Trip Home

Howdy,

Its been a while. You may be wondering where I have been. I guess the truth is trying to reaquaint myself with Canada and spending some time with Friends and Family in Mississauga and Ottawa. However, if this blog is to keep going I must at least occassionally write so I thought I might pick up where I left off which was the trip home.

My trip home was approximately 30 hours from Jo'burg to Toronto with a stop over in Zurich and Montreal. The first leg of my flight was over night. I was a bit concerned that I might not sleep as this tends to be a problem for me on most aircraft. Lucky for me (yeah right) my entertainment system did not work for the entirety of my 12 hour flight with Swiss International Airways and so it was quite easy to sleep (especially after a glas of wine) My favorite part of this flight was when we flew over the Mediterranean sea and reached the French alps where you could see the outline of the European continent lit up by city lights. It was stunning.

After landing in Zurich, with a 6.5 hour stopover ahead of me I had to make a decision. To stay in the airport or to spend some of my time exploring Zurich. Because I slept on the plane I chose the latter and headed through customs, which I am fortunate enough to be able to do with my Canadian Passport. I then took the train to Zurich Central and proceeded in a direction which looked like it might have a cafe which was open at 7 in the morning. At this point it was still quite dark out which was a bit unusual as I had become acustomed to the sun rising at 5 a.m. in South Africa and boy was I feeling the cold (this only got worse when I arrived in Canada). So I found a cafe/bar which was open and enjoyed a cappucino. I then informed my server of what I was doing in Zurich and asked whether she could recomend anything to do at such an early hour in Zurich with such a constrained time frame and she suggested that I head for "The Lake" and gave me directions. So I made my way to the lake, once again amazed by the beauty of Switzerland and found myself at a lake very similar to lake Geneva, with hills and mountains on both sides. I later learned from my Aunt that it was Germany which I saw on the other side of that lake. Wow! what a beautiful sight! At this point I decided to make my adventure a photographic one and then proceeded to walk around just looking at and photographing things until my camera battery died.

After my battery had enough I was feeling very cold so I decided to stop for a tea. I chose a store attached to a chocolate shop that was quite busy and I was quite delighted to be served organic earl grey tea and I bought a croissant filled with chocolate. While I have discovered that for some reason I only like swiss croissants anyway, this was the best croissant I had ever has as it was also filled with swiss chocolate (which as I am sure you remember if you have been reading from the beginning that I ranted and raved about and truly feel that its better than Belgian chocolate) (my mouth is waterring just thinking about it). After my tea I walked around Zurich some more, taking in more sights and buying some last minute Christmas gifts. Before I stop blathering about Switzerland I do have to say that the people of Zurich were incredibly nice and friendly. While I found that the people in Geneva could be a bit aloof at times the people in Zurich seemed eager to talk with me, very polite and in some cases wanting to help if they could. When it was time for me to get on the train back to the airport I was wandering around a bit dazed trying to find my platform which had some absurd number like 254 (I was seeing numbers like 18 and thinking back to the Bassel incident I was getting a bit nervous) so a nice (and cute) young man approached me and asked if I needed help. Not only did he give me directions but he also walked with me to a point where he was sure I was headed in the right direction. Very nice indeed!

So then I headed for my next flight, to Montreal, desparately hoping that my entertainment system would work and it did. So for the first half of my flight I read the magazine called Intelligent Life (Whose content overrides the pretentiousness of its name) and watched "The Ugly Truth" for the second half. That flight arrived early and finished with a container of Movenpick ice cream (which was as delectable as when I purchased it from that street vendor in Geneva) so I was much more satisfied than with my first flight.

In Montreal I had to retrieve my bag from customs before I could connect to my domestic flight. I thought I might be in trouble when the Canadian Border Services official gave me a hard time about making a mistake on my form, knowing I lied about not having any wood products in my luggage (they were carvings given to me as gifts), but when I responded that I was sorry and that I was just tired and had been travelling for nearly 30 hours, this was sufficient and he le me through.

The plane ride from Montreal to Toronto was interesting. It was with Air Canada on some kind of new airplane where the over head luggage compartments folded into the ceiling and lights which faded into different colours and went bright pink when we started to land (this really happened I wasn't delusional from lack of sleep). I enjoyed an episode of big bang theory and was greeted at the gate by my mom Adam and Kristen. I really appreciated that they took the time to come and meet me at the airport. (Adam came all the way from Ottawa and Kristen's presence was a surprise). We then continued with my tradition of after arriving back on Canadian soil heading to Swiss Chalet for a festive special. Then exhausted I went home and went to bed.

I plan to fill in some more blanks in later posts but for now please enjoy a selection of pictures from my photographic adventure in Zurich!

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