Day One - Learning to Fly

I didn’t manage to access the Internet during my flight or transfer (they can’t send you a code for 60 minutes of free wifi if you don’t have a phone), but a brief summary of my trip so far.

I boarded the plane quickly after the previous post, placed in 26A, a window seat, as I’d planned/hoped, really. I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time (and I recommend it highly to anyone who wants brilliantly acted lines and, of course, random violence), and then slept (if you can call that monstrosity sleep) for the next 3-5 hours. I was served both a four course dinner and breakfast, which made me slightly embarrassed for having brought a burrito with me. I’m eating it as I write at the Zurich airport. (stomach pains, here we come!)

My accompanying seatmate’s (as there were only two seat in the row, but of average commercial/economy size) name began with an F (as far as I can recall), and as it turned out, he lived in Zurich, and was returning to Switzerland after visiting California for only 2 months (an odd mirror of my current situation), picking up English along the way. As I later discovered, he played professional soccer (he said “football”, then looked at me with a moments pause and continued “you call it soccer, I believe”) for seven years before four knee surgeries put him out of duty. He played one instrument in school, his explanation of which spurred the following exchange.

“It’s like, a long pipe with holes”, he says with rich Swiss accent, putting his hands up before his mouth and wiggling his fingers. “You blow into it”. He pantomimes an excellent Native American pipe, but I pause, thinking it strange that it would exist in Swiss schools.

“Wait, wait. Is there a hole,” I say, hands raising to my lips and my pinkie wiggling, “down here, that has two holes in it?”

“Ah, yes” he says, smiling. I laugh a little.

“We call it a ‘recorder’. I learned it in elementary school too!”

It’s weird, the traditions that stick.

I arrived in Zurich without much fuss, and wrote the first part of this during my hour-long waiting period, before going through the automated check-in for boarding (why, why don't we have this), where you just wave your boarding pass over a reader and walk on the plane.

I was placed in 33A, another window seat, and my seat-mate's name also began with an F, conveniently enough. As it turned out, this was another traveler returning home, from visiting her sister in Zurich. She was very, very German, and quite pleased to explain to me what jazz dance (her chosen activity of the past nine years) entailed, despite my explanation that I'd tried it a bit myself in my own dancing career. I was a bit confused when I asked her about other hobbies, and she said (and I quote): 

"I have a Haus!"

This is what it sounded like to me, anyways, and the next couple of minutes were spent asking what one did at a Haus, and what was fun about them, as she told me how was a lot of work tending to them.  My quisquos, and mildly bewildered response left her with a similar expression. As it would seem, the Germans do not really pronounce their R's, and I had basically just queried as to what one does inside a beast of the equine variety, or "Horse".

Life is fun sometimes.

Anyways, we landed and went to check out baggage, me walking down the stairs, chatting with my seat-mate, when I saw my German Sis and German Mother on the other side of a pane of glass, waving and laughing. As my sister later jokingly explained, they had bet that I would arrive with a girl, so my entrance with a blonde, pale, altogether extremely German female had my sister smirking and waggling her eyebrows. I immediately ran up to the glass and reenacted one of those scenes where the protagonist and his family would be hugging, except for the transparent wall. Then I grabbed my bags, received my first German "Bretzel" from my German mom, and drove to their house without delay.

This next piece will require a whole other post.