Tuesday, June 13, 2006

It’s taken me some time to organise power to my laptop and an internet connection, hence the delay in posting this blog. In fact, at the time of this writing don’t have an internet connection. We’ve jerry-rigged a swiss power socket so I can use my laptop, and will post the blog once I can connect to the net.

June 1, 2006: Singapore Airport
The flight to Switzerland was smooth enough. I spent most of my waking hours watching movies, the last two of which were The Promise and Freedom Land. My memory of the other movies are blurry and will remain so until something jogs it. The intra-venous entertainment drip was pulled at Singapore airport for 4 hours between flights. The airport is strikingly well described as a Siamese-twin octopus. It has two heads (terminals T1 and T2 are connected by skytrain or travelator). Each terminal has four tentacles (arms), and each of it’s arms has between 4 and 10 suckers (gates). I took a shower and then tried a Singapore Sling cocktail. It was served in a cocktail glass, garnished with straw, pineapple, cherry and umbrella, tasted sweet and tangy, and was bright pink. Thank heavens I was at the sports bar, though I did get some questioning looks from the other beer-drinking, football-watching blokes there. The airport has everything. It has an orchid garden (very beautiful, complete with fish pond), a fern garden (I know about ferns, so I didn’t care), a waterfall, and an outdoors sunflower garden. I paid a brief visit to the sunflower garden, but after two minutes in the sweltering dampness, the air conditioning beckoned. At one stage I enquired at a computer shop whether I could buy a modem for my laptop. I was politely informed that Singapore had advanced from the stone age to more effective forms of communication. They only sold wi-fi, however I could pick up some cheap smoke-signal equipment so long as I didn’t bring it on the plane. I got lost, got unlost, and battled to stay awake until the second flight. Once aboard I slept in semi-comfort, and woke four or five hours prior to landing in Zurich at 0630.

June 2, 2006: The Dörfliger Family House / Schreinerei
By contrast, Zurich airport is metallic, automated, and spacious (Singapore airport is vast, but not spacious). You get out of the plane, down an escalator, and then wait at the platform below for a train which pulls up and takes you under the runway to the main terminal building. I was expecting a group of yodeling, alp-horn playing farmers to welcome us to Switzerland, but evidently an underground railway and a pan flute-playing busker was considered sufficient. You can take trolleys up escalators, and they somehow don’t tip and fatally crush you (I didn’t learn this empirically — it was pointed out to me as I was pondering how to get my luggage up to the lift). My uncles (önkels) Emil and Peter met me at the airport and drove me to the family home in Fulenbach, after which I then battled to stay awake until 10pm so I would wake at a reasonable hour. The drive was just plain confusing. There seemed something fundamentally wrong with driving 120km/hr on the right hand side of the road in heavy traffic and not having a head-on collision. Intersections made little sense, Wanderweg in the forest behind the houseand I almost panicked when we went the wrong way around a round-about. The countryside is picture-perfect. Fields are green, the hills are rolling, and towns are quaint and colourful. Everything seems to reflect history. I saw my first castle. It is apparently used as a prison nowadays, and though it was originally used to keep invaders out, its function has evidently since been reversed. It actually looked quite appealing if you could get a room with a view.
I can’t get over how organized and thought out everything is. Even nature seems to conform. Everything is so idyllic and perfect. Power poles are planted in perfectly aligned rows which span the country. Deer roam wild through the fields with their fawns. Bird houses have been built and hung in the forests. Dedicated bicycle lanes go everywhere. Houses have double glazing, heavy doors, shutters on windows, central heating, thick solid walls, and an entire underground level. The downside of this is that the Swiss can be retentive somewhat. You don’t walk through paddocks, as you’ll flatten the farmer’s grass. When my dad was young, one of the nearby farmers placed a big rock in the grass at the side of the road to teach drivers who cut the curb. The rock is still there.

June 6, 2006: The forest: so perdy
Today is my fifth day in Switzerland. My dad arrived two days ago, and today we went to register with at the local council, and to open a bank account. The bank account was no difficulty at all, so I can begin my international money laundering operation right away. Registering as a citizen of Fulenbach will take a little longer, as they need my birth certificate (to verify place of birth) and I only had my passport handy (which does not). They are a separate governmental division from the one that actually has a copy of my birth certificate, which can be provided at a small cost of 30Fr. Hence, Rowena is kindly sending the original to me from NZ.
Yesterday we went for a walk in the hills. The first part of the wanderweg (walkway) is forested, and is very beautiful. The top of the hill sports great views across Switzerland, and on a good day (sadly it wasn’t) you can see the alps. Later we came to pastoral land, and I saw and heard my first heard of genuine cowbell wielding cows. It struck me that it is actually very practical, as you can always hear where the heard is. That and you’ll never need to buy a wind chime ever again - listen for yourself. We got talking to a pair of cyclists, one of whom said her brother in law did web design and she would pass on my contact details. I’m not hopeful, but it was a really nice gesture from a complete stranger.

June 7, 2006:
Went for a long bike ride today. We biked through the Nuendorf forest, and came to a farm where I saw my first camel. I remembered Terry Pratchett’s warnings about the mathematical precision of camel spit, and stayed well back. We biked on to Önsingen and visited castle Neu-Bechburg. We ate rhubarb pie with the Christofferos in Hagendorf. A typical lovely Italian family, and the parents of my cousin Roger’s wife, Sandra. In the same town we visited my dad’s cousin Urs Dörfliger, who runs a large (I mean large) metal fabrication company. He said he knows of someone who has an international english-speaking company, and may have work for me.

June 8, 2006:
Went for a drive in the country with the grandparents. Drove into the hills, and walked to a nearby restaurant (as you do) and had Brotworst and Rüsti. We stopped in Aarwangen on the way home. It’s a very old town, and dates back to when the outer wall of a town was a ring of houses. And then we were home.