Zurich - Arriving Back

Zurich - A Sad Palm and A Happy Spring

When I was first back in Egypt, I worried about my Zurich flat being burgled, but somewhere along the line, I stopped being concerned. Possibly, it was when Steph asked to take some stuff out of the flat and she didn’t report that anything was missing.

Anyway, I didn’t sense any trepidation on returning to my flat; instead my main worry was how dirty it would be. I think this was basically me expecting Switzerland to be like Egypt, which, of course, it isn’t. After three months away from Egypt, I’d expect my flat to be a newly-formed beach.

Funnily enough, when I was learning Arabic, someone asked what the word was for “dust” in Arabic and apparently there are loads of different words, all depending on what kind of dust you want to talk about. I can see the need, given that there is so much dust in Egypt.

Philosophers often cite the example of Eskimos having many different words for snow. I can’t remember why this is interesting for philosophers; it’s either to debate whether words shape perception or to illustrate that people perceive things differently and thus a question arises as to what the “real” world could possibly be. I reckon philosophers should use the example of dust in Arabic instead.

But my Zurich flat was surprisingly dust-free even after all this time; I was clearly not in Egypt.

Nevertheless, since I’d only ever been in my Zurich flat for a total of 2 weeks, it didn’t really feel like I was returning to my home. The flat is still pretty empty and noise echoes round whenever you speak. So, although it was good to be released from the hassle of discovering a new location and working out how to get to work, etc, it didn’t really feel like a homecoming; it was more of a curiosity.

It was a bit like moving house when you finally open all the things that you’ve been waiting to arrive. You discover things you’ve forgotten you even possess; it's like a birthday. In this case, I opened my cupboards and was quite surprised to discover what was and wasn’t there. I really hadn’t remembered very well. I had more t-shirts and jeans than I remembered, but was astonished to see that I had only one swimming costume and no pairs of flip flops. What was I thinking?!

Also, I kept on buying things and finding out later that I already had them, but stored in a different cupboard (for example, I bought a box of tissues and the next day discovered a pack of three boxes that I’d previously purchased on special offer and stored elsewhere). I guess I’ll get the hang of being spread across two locations sooner or later.

Having claimed that I didn’t need to learn my way about this time, I was flummoxed when I went to the tram stop and found that my tram to work was going to a different place than it used to go. There was no timetable up to explain the new route. I went into the rail shop to ask whether this was new, but they seemed to think I was complaining and apologized. It was too much effort to work out how it was that they’d misunderstood my question, so I left it. It was quite a bizarre sensation to have such a major change, but later I realized it was just a temporary change of route while they were doing repairs on the line. It did make me feel that I must have been away for longer than I realized.

I don’t know if it was there before, or if I was just sensitized to it now having just come from Egypt, but I spotted a kebab place by my tram stop with a fake palm tree. I found it quite amusing, since palm trees are everywhere in Sahl Hasheesh and now I’d come to somewhere where they felt the need to have an artificial one. It was a very sad looking artificial tree (see photo), nothing like the real thing, and it gave me a slight pang for Egypt.

On the other hand, it was wonderful to experience spring in its full glory (see photo). The gods had smiled on me yet again and granted me really good weather on my return to Zurich. The skies were blue and the spring flowers added colour and a sense of joy to everything. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen a real daffodil in quite a long time and it made me quite nostalgic. In fact, the locals must have thought I was a bit weird, because I kept on stopping to take photographs each time I saw a flower anywhere!

Other things that struck me on my return were, once again, how creamy the milk is (even the semi-skimmed). The granulated sugar in Switzerland is also very fine; it’s almost like caster sugar. I had to double-check the packet when I sprinkled it on my Weetabix, but indeed it was just normal sugar! I’d completely forgotten about that. It was obviously time for me to re-adapt back.