Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Last weekend was Zurifascht, a two and a half day long festival celebrating Zurich that occurs once every three years. Was ist das, you ask? I tried to find the historical significance of the festival, but everything I found online was in German, so I’m just going to be a therapist and tell you, “The festival is whatever you want it to be.” Basically, it’s an opportunity for people to eat and drink for 72 hours. The entire city area around the lake and and around Limmat, one of the rivers in city center, is shut down, and there are hundreds of food and drink stalls and dance clubs on the street. Among other things, the festival also boasts of a gravity defying air show with amazing air stunts done by the navy and choppers. Spectacular fireworks indicate the beginning of the party at night, which doesn’t end until the sun comes up. People spend the weekend walking around and checking out different stalls for food and usually hit at least one “road” bar on their trek. It is estimated that around 2million people are out on the street during the festival. Here are some images to give a better idea of what the festival is all about:



Here's everyone and their uncles out on the street basically all night long:





This was my first ZuriFest and I was determined to make the most of it. My OCD required that I research everything and plan the most fastidious and effective route, but everyone advised me not to “plan” anything and go with the flow. So 12 of us decided to meet on Friday evening and then, you know, flow. The evening started with great promise – we saw a flying dog:



And Ghana looked like they were poised to win the game. However, things started to get crazy once 2 million people made their way to a 1 mile radius area. We started to lose people. At first, it was a person here, a person there. Before we knew it, we were down to a group of 5. Unrelenting, we marched on. Our quest to find the perfect spot to watch the fireworks brought us to the lake shore. The view was indeed great, and the fireworks, synchronized to classical music, were quite spectacular. I would love to show you pictures but I was too lazy to take any good ones, so you'll just have to believe me when I say that the fireworks were fab.

But millions of people in such a small area led to cellphones being jammed and people unable to contact other people. Pretty soon, we lost the remaining people and were down to myself and just another friend. I felt I was on the battlefield and had lost all my soldiers in the fight to survive. Eventually, my one other friend and I were reunited with a few others that we lost earlier in the evening, but by that time, the trauma of losing the remaining soldiers, I mean friends, coupled with my cell phone having no battery, was just too much for me, so I decided to call it a night.

Day two of the festival was all about THE Falafal. In my hunt for my fellow compatriots, the sight of various people eating falafel had not escaped unnoticed. Saturday morning I decided to walk around in the afternoon and try to find my falafel. I had no idea where the falafel eaters had found it the night before, so I painstakingly walked through every single lane and by-lane until success was finally mine. Three hours and a few blisters later, I was united with falafel. Never let it be said that I wouldn’t go to great lengths for things that I believe in.

By Saturday night, I was older and wiser, and having learned from my past mistakes, decided to attend the festival with a much smaller group. And in the process, learned another invaluable life lesson: In a crowd of 2 million, a group larger than 2 people is…large. Needless to say, by the end of the inght, I had again managed to lose everyone, including my visitors from NY. I tried looking for them, but who knew it would be very difficult to find two people in a mob of two million?

Eventually, I gave up and hoped that they reached my place safely. I repeated the post-separation process from the night before, and ran into a few people I knew, but was so exhausted as to be unable to even breathe without my feet crying in pain from all the standing, and had to go back to the apartment and crash.

I had plans for Sunday that included walking around and covering one area that I hadn't yet checked out, going swimming in the lake, and by swimming I mean splashing around on the shore, and of course eating. I couldn't even make it out of the couch and to the balcony. Somehow, I found the inner will to actually move and hunt for food at around dinner time, and left with my visitors to check out festival one last time. I finally realized why this event occurs only once every three years - I don't think I can handle such insanity on a yearly basis!

The Art of doing Laundry

I had been delaying my laundry excursion for over a week now. Finally, with literally just one pair of clean pjs left in my entire closet, I knew it was time to do the inevitable. Let me walk you through my laundry experience. You will have new found appreciation for 24 hour laundry room availabilities after reading this.

Last weekend, I went to Migros to buy laundary detergent. The beautiful thing about grocery stores is that everything is described in three languages. The tragedy is that none of them is English. So if you understand Italian, French, or German, you’re good. If, like me, the only thing you know in Italian is “Pizza”, in German is “gud”, and in French is “Je parle francais en peu”, then you are in trouble. After much deliberation and an immense amount of self-translation, I bought laundry detergent that came in pink packaging. I used the same philosophy to buy the detergent as I use to buy my handbags: It looked pretty and the design on the packaging wasn’t too busy.

Now that I had the detergent, I was ready to go. But, you can’t just waltz into a laundry room and use it here! No, sir, you can’t. There is a sign-up sheet. Yes, you heard me. A sign-up sheet that has the days of the week, and time slots in 4 hour increments listed. I signed up for the 6pm-10pm slot on Thursday. So come Thursday, I ran out of work at 5:40. Not a moment could be wasted.

Since this was my first time operating unfamiliar machinery, I divided my laundry in two groups: The “sacrificial lamb” and the “too important to die”. Now came the hard part. I went down to the laundry room, and as I suspected, instructions to operate the machinery were in – German.



The washer was pretty intuitive, so I figured it out, but the dryer was a different matter. There was nothing written on the machine; only symbols. Some of the symbols looked like what we have seen on LOST during the button pushing days. I couldn’t take the risk of my clothes shrinking, as they had once before, so I did the following. The order of this process is very important, so make sure you’re paying attention:
- Looked up the make and model of the dryer
- Came back to the apartment and found the manual for operating the dryer in German
- Downloaded the PDF and saved it on my laptop
- Went to www.translate.google.com and uploaded the document to have it translated into English
- Understood the different symbols on the dryer
- Went back down and put the dryer on the right setting

I tried this process on the “sacrificial lamb” group, and it looked like everything came out okay. But I didn’t want to take the risk so I air-dried the “too important to die” group. That’s the other thing here; everyone just leaves their clothes to dry in the laundry room. There is implicit trust that no one is going to steal your jeans or your pullovers. I decided to embrace the Swiss culture and left my clothes to air dry in the laundry room overnight. But I locked the room on my way out. And I went back down first thing in the morning to check on them. I wanted to go down at 3, 4, and 5am when I woke up thinking about them, but I resisted. The clothes still were a bit wet, but I felt like I had done enough cultural integration so I brought them back up to the apartment to dry. I will be celebrating my successful laundry endeavor with Movenpick. We’re BFFs now.

Mysteries Resolved

First, that "adventurous" thing I was planning on doing today? Never happened. The sudden and insane desire to have Raclette and Movenpick won over. I made a mad dash to the nearest Coop (grocery store) after work and bought these items. I was almost ready to open up the Movenpick container and start eating while waiting in line. And I LOVE Raclette. If I could marry it, I would. Usually, one needs a Raclette grill in order to properly enjoy it, but I'm nothing if not resourceful when it comes to food. So I just had baked potatoes and Raclette for dinner. The presentation came out quite nice; I was about to take a picture for you. But something happens to me when I look at food; I can't quite explain what. I forget about anything and everything, and the only thing that matters in that moment is to inhale all that is front of me. So no pictures this time around, I'll try to exercise a little more restraint for the next time.

Ever since I landed here, there are a few mysteries that have confounded me. I'm going to address what these are and how I resolved them.

1) My Hair: My hair is usually quite voluminous, especially after I blow-dry. However, for the past ten days, the hair has been exceedingly flat and limp. At first, I thought it was because I was sick (why I think such things, I have no idea). But this continued even after I got better. Thankfully, a good Samaritan at work told me that Swiss water is really heavy, and US hair products don't have the right chemicals to combat it. Locally sold Swiss hair products have certain chemicals that absorb these minerals that make the water heavy and leave your hair weightless. I immediately made a mad dash to the local grocery store to buy a local Pantene. And voila, it worked! My hair is back to what it used to be in the US!

2) Target: If there's one thing I miss here, it's access to a local Target store. I never really realized the importance of having everything from bedsheets to pots and pans and shampoo under one roof until I got here. I wondered where the Swiss went to buy all these things. Did they go to a different store for each product? Wouldn't that be a slap in the face of the "Swiss Efficiency?" Thankfully, someone at work told me that a local Migro (another grocery store) close to work had a supermarket on the lower level. So, off I went downhill on a cobble stone, wearing ridonkulous heels, and made it to the store without a single fall, which in itself, is an achievement, as you all know. One day I'll do a post of just how many times I've already fallen here in Zurich. Anyway, I went to the lower level and was greeted by the sight of pots and pans and sheets and bags and everything that Target offered! I just closed my eyes, stood in between the sheets and pans, and felt right at home. I also bought a "dual voltage" travel hair dryer, and a few other products. Which brings me to the last mystery of the week...

3) The burning hair dryer: My hair dryer saga is well chronicled here. What I just learned today is that even if something says "dual voltage", there is a small switch at the bottom of any such appliance, that needs to be flicked "on" for that appliance to change voltage. Since my brain isn't scientifically advanced enough to know such things, I managed to burn a "dual voltage" appliance.

Now for STIDT of the day: This morning, I was listening to a particularly good podcast of This American Life on the tram. I vaguely heard some announcement on the tram, but since it was in German, I didn't understand it/ignored it. Immediately, I saw all but one person get out of the tram. In that moment, I decided to be my own person and not follow the herd. So what if they understood the announcement? I didn't! And if I didn't, well, then it just didn't mean anything. And I went back to listening to the podcast. The display screen on the tram hadn't changed, so I just assumed that the tram was taking another route to get to Uteliberg (the office where I work). A little while later I noticed that the tram had changed directions and was now heading back in the opposite direction! Then it dawned on me that the announcement was probably about the tram NOT going to Uteliberg, but rather, going back to the yard (or wherever it is that trams go). I finally got off, crossed the street, and waited for the next tram. But as I've mentioned before, my ridiculousness is genetic. I'm just an innocent victim here.

Information overload

I had a dream. A dream that I would wake up at six and go running by the lake. But I had forgotten that I hadn't done a STIDT(Stupid Thing I Did Today) yet, so it was time for one. I tried setting the alarm clock, but couldn't find the "Alarm On" button. I know. I am a moron. Sue me. Anyway, as a back up, I decided to set the alarm on my cell phone. For some reason, I still thought that my cellphone was on NY time. So, instead of setting an alarm for six am, I set one for midnight (since six am here is midnight in NY). What happened? Well, the alarm went off...at midnight. Hugh Jackman was just about to ask me out and we were rudely interrupted by the incessant sound of my alarm. In my daze, instead of hitting "Off", I hit "snooze". So the alarm went off again in ten minutes. Finally, I turned it off, not realizing that nothing would wake me up at six am, especially if Hugh managed to ask me out. Luckily, my upstairs neighbor was kind enough to stomp around and make enough noise to wake up the dead, making it possible for me to get to work on time.

It was a short day at work today, as I had an appointment with my Relocation specialist (RS). We went to get me registered, and it was great that she was there, because the woman behind the counter spoke very little English. The RS was super nice. She walked with me around the neighborhood, took me to a couple of local bakeries, helped me find 2% milk at the grocery store, gave me some nice recipes for Raclette, and if that wasn't enough, had a 50 page binder on her for me! I think my questions probably made her wish that she were a monk or that she didn't speak any English. After coming back to the apartment, she sat down with me and went over everything from how to do laundry to where the nearest dance studio was. She even figured out where the "On" button was on the alarm! My brain is currently hemorrhaging information that she provided me for over two and a half hours. Here's the binder that we went through, in addition to the neighborhood walk:



The weather today was absolutely delightful, so I finally went out for that run by the lake. The run wasn't very good; I was distracted by smells of street food and by the sights of ice-cream, so toward the end, the run had transformed itself into a slow walk. It was still a lot of fun.

As a part of my two and a half hour indoctrination into the Swiss lifestyle, I discovered the following:

- There is no such thing as "Sign here" on any swiss forms. The woman drew an outline on a box and told me I could only sign inside that box, otherwise the form would be nullified.

- The Swiss have a garbage schedule. No, it's not just what days the garbage truck will come by, it's also what days can you dispose off certain kinds of garbage. There's a specific day to dispose paper, plastic, regular garbage, gardening garbage, etc. To dispose the wrong garbage on the wrong day is the biggest crime of all. If you come over and take a look at the pristine condition the city is kept in, you will understand why. Everyone in Zurich gets a timetable that looks like this:



- Everything here runs on time. Everything. The tram is never even 15 seconds late. It's spooky, but great for neurotic people like me.

That's all for today. I'm may be doing something adventurous tomorrow. We'll see how it ends and whether it's postworthy or just too shameful to even be put in writing. Ciao!