500-year-old playing cards found
Swiss Spring has sprung (with pollen)
Phoenix was said to be a place to cure ailments, just by its natural climate. The high-Sonora desert was so dry, and the wide-open spaces so inviting, that residents packed into no-man’s land to be healed. With all of these people came pollution, and now days there are times when people should not leave their air conditioned homes for risk of breathing the dirty air.
Zurich, like much of Switzerland, has been plagued by dryness this year, in what some have called a European drought of the century. (I am sure they mean the last 100 years, and not just the last 11 years of this century.) That dryness, combined with flowers, trees, plants, animals, people, has puffed so much pollen, perfume, and cigarette puffing, that I have been on a non-stop sneeze fest.
Switzerland’s ‘part-time’ friar
Swiss Canine Rescuers in Japan
Travel to Baselworld
Baselworld is very much like another planet, rather than the biggest watch, jewelry and gem trade show in the world. I consider myself very much an “everyman.” Despite interviewing the occasional CEO, or having access to industries or decision-makers, I am and likely always will be firmly in the middle-class. “Middle class” at Baselworld probably amounts to being able to afford a watch worth chf 20,000. (Read: not me)
In the first minutes of my first excursion to Baselworld I held a wrist watch backed in Titanium worth chf 87,000 before tax. I was nervous to hold it, until a salesman ran toward me with his newest gimmick–an analog watch with intricate mechanics to allow blackjack and roulette. The price? “About chf 160,000,” he said coolly. Not my middle class, I thought.
Pearls from paste: Basel’s niche
Biking (Swiss) Route 66
It was an unusually pleasant Sunday: the clouds had broken for long enough, and the sun shone bright and warm enough, for us to expect Spring flowers and mornings without shivered awakenings. Our new perch on the edge of Zurich’s suburbs has given also proximity to Route 66–a long trail of 55 kilometers (34 miles) winding along the Limmat River. Unlike US Route 66 this path is paved by just loose gravel for a time, traversing rails and pathways; buzzing apartments and a reformed industrial quarter, to connect a medieval refuge with a quaint town–with the largest Swiss city between the two.
So with an unexpected sun at my back, I took up the same bicycle that I rode through college triumph and strife, to conquer at least part of Route 66.