03.11.19

 After what felt like two days in the sky above Earth and crowded airports...packing and unpacking at security checkpoints, huddled in corners watching thousands of people from all over the world go by at JFK International etc...buying morsels of food that I couldn't stomach and washing it down with cheap coffee from bright kiosks; I finally rounded the 20th corner in a sort of underground maze that led from the final plane to a subway tram to a declining slope to an escalator to a hall to a sign that said "baggage claim --->" and there she was, smiling the same way I'd seen her when I waved goodbye in San Francisco and Albuquerque. Hannelore. Hummingbird. And now I'm here. Now it's been three days of jet-lag, upside-down stomach, then falling asleep...nearly blacking out from exhaustion around 8 pm only to wake up at 3 am feeling discombobulated...then "Ah...Zurich." Falling asleep off and on for three more hours and walking around all day learning the general ropes, allocating tram ticket discount cards and new phone contracts until I black out again almost on cue. Of course, today everything went wonky on my first solo outing around Lake Zurich and I found myself  lost in a sudden snowstorm that caused a white-out, zapped my phone battery and maps, erased my hilltop visual orientations to the west, and had me wet from head to toe. I was officially 'lost' less than half a mile from home until I shuffled into a random Italian restaurant and asked "Bitte, schprekin Zie Ayyynglish?" Yah?" "Oh, good! Do you know where Errismanstrausse is?" "Oh, Errismanstrausse is straight this way then left at the tall buildings" "Ok thank you! Danke!" I'm ok. I'm good. I get back and turn the key and pull and pull and pull and curse all the Swiss door-making engineers until I realize I'm supposed to push it open. Right. The bike goes in the basement and I go in the shower which rotates from cold to scalding hot over thirty seconds. It's ok. I'm here. I'm pretty close to downtown Zurich and Erismannstraussen is one of hundreds of perfectly manicured little blocks with historic apartments ranging from the 1930s; all remodeled in different ways here and there. It feels a bit utopian compared to Albuquerque. Closer to Flagstaff...but then again Flagstaff felt pretty utopian too. It's virtually impossible to get lost in the America Southwest. There are long highways that run through cities which are all shaped like checker-boards but anything older than 300 years has twisting, underground, riverside-special-access-on-Thursdays-routes "If you have the light-green card with two gold stars on the left side notarized by a small goat" and when I got upstairs and hit the shower I felt like I'd done enough just by avoiding a mental house that I deserved a glass of red wine, salami, and a big block of brie. I told Hanne my first 'goal' was to get lost. So I got lost. The problem was that I didn't know how to get found. This was a strange feeling...After I dried off I set up the laptop...all the Youtube commercials are now in German, which I don't mind because in New Mexico half of them were in Spanish and I'm not looking for commercials, I'm looking for Boards of Canada who are Scottish but feel very American Cold War Pastoral. Sigh. I think I'm British, French, and German. More or less. I can trace my family's history back nearly 2,000 years thanks to the LDS website. Those clever record-keepers...it all comes back here. Somewhere around here. The point is: there's no way to know I'm not Swiss until I open my mouth and start begging for directions.
So, how would I evaluate the first week? How would I ever know? One minute I couldn't care less. The next minute I'm laughing at myself thinking "Come on man, you walked 2,650 miles and didn't get lost once and now you're lost? I can see the gentle amusement in a few faces. The check-out lady at the Co-op tells me in Swiss-German to 'Set my wine down on the belt so it doesn't fall!" The woman in front of me purses her lips to stop from laughing and motions with her hand what I should be doing. I want to say "Hey, you guys are great...I'll be here every Monday..." but I say "Oh, Sorry. Thank you...thank you..."
I walk back to Erissmanstraussen and cut a big piece of salami and smoosh it on a cracker with the brie. The taste of the red wine triggers an old memory from over a decade ago when I came across the ocean. Thirty minutes later the sun comes out and the kitchen glows bright yellow.
Hanne is at her first day of work at an official full-time job since the trail. It's been almost five months since we rolled down Kearsarge pass into Bishop. Our faces are softer. We're both in our city clothes. There's adventures and rumors of adventures and I always seem to be stuck between one adventure or another but I'm glad that I'm here. As always these choices are packaged with a healthy level of uncertainty, fear, romanticism, and all the possibilities of the future. It's a mad new feeling to be sure but I'm not sure I'd like it any other way.  In another sense I feel like I'm bringing my mother home. This is where she always dreamed of being. This is where I promised I'd go. Here I am.