Zurich

D Chatz gaht uf Wallisellen,
chunt si wieder hei,
hät si chrumi Bei,
piff paff puff
und Du bisch duss!

I actually learned to chant this, much to the annoyance of everyone on the train. It's the Swiss German equivalent of Eeny Meeny Miney Moe (without the racial connotations, I think). I was in Zurich for the weekend visiting Christoph. Though this was my fourth trip to Zurich, it is still hard for me to believe the place is real and that I didn't walk into a picture book. The grass is green. Bright, bright green. The hay is yellow and stacked in long loose haystacks like Little Boy Blue sleeps under. The water is solid turquoise and everyone has window boxes filled with red geraniums that are always in bloom.

On Friday we went for a long walk to the Town of Roses. To get there, we crossed the lake on a bridge built on top of ruins of a medieval bridge used by pilgrims traveling from monastery to monastery. The bridge was recreated in a contemporary style, and the juxtaposition of it against the old monatery and castle was striking.

The next day we rode bikes. I'm not sure how tall Christoph is, but my face usually lands around his bellybutton if we hug. I rode his bike. Yes, indeed, I had to tip over to get off. Which made stopping for traffic highly inconvenient. Luckily, we were out in the country most of the time. Only in Switzerland would you find smoothly paved, perfectly clean roads that connect every bit of farmland, forest, river and hillside. Never have I ridden so comfortably (and so fast due to huge street bike tires) in such beautiful territory. We rode out to a monastery where the monks make beer, cheese, sausages, and a delicious bread filled with dried fruit. We rode back along the country roads (picking blackberries on the way) in order to find some of the local cider. Instead, we found some of the local weather. It poured so hard that I was actually breathing in mouthfuls of water as I struggled to stay atop the bike. My waterproof jacket was full of water. My waterproof backpack was full of water. When we finally found a restaurant to duck into, water gushed out of my shoes with every step and my jeans clung to me like a heavy skin. The restaurant was fancy, but they let us in. Nothing could have tasted better, being drenched (or wet as soup, the French would say) and freezing, than the veal in a creamy reduction sauce and hot potato pancakes like the ones Gypsy fed to me at the swap meet in Germany. We made it the rest of the way home in a friendlier downfall and finished the night off by making a blackberry sauce from our day's gathering and pouring it over ice cream. After a lot of hours on a bike, calories were no consideration.

The next day we went on a hike and walked through the city and Christoph showed me all sorts of tricks for taking better pictures with my new digital camera. It dried out nicely from the day before (thanks to a long session with the hair-dryer.) Even still, my pictures don't do the beautiful weekend justice. Christoph has a way of turning the simplest every day thing into art. The way he folds a blanket or arranges vegetables in a bag to be taken to a barbecue. Or makes a picnic out of crackers and cheese and yogurt feel like a feast.