17 September 2011- Zurich

Is it just me or does Zurich bear a tiny resemblance to Melbourne? It has a main shopping street that looks like Bourke Street, there are buses that like trams that run like clockwork, a lake (kind of like the Yarra, work with me here) and changeable weather.

Man from Mars and I shopped and purchased quite a lot—a fact that left both Miss Poised Procurer and Miss Cheese&Bread perplexed given that Switzerland is really expensive, there isn’t as much choice as Italy and London, and everyone really only “browses” in Zurich—leaving the purchasing to the other European cities. Man from Mars scored at H&M buying two jumpers—one green (his nemesis-- he thinks green means spew colour, but I’m bringing around and pointing out the difference between bottle green, fluoro green and puke green) and one red. Meanwhile, I was motivated to buy some German fiction in a hopeful effort to remember and maybe regain the German I knew in high school.

[They park really close to the kerb in Zurich:]

[Zurich:]

We returned home in the late afternoon to find Miss Poised Procurer and Miss Cheese&Bread completely wiped after partaking in a 10km run (a formal one, kind of like the City to Surf). They finished it in just over an hour, and soldiered on to take Man from Man from Mars and me out to meet their friends and enjoy some Italian. The night was going swimmingly- we had eaten our pastas, focaccias, pizzas and had some lovely conversations with their seriously good-looking and genuinely nice group of friends. However, as we were reaching for our wallets to split the bill, we discovered that someone had pinched the handbag of one of the group. It had been sitting on the floor—and with her seated at the end of the long table talking to everyone else, nobody had noticed anyone reach under the table to take her giant tote that was filled with everything important- her purse, phone, house keys. We were stunned. This is Switzerland we’re talking about- the country of diplomacy, safety, rules (eg. Sunday is rest day and you’re not allowed to do anything remotely taxing like laundry) and precision. Usually, the thieves are looking for cash, so they’ll often take the money and dump the bag in the alleyway. We looked around the backstreets, but we didn’t find her bag anywhere, so we walked together to find a police station. Strangely, despite the police station being fully manned, they refused to take down a report of her incident, saying that we’d “missed” the relevant window to make the report. She would have to return at 7 am the next morning.

We took the train home, confused by the police swarming the streets (this was highly unusual for Switzerland, so we were told), and then parched and delirious from fatigue, we drank tea and flopped down in front of the tv to watch Schlag den Raab. It’s a highly addictive and hugely exciting German game show where a contestant (the challenger) duals with another guy (the show’s resident smart and strong guy who dresses in potato sack coloured clothing, sports a crew cut, knows his atlas from his key dates and hisses “Yassss!” (read “Yesssss” with a German accent) every time he wins). The contestant sweats each round out, in pursuit of a huge amount of cash (eg 1.5M euros in this episode).

The rounds alternate between challenges which test their intellect (history and trivia), reaction time (bouncing two balls and seeing who can catch them both with one hand), athleticism (driving around a haystacked race track), and cool under pressure (rolling a tyre from 20 metres away so that it sneaks precisely through the gap between two blocks). It is taped live, so the contestants can often run off the set for a toilet break because German television only has commercials every half an hour or so. Also, you never know how long it’s going to take--for this particular night, if we were exhausted when we got home at midnight, we were completely smashed when the show finally wound up (in hugely anticlimactic fashion) at 2 am. The resident strong/smart guy had been leading for the entire first half of the show, but the contestant came back to win in typical underdog style. After some confusion as to whether he had done enough to win, the audience clapped uncertainly before the host confirmed him as the victor. It was like the audience had exhausted their enthusiasm in what turned out to be a 6 hour game show, and so, the contestant leapt, his girlfriend cheered, happy in the knowledge of her financial security and we rolled off to bed without so much more as a second glance.

[Schlag den Raab and getting hyperactive:]

[Rolling the ball between a tiny gap:]

[End of the night: Man from Mars trying to fix the toilet seat that kept going lopsided:]