Zürich

My last day in Switzerland. I was catching a night train to Paris and then changing to a train back to the Netherlands. As it was an overnight train, I only needed one day of my Eurailpass.

I had promised to cook dinner for my hosts, their sons and girlfriends. First order of business in the city was to get my old Swiss banknotes changed at a bank. It had been 8 years since my last visit and Switzerland had changed the paper currency in the meantime. When I tried to pay with an old note, cashiers either refused it or had to check with management. At the bank counter the employee looked at me quizzically and said: Sir, these are not Swiss Francs, they are Euros. Oops, hahaha, silly me, I had pulled out the wrong bunch of notes from my wallet and pushed them under the screen without looking.


The selection of Asian groceries at Globus was pathetic so I went to Bellvue to look in the Co-op. Not a great selection either so I decided to buy jasmine rice, some veges and make sang choy bow. At 1700 I started preparation and with T's help, was finished by 1900. The food was a bit too dry, maybe Swiss air dries groceries out faster. Both sons and their girlfriends came for dinner. All the food was consumed, as was all the desert, so they can't have been too bad.

We chatted until 2200, then they accompanied me to the bus stop. The elder son, A and his girlfriend were going home so they accompanied me on the tram. At the platform group of noisy young USAns got onto the train. It seemed that they were planning a drinking party once the train got going. The train looked a bit old. My compartment companions were I think one French and four Swiss. I slept well with my eye shades and ear plugs.


It was good to meet old friends and sad to part but I was beyond nostalgia now. There are pieces of me all over the world. I had to travel this long to realise that I should neither look backward nor forward, that I should embrace timelessness. Like the wild geese in the Zen koan, the universe had always been there, it was only my mind that discriminated between past and future.