and allows good things to happen.

Perfumeries are everywhere, its fun to spray myself with a new scent each day – it makes me feel really wealthy when I wear perfume. There are also many shops selling beautiful Swiss watches and jewelry, as well as clothing. The men dress very nice there with their blazers and ties. While Hannah was taking a nap, I went out to the old town again to find a market I had seen before. When I arrived, it was closed and I started talking to a woman who I felt I had spoken to earlier in the day – but she did not recognize me. She invited me up to her house so she could show me how to get around Zurich and where to go. This was so sweet and I went with her. It turns out that she was a graphic designer like me, but has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and has not been able to work recently. She told me that she must take every day as it comes and I understood very well what she meant. She showed me some over her paintings and they were mostly deep blue-green with the subject of the painting very hidden, like under layers and layers of depth. This was beautiful to me and I felt like it was a window whose view looked into who she was. She told me about an expensive chocolate shop I must go to and the cool “Industrial quarters” as well as the long street, good for walking and eating. I was touched by her kindness and made a goodbye.

Hannah left in the evening and after making a meal for myself in the kitchen I felt a little bored. I thought to myself that this is part of traveling alone…Some nights might be a little boring because you don’t always have people to go do things with. Then I went downstairs – This night Jan wasn’t working, but his brother Oliver was – and the moment I saw him I knew who he was. I helped him and one of the residents of the hotel set up the breakfast tables for the following morning and then Oliver asked me if I wouldn’t mind looking over the English in his Senior Thesis for College. He brought out his laptop and I started reading over the material. First of all, I had no idea that Oliver was 27, second I did not know this was for a Masters Thesis which is 80 pages long, third I didn’t know anything about political science – which was the topic of the paper. The Thesis was comparing and contrasting the scope for innovation policies in two Czech regions…Other than finding a couple grammatical errors, I felt that I could not have written a thesis in my own language as masterfully as he did. He made me a hot chocolate and I went to bed – happy that I had found something to do.

Internet: the best medicine

8/15/07

When I was riding on the train from Venice, the moment we hit Switzerland, I felt completely safe and at home. My heart almost broke form the natural green beauty moving by me and I felt an incredible sensation of having “found my place.” Hannah was with me at this time and we found our hotel together. This was a special place because it is a hotel with all the nice amenities, and on the top floor they had kept a sleeping quarters for people who just need a no-frills place to stay. I made friends with the man (Jan) at the counter and I was attached to the internet for a couple hours – which for me was like medicine.