Six o'clock, I have been up for two hours, mostly watching the day arrive. The sky is a cloudy grey-brown and the light a flat, muted gold as a storm starts to build over the Alps. The golden light on the old wooden bridge and stone buildings makes them glow; it is not the sharp-edged light of the past four days. Soon enough I will wake Gail, we will go find pastries and sit for coffee one last time. For now I am happy to just sit and listen to the church bell toll.
Breakfast at the cafe around the corner, drinking coffee, a croissant and watching life.
It is Saturday, market day in Luzern, so after breakfast we walked the market, drooling over all the food we cannot bring home, lusting for the fresh flowers that would be thrown out at security.
I still had $7.40CHF burning a hole in my pocket... what to do? So we hatched a plan: we had a mini bottle of French wine stored away. I set aside $3 for a second bottle, and we went to the cheese merchant. Gail got a fresh, apricot yogurt for $1, and I plunked down the remaining $3.40 and requested that much cheese. He cut me a generous slice, I picked up the wine at Co-op, and we were set for lunch on the train. Alles ist güt!
It's 11:30 now. As we entered the train station the last view of the outside was the bright red and white flag waving us goodbye. It is a one hour direct train to Zurich airport, then our flight to Iceland leaves at 14:00. Iceland to Seattle, a two hour break for dinner (we hope) Seattle to Oakland, then crash in a hotel before driving home. We are crossing eight time zones, so we leave Zurich at 14:00 and arrive in Oakland at 22:00 the same day, only eight hours later but sixteen hours of flying time.
The train left and arrived on time, we blew through security (no passport control), and were airborne.
A sad thought, I'll have to retire my passport after this trip and get a new one, as mine expires in seven months now.
I often wish that I could bring home some of the good habits and ideas from our trips, like eating long, slow, healthy meals. But work and life does not lend itself to that.
One idea I picked up in Mürren that I really like, and am going to think of how to incorporate it into real life is the way they deal with trash. We, the guests, were responsible for any trash we generated; required to bag up our trash, separate out the glass, plastic and cans, then carry the trash bag down to the end of the path to the trash can, and carry the recyclables uphill into town to the central collection area. Everyone does it, and it makes you acutely aware of exactly how much daily trash you generate.
Another great Swiss idea: direct airport trains. There are direct trains, hourly, from every major city in Switzerland to the Zurich airport. If you are in a smaller town you just connect to the nearest city and zoom, you are there. It took us one hour to go from Luzern to the airport this morning, about $20 each. Wish I could get to SFO that cheap and easy.
Last, we are vowing once again to slow down our meals, eat better food, al fresco, and have more friends over. This last one usually works well until we are immersed in work once again, but hey, we have the good intentions.
Zurich to Reykjavik I listened to episodes of NPR's This American Life, Gail watched movies.
We had one hour to change flights; thank goodness for a small airport and carry-on luggage. We got our passports stamped out of Iceland with no wait, and we didn't have to go through security again. I am impressed with their efficiency.
Flying over Greenland was very interesting, the icebergs, rocky shores, and huge snow fields, glaciers with just the black tips of mountains sticking out. Lots of lakes of meltwater on the glaciers, at the edges of the snowfields; the snow is melting fast, and you can see the aqua-brown water reaching miles out from the glacier before it turns to that pure, deep blue color against the grey mud flats. Even from an airplane at a mere 30,000 feet, the evidence of unusual heating is right there.
Of course, I have the friend who STILL, somehow, is a Global Warming Denier. He, of course, has his Doctorate in Climatology (not) so he is eminently qualified to listen to AM radio and disagree with 99% of the world's scientists. Whatever. He should get out of the house and take one flight over the Arctic.
Somewhere over north-east Canada I fell asleep, when I woke up an hour from Seattle I was really confused what day it is. After checking my iPod (1:30 on Sunday the 4th of August) I had to think a lot about whether it was really Sunday, or is it still Saturday? Ugh. Good think I filled out the customs form back when I was awake and alert. These long flights are a surreal mixture of days and time zones, the days blur.
So here is a weird thing: we got emails from a couple friends telling about a big terror alert for travelers this weekend, some high alert, imminent attack kind of thing, shutting down embassies and so on. I caught the news before we left, sure enough... Yet today we just zoomed through the airport in Zurich, and in Reykjavik we were barely looked at. I usually gripe about the fifty questions coming into the US, but today it was the easiest, fastest trip through passport and customs ever. Huh. I think it just does not pay to worry about these travel alerts, or to even watch the news at all. Maybe ignorance is bliss, or maybe it is just a needed dose of reality, and perhaps it is not so good to be constantly manipulated by the press and government fear mongers.
We had time to catch "dinner" at Bigfoot in SeaTac airport, which was really more of a desperation meal (in real life I would never eat here), and used the free WiFi to catch up before our final flight to Oakland. Flying into the Bay Area is always a treat, but it has a surreal beauty on a foggy night, when the city lights add a glow to the fog; where the cloud banks end the bridges and highways sparkle like golden necklaces, and you descend into the glowing fog bank, down, down until HELLO! you are in that hundred foot space between the cloud and ground.
It was past midnight when we crashed at our cheapo airport hotel. I figured I gave been mostly awake for about twenty-seven hours. Today (Sunday for real now) we pick up a rental car, meet Amber and Andrew for breakfast, and head the three hours home. I am plotting out where to go next summer... a mix of warm beaches and fantastic mountains perhaps?