Zurich - Trip to Edinburgh

A Few Days at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Since I’ve now stopped working, you’d think I’d have more time to write my blog, but instead I’ve been so busy that I completely forgot to write it last week, sorry about that. One of the things I was busy with was a trip to Edinburgh.

It took a lot of organizing and even then I didn’t really do it very well. I’d picked dates when a swim wasn’t coming up and when the flights were at their cheapest (relatively). It was otherwise fairly random as my main aim was to meet up with friends, but then it turned out to be August and when the Festival was on. This immediately made it more difficult to see friends, partly because most of my Edinburgh friends were already booked with visitors and partly because seeing stuff at the Fringe/Festival suddenly takes priority.

I’d booked all my Fringe tickets before I arrived, whilst liaising with Alastair and Rachel about when we’d all be free to meet up for dinner (deciding which shows to prioritise took me a LOT of time!!). I knew I could pick my tickets up at the airport and I was expecting a manned service point but it turned out that it was just a small yellow machine. You put in your credit card which you used to order the tickets, and out all the tickets come! I walked right past it the first time because it didn’t look how I was expecting it to look, but really it was an efficient way of doing it.

I managed to book a very cheap box room via Airbnb as somewhere to stay. By some complete miracle, I found the flat without a problem and that’s even with having to take the local bus and get off at a stop that wasn’t announced in an area I didn’t know. I still don’t know how I managed to do it. The buses in Edinburgh are now like the underground in London – you just use your contactless payment card as you enter the bus and it charges you automatically each time up to the maximum of a day ticket, so you don’t have to worry about finding change or which ticket to get. I hope Switzerland catches up at some point!

My hostess probably thought I was a bit of an idiot because there was this entry system to get in, which apparently opened a box so that you could get the key, but I thought it opened the door, which happened to be open when it shouldn’t have been, so I just went in. My hostess had to hurry out and make sure nobody else took the keys! The room was fine and there were two friendly cats, even the one that was supposedly shy and I would likely not see. However, the flat did smell a bit because of them and my bed was just a camp bed. Nevertheless, I slept really well, and the room was a good price, so I’m not complaining.

She pointed me to the nearest supermarket which was just round the corner, but somehow I walked right past it and got grumpier and grumpier as I couldn’t locate it. It was only when I turned round to go back that I realized I’d walked way too far. I also realized I was having problems in remembering to look in the right direction for the traffic, I’ve got so used to being in Switzerland now. I had a few close calls during my stay!

As always seems to be the case at the Fringe, it can be a bit of a rush to get from place to place in time. I’d booked something for the night I arrived, but it was further away than I thought. Next to the venue, there was a food market, so I ordered some fish and chips, but I had only 10 minutes to eat them. And it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was fried fish but not in batter and a huge chunk of it and the chips were made out of sweet potato. So, actually, it was very healthy, but I couldn’t finish it in 10 minutes and since I don’t normally eat fish, I felt a bit sick when I tried to eat it so fast. I could tell it was tasty though!

The first thing I saw was Pianodrome which is original music (string, percussion, drum, accordion, piano, I think) played in a setting made from upcycled pianos. As is often the case when I hear musicians, it made me feel how wonderful it must be to be so creative and to really dedicate yourself to something you love so much. As happened at several performances, they made a plea for donations so that they could keep going and also a plea for a permanent venue.

I must have seen 10-11 things altogether (a mixture of plays, exhibitions, music, dance, immersive experience). I didn’t have one dud, although the thing I least enjoyed was the photographic exhibition – there just weren’t many that appealed to me, with quite a few fantasy photographs and what seemed to me to be self-indulgent female nudes (did that photograph really require nudity?), which aren’t really my thing.

The last thing I saw was The Fragility of Man, which had been fully booked and then had an extra performance, so I was able to get a ticket. I think it was the guy’s father doing a survey as you queued to get in, which was a nice touch; he was warning about the strong content! It turned out that this was his son’s 52nd performance (how can he manage to keep it so fresh on each performance?). The room was sweltering (and full); I was sweating just sitting there, so how the actor wasn’t silently dying as he put his all into the performance is beyond me. What amazed me at the end was that he’d written and acted it; I have no aspirations to act, so to be able to do both so well is stunning.

I saw one thing with Alastair which has a title that is a palindrome “Are we not drawn onward to new erA” and the first half was basically played backwards and spoken backwards and the second half was the recording of that played backwards so that the language and the actions then made sense, even if the voices sounded a little odd (the backward language sounded like Russian to my ears! However, they kindly included subtitles on the forward recording in case of ambiguity due to strange tonality when the backward speech became “normal” speech); there was an underlying ecological message.

With Rachel I saw a beatbox version of Frankenstein which brought home to me how much I don’t know about how today’s youth speak, act, and think and makes me wonder if I really should be having teenagers as my main characters in my novels due to my ignorance!

I was two minutes too late for one of my plays and wasn’t allowed in; I was also two minutes too late for the one-man Korean MacBeth (with subtitles), but was able to get into that one; I‘d been charging along the street trying to get there!

There’s too much to talk about really. Alastair, Rachel, Jessie and I met up for dinner and it was so good to catch up. On my non-Fringe day, I met up with Caroline for lunch, who I haven’t seen for a long time. And I also went for a swim in the Commonwealth pool which had been refurbished five years ago and was very different from when I used to do my early morning swims before work when I lived in Edinburgh. It’s heated by solar panels (in Edinburgh!), the toilets used waste water for flushing, and they had little spin dryers for your wet costume – all fantastic!

It all went too fast, but next year, I intend to stay for 2-3 months. That’s when I’ll really be able to catch up with everyone.

Zurich - Insel-Ligerz Swim

Village of Ligerz

My next challenge after Sempach was the Insel-Ligerz swim. The plan was for me to work my way up to a 3km swim from Untermatt to Weggis on 17th August, since the furthest I’ve ever swum crawl is probably around 2km and I want to test my abilities.

The Insel-Ligerz swim is one swim of 1.1km followed by a 2.1km swim one hour later. You can choose to take part in either one of the swims or both swims; if you do both swims, it’s counted as a 3.2km swim. My reasoning was that if I could do both swims without feeling exhausted, I’d probably be able to manage the straight 3km swim. This was the first event I’ve attended where there was an official timing of participants.

I also noticed that it was part of the Swiss Open Water cup, inaugurated this year, which gives you points for each Swiss lake swim you complete that’s on their calendar, and then extra points if you place; there are also awards for different age categories. I signed up for it (it was free), but with the weather as it now is, it’s unlikely I’ll do any other swims. My previous swims weren’t on their list and so didn’t count.

I left Zurich just after midday on Friday to overnight in Biel beforehand, so that I didn’t have to rush the next day. Biel is one of those places in Switzerland that is truly bilingual, so everything is in German and French (eg, Biel/Bienne). It’s always a bit of anticipation as to whether the person that’s about to speak to you will do so in French or German. I initially wondered how they chose to put German first on all the signage since F for French comes before G for German, so you’d think it would be the other way round. However, on further deliberation, I realized that in both French (Allemand, Francais) and German (Deutsch, Franzoesisch), German actually comes first alphabetically. Question answered!

It was a beautiful day, so I walked along the Taubengracht, which I’d read about online. It’s a walk by a gorge and it’s really quite unexpected as you don’t expect it to be there in the middle of the city. It’s not a long walk, maybe 30 minutes to an hour depending on how many photos you want to take. As usual, there was a barbecue facility half-way through if you wanted to grill your dinner in the countryside. It was a beautiful walk and ended up at an equally pretty café / hotel, where I stopped and treated myself to a banana split.

It wasn’t so easy to find your way out at the other end; I finally made it to a bus stop which actually said it wasn’t being serviced, but the bus stopped, so I was fine. I’m not sure what I’d have done otherwise – maybe walk all the way back?

Biel itself wasn’t anything special, but I was very happy with my hotel which had all the UK TV channels (that’s pretty unusual!), a great buffet breakfast (which included baked beans – also unusual!), and tea and coffee making facilities. It was close to where the ships left to go to Ligerz (and close to the railway station), so it was ideal for my purposes.

I had to check out by 11am, so I decided to take the earlier boat to Ligerz (cost covered by the swimming participation fee). It was cloudy and raining in the morning and I started to fret that I would be the only person there; I wasn’t going to back out because of the rain.

However, it cleared up as the day progressed. As we approached Ligerz, I could see the buoys for the swim already in place across the lake. It was quite exciting! Getting off the boat, the swim was well-signposted, so I got there with no problem and got myself kitted out with my number and wrist tag.

I took the spare time to look round Ligerz which was extremely old and pretty but very small (it’s just a village); there were steps leading up the hill where you could see all the vines growing, but I didn’t want to wear myself out before the swim. In retrospect, I wish I’d done it, as I think the view from up there is stunning, having seen some photographs.

The thing I found most disconcerting was that they didn’t have any changing areas; they had toilets, a large tent to store belongings, food tents, but no changing rooms. I had to hide behind a tent to get into my costume, but I wasn’t alone and it wasn’t unisex behind that tent!

The first, 1.1km swim was from St Petersinsel to Ligerz, so you had to wear life vests as boats took you across in groups of about 12. I had been thinking to go over early, but I’m glad I didn’t as there was nothing there. We were dropped off at a place that was stony underfoot (yuk!). I went into the water beforehand to test the temperature and it turned out that there were more rocks under the water and then deep masses of algae or something. It was quite disgusting underfoot. I’m glad I went out as it would have taken me ten minutes just to get started otherwise.

It was obligatory to wear your own “auffallende Badekappe”, by which I think they really meant a bright, easily-visible swimming cap. However, “auffallend” means striking or noticeable or remarkable, so it was a bit open to interpretation. I saw some people wearing checkered caps, others wearing caps in the shape of an animal with scales sticking out of them. I had been worried if mine was bright enough, but since it had the slogan “what do swimmers think about?” with a picture of a roast chicken in a thought bubble, I decided that this did indeed qualify as “auffallend”.

Just as we were about to start, a family of ducks sauntered across the starting line, so we all had to wait. And then we were off; the timing wasn’t so strict since as we got to “Go!”, some swimmers were still on the shore and others, like me, had already waded out quite a bit. I felt nervous even though I do this distance of swimming almost every day.

On arrival, there was one person pressing a button when you arrived (which was presumably recording the time somewhere), another two people were writing down your number and your rank. To my surprise, an audience was cheering everyone in and shouting “Hop, Hop!” (that’s a Swiss cheer of encouragement) as each person reached the finishing line. It was a nice way to feel truly part of it.

Then, an hour later, they started the 2.1 km swim which was to the island and back (it’s an archipelago and not a true island, by the way). There were fewer people in this swim, and fewer again doing the full 3.2km. With each increase in distance, the level of swimming was also better, so my ranking got progressively worse. Among the women 3.2km swimmers, I came in last! There were some 2.1 km swimmers behind me, though, and one male 3.2km swimmer slower than me. Still, as a test run it was successful and although I was more tired than just on the single 2.1km at Sempach, I wasn’t absolutely exhausted.

It was a bit of a rush to get the boat back to Biel; I grabbed my prize for completing (upgrading from the Zurich plastic cup, to the Sempach towel, and now in Ligerz to a full-sized bottle of local wine!). In my rush, I left my swimming goggles behind, but when I emailed afterwards to ask if they had them, they sent them back to me by post. Sometimes Switzerland is truly wonderful!

Unfortunately, after that day, the days became colder and the lakes cooled down. In the end, it was ruled that, for the 3km Weggis swim that I’d been working my way up to, you had to wear a wetsuit for safety reasons (preventing hypothermia); the lake temperature was forecast to be 18.5 degrees or less. So, after all that, I never did the swim I truly wanted to do! But I had a lot of fun along the way all the same.

Zurich - Sempachersee Ueberquerung

Exiting After the Swim

I thought I’d make the most of my last opportunity (maybe) to swim across various lakes in Switzerland. It’s a good way to explore places I wouldn’t otherwise go to.

So, I’ve done two extra lake swims so far – one was at Sempach, which was 2.1km (it was not easy to find the information, but the swim was from Nottwil to Sempach). It took place on August 1st, which is Swiss National Day and thus a bank holiday. This year, it was on a Thursday. Consequently, I went down after work on Wednesday and stayed in a hotel by Sempach station (confusingly sometimes called Sempach Station and sometimes called Neukirch).

The hotel was good although the open-plan bathroom was a bit disconcerting. I felt I had to shut the curtains each time I wanted to go to the toilet so as not to be seen by people in the flats opposite! I’m not sure what the designer was thinking, but maybe you can’t actually be seen from the outside. I wasn’t going to risk such humiliation, though.

After I’d checked in to my hotel, I walked around for ages trying to find out where the swim would start from. I found the local Strandbad (beach lido), which to my astonishment was not a paid area like it is in Zurich, but just a free area along the lake with sand and where you can swim; they also had some barbecue areas (this is very Swiss, they are very fond of installing free-to-use barbecue areas). But this wasn’t the starting place for the swim.

I found out in the end that I had to get the bus to get there and that last year all the buses had been full because it had been an exceptionally hot summer with the most ever participants, so I started to stress about which bus to get. I decided I couldn’t afford to cut it fine, so I had to get up early (for me) and get the earlier bus and arrive early. Then I stressed about whether I’d need the toilet if I’d just eaten.

The swim was similar but slightly different from Zurich (and had only around 575 people). This time, you got a red and white swimming cap to wear (out of some strange material) and, to my surprise, you had to return it afterwards. Your number was written on ink on your hand rather than on your cap to identify you and your luggage, and you also wore an electronic armband that was supposed to register you starting and finishing. You could leave valuables and rucksacks there and there were changing rooms (and toilets) available.

We were all taken by bus to Nottwil at the other side of the lake (Sempach lake) where toilets were again available. I now decided to worry about the actual swim and I had to keep on telling myself that I could do it and that I mustn’t panic. Although there were some foreigners there, it was very Swiss and all the instructions were relayed in Swiss German. We all waited at the water’s edge until given the go-ahead to start and off we swam. As usual, the swim was marked with buoys and rescue boats.

The water was a good temperature, so I didn’t have a sense of shock when I entered and I could see the other side, which was comforting. Towards the end of the swim, if I focused on it, I could feel that my arms had been working, but I didn’t feel exhausted; it took me about 55 minutes to swim the 2.1km.

We had to queue in the water while we waited to exit; it was quite cold as you stood in the water, although everyone was patient and polite and there was no pushing to go up the steps first. A representative from the organisation shook each person’s hand individually and congratulated you while calling out your number so that they could log that you had arrived. 

Your reward for completing the swim was a towel, so better than the plastic cup that I got in Zurich. After collecting the towel, there was also someone there cutting off your electronic armband and another to collect your swimming cap (hence the queue with all these people to pass through on your way out). It was almost like being in Egypt again with all these people allocated to different tasks.

Of course, there was the standard steaming cup of bouillon awaiting you once you’d got through all that. A warm snack (something cheesy, I think), a soft drink, and a small bar of chocolate were also provided by the sponsors. You are always very well looked after at these events.

I spent the rest of the day exploring Sempach, which isn’t very large. It’s a pretty town and there’s a large bird sanctuary just a bit further up the lake towards the station. I started walking along the lake towards the bird sanctuary and there was a group of people on SUPs (stand up paddles) with dogs on them too wearing life jackets (the dogs, that is!). It looked most bizarre and one of the dogs kept on jumping into the water and they had to keep on trying to haul him back on! I’m not sure what they were doing, but perhaps they were training the dogs as rescue dogs? I have no idea!

After amusing myself watching them for a while, I continued on to the bird sanctuary. I still find it bizarre that so many Swiss Badi (lidos) have some form of aviary or bird sanctuary attached to them (eg, Seebach and Enge in Zurich, for example, and now this at Sempach). Anyway, it seemed that Sempach was quite well known for its bird sanctuary, so I paid the entrance fee and did the tour of the exhibition on birds; it was well laid out and I stopped and had a diet Coke in their cafeteria before getting the bus back to the station and getting the train back to Zurich.

All in all, it made for a good trip out for a day; it’s not really worth doing just for seeing Sempach, but if you’re doing the swim, it’s fun to see somewhere you wouldn’t otherwise go!

Zurich - Trip to Pilatus

View From Fräkmüntegg - and Dark Skies Overhead

Pilatus is one of the must-see things to do in Switzerland, so I couldn’t leave Switzerland without giving Idette the opportunity to go there.

Again, getting the tickets is a bit complicated, because although I could see the RailAway deal on the internet, I wasn’t really sure how to get all the various bits of the journey correct (it involves getting a train, the steepest cogwheel railway in the world, a cable car and a gondola) or how to get it without committing to a specific time of travel. You can also get a boat if you like, but it adds several hours to the journey.

Anyway, we got our tickets the day before from the station and the woman serving us was very helpful and took my half-fare card into account and my existing travel pass for my zone and Central Zurich area. And she ensured we got the ticket that would have the correct forms of travel and allow us flexibility of when to travel. Phew.

Our travels all went smoothly, although we got a little lost in Kriens trying to find the cable car to go up, but it gave us a walk among the hills, so it was good for us. There were a number of Japanese tourists there, so we had to queue a little to exchange our tickets for tickets for the gondola in order to have the bar codes to let us in through the automatic gates. Impressively, a man was there cleaning the gondolas as they came into the station. This is Switzerland.

We ascended the first part of the mountain until we got to Fräkmüntegg (there’s a Swiss word for you!!). From here, we were supposed to take the cable car up to the top, but the mountain was covered in mist. It was so unfortunate! We decided to eat lunch at the restaurant there, while we still had a view of some kind, and in the hope that the mist would clear in the mean time.

There was an adventure park right just as you got out at Fräkmüntegg station, so the first thing you see is people walking along a tightrope above the massive drop below. It looks scary and impressive! Although it was misty, it wasn’t cold, so we were able to eat our lunch outside. For the first time, I had a very Swiss lunch of Roesti with fried egg on top! It’s making me feel hungry again just writing about it.

The mist didn’t move, but we took the cable car up to the top anyway, but visibility was literally nil. We watched a film, so that Idette could see what she was missing, and I think we had a snack before taking the cogwheel train down.

The cogwheel train is the steepest in the world and it’s one of those crazy ideas that someone has and then goes ahead and does while everyone scoffs saying that it’s impossible and won’t work and then succeeds and becomes a roaring success (in Egypt, that’s like El Gouna). Given the bad weather conditions, the train was still quite full. Going down, we were quickly out of the mist again and it’s amazing as you travel through the mountain at some points and you just have the bare mountain rock either side. It’s incredible how they ever excavated through it.

The upside of Pilatus being misty was that we had some time to look round Lucerne (the Chapel bridge, the old town, and the church, which actually I’d never seen before) and to have some coffee and cake.

Despite the less than optimal weather, it still made a wonderful and varied day out!

Zurich - Trip to the Rhine Falls

Approaching the Rhine Falls by Boat

I had the pleasure of a visit from Idette towards the end of July. Since I’m moving back to Egypt in October, this may be the last time that she’ll have the opportunity to visit me in Switzerland (although I ended up back in Switzerland last time I moved to Egypt, so who knows what the future holds).

When I visited Idette last year, I mentioned that I was thinking of maybe moving to Schaffhausen, so I decided that this would be a good place to take her (so that she could see what might have been). Also, on thinking of your typical image of Switzerland, it has to be mountains and lakes, and although we’d taken a boat – sorry, ship, they get quite annoyed if you call them boats - on Lake Zurich before, we hadn’t really seen any Swiss mountains together. Therefore, I thought a trip to Pilatus may be in order.

I’ve done both of these trips before, but it was so long ago now that it’s actually pre-blog. Consequently, it’s maybe worth splitting up the trips into two blogs, as both places are well worth a visit.

The day of Idette’s arrival was a perfect summer’s day.

It’s easy to get to Schaffhausen, as it’s a direct train from my local station and takes about 50 minutes. However, I forgot to look up the route that the train takes. You might think that if it’s a direct train, why would I need to be bothered by the route? Well, in Switzerland, the ticket system is really complicated. You try to buy a train ticket to Schaffhausen from the machine and it will give you two options for tickets depending on which route you are taking or it asks you if you want a day pass for a whole load of zones instead. Well, I had no idea which way the train went and I had no idea what all those zones were that the machine was listing. I just wanted to get the train that goes to Schaffhausen from my station. Why should that be so difficult? In my hurry to get the train, I plumped for the ticket listing all the zones, but I think it was three times the cost of what I needed to pay, actually, and the zones covered a far greater area than where we were going! Lesson learned, but it’s a bit late now. I don’t know why they have to make it so complicated.

Anyway, I shouldn’t dwell on this as the day was superb (even though I say so myself!). We wandered round the old town a bit and had a coffee and cake (always a good idea). Idette’s husband had informed her that there was an IWC museum in Schaffhausen (Gerard, I think I remember you buying a IWC watch once and Paulo commenting that you’d spent your bonus early!); watches are obviously a guy thing. I’d never been there, so we went to visit that – of course, if you aren’t horrendously rich, some of them are just out-of-this-world expensive, but the older ones with the fancy casings were interesting to look at and I could appreciate the work gone into them. The pieces are tiny! It takes you through the history of the watch design, so it’s actually quite absorbing. I teased Idette that she should buy one for her husband, but if he was hoping for one, he didn’t get it (unless she bought one at the airport!).

We then walked along the Rhine to the Rhine Falls. There was some construction going on, so we got a bit lost at first as we couldn’t get to the footpath as directly as I had done before. However, we managed. It’s a great place for a stroll as you have the Rhine to your left and some beautiful private properties to your right; you can see the river getting gradually more and more turbulent the closer you get to the waterfall. Also, after the town, it was a bit cooler down by the river, which was a pleasant respite.

And then, lo and behold, at the end of the walk, you turn a corner and there are the Rhine Falls. The surprise was spoiled a bit as you see them already from the train as you go to Schaffhausen, but it’s still a lovely prize for having walked that far and it’s always something else to be right beside them. The Rhine Falls is the largest waterfall in Europe, at least in terms of breadth.

The Falls were gushing pretty hard when we were there; I guess the summer heat was melting all the ice. There’s a load of spray in the air and, of course, the thunderous noise of the water crashing down en masse. We took one of the boats that take you along the river and under the Falls. As you travel further down the river, the land on the left is Germany and the land on the right is Switzerland. How cool is that?

To my surprise, there must be good Swiss-German collaboration, because our Swiss boat picked up a group of swimmers from a German beach further up the river. They stayed on the boat with us while it went under the Rhine Falls (then you really can feel the spray from the water and actually you can’t see much because it’s just a mist of water droplets), which is exhilarating as you can sense the danger of getting too close; one woman on our boat seemed to be really enjoying it and just laughed the whole time. On coming out from the waterfall, the boat then let the swimmers jump into the water so that they could swim all the way back to their beach. What a fun thing to do! It really made me want to live in that area.

We had perfect weather the whole day and in the evening we had the open-air cinema booked by the lake (VIP tickets). I’ve already written about the open-air cinema before, but there are some new things, so I think I’ll combine that at some later point into a blog of three open-air cinema visits that I’ve done recently.

But it was a fun day out!

Zurich - KFC Opens at the Airport

Opening Day at the Airport

In Sahl Hasheesh, the opening of a local supermarket was a major event for me. Here in Zurich, it’s the opening of a KFC! Switzerland is way behind Egypt in this respect. In Hurghada alone there are three KFCs; in the whole of Switzerland there was none. For those of you who are unaware, KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is my favorite food. I do try not to over-indulge.

Years ago, before I came to Switzerland, I believe, KFC opened up first in Zurich and failed and then again in Geneva and Lausanne and failed. I heard that it failed because it didn’t use Swiss chicken, but I’m not sure of the truth of that rumour.

Anyway, over the last year, they’ve suddenly started to open up branches in Switzerland (using Swiss chicken, I think) where previously there was none. I think the first three went in Geneva, Bern and Zurich, although the Zurich one ended up in Volketswil, which isn’t so easy to get to. Apparently it’s done very well, but I haven’t managed to get there.

However, the big event that I’m talking about – one which will change my life here in Switzerland – was the installation of a KFC in Zurich Airport. That’s just a 6-minute bus ride from where I live. They couldn’t have been kinder to me (my hope of having one in Glattbrugg was unrealistic, even I will admit that).

It opened just a couple of weeks ago and I went there for the opening night – with some trepidation as I heard that in Volketswil there had been large queues. When I got there, the KFC management team were having an apero in a red-carpeted area, while the customers queued at the counters. I did think about sneaking in and gatecrashing to get an apero myself (surely they could have offered their customers a part of the celebrations!), but I noticed that everyone had an official KFC badge.

There were gold balloons up spelling out KFC; there were queues, but actually it wasn’t too bad. I was there as they reached what seemed to be their 1000th customer, but there was no celebration of that, although maybe the numbers weren’t really per customer (you order and pay, then you wait for your number to be called). Or perhaps now KFC being present in Switzerland is just becoming the norm!

A professional photographer was hanging around and I saw him take a photo of someone who seemed to be a Colonel Sanders lookalike standing with two other KFC staff. I was sorely tempted to take a photo myself but they were looking at me watching from the sidelines so I didn’t dare.

I have to say, the chicken was extremely delicious; the best tasting KFC that I’ve had for a while. My 3 box menu came with three sides, so I ended up with large fries and some corn on the cob since I didn’t want coleslaw. Their milkshakes looked tempting, but I couldn’t swap it for my soft drink, but maybe it’s just as well as I guess it would have been a lot of extra calories.

I thought I’d do a cost of living exercise on KFC like they do with McDonalds (comparison of the cost of a burger in various countries). So, I was charged 22 CHF (around 18 GBP!!) for my 3-piece chicken box at the airport; in Egypt this costs me about 95 LE (around 4.50 GBP), and I see in the UK it costs around 5.20 GBP. However, in Egypt, the deal includes 1 extra side vs UK and the chicken is Halal; in Switzerland, the box provides 2 extra sides vs UK, so the three prices are not a direct comparison. But, needless to say, however you look at it, the Swiss version is considerably more expensive. Fortunately, when I’m on a Swiss salary, this isn’t a problem, but might be if I were a mere tourist or if the prices were like that in Egypt. I remember when I used to sit with my Starbucks in the Swissotel in Oerlikon and I’d invariably hear Americans discussing the price of the McDonalds across the road with utter disbelief at how much it cost. That’s Switzerland!

Zurich - 25,000 Page Views

Zurich Festival Lake View - Now My Own Celebration!

I wrote a blog on my blog statistics when I reached 10,000 page views; now that I’ve reached over 25.000 it seems like time for an update.

Before I begin, I’ll just put the provisos that I wrote before – namely, I don’t really trust the statistics and even google says they are not to be expected to be accurate. I think the numbers change over time as hits by bots are deleted from the totals. In any case, the stats across various ways of counting (by country, by day, etc) don’t add up. Still, it’s fun to look. Also, I believe that those who receive my blog by email (and I don’t get to see how many subscribe by email, which is a shame, but could also be depressing if I had a sudden exodus) are not included in the totals.

What’s been most noticeable just looking at it casually each week as I update my blog was a sudden increase in (alleged) readers from Germany. Having not featured previously as a prominent country at 10,000 views, this time it’s at the top of my readership. Not only that, there are almost twice as many German readers as any other country. I can’t really understand why this should be, and the hits are so many, I am frankly suspicious that there’s some mega-bot in Germany that’s managed to foil Google’s bot-detector. Huge apologies if there are lots of you reading my blog in Germany – I’m very flattered if it is true and do keep reading! I’m just a bit stunned.

After Germany, there’s the UK and Switzerland, numbers of readers halving each time, and then the totals start to level out as Russia comes fourth, quite close in numbers to Switzerland. Egypt slips in at 9th.

To my surprise, it’s more recent posts in 2018 and 2019 that have been read more than the earlier posts (which have been up longer and therefore had more chance of being read). I’m not sure why this is and I can only think it is tied in with the sudden influx of readers from Germany.

There are only 41 extra hits between the most-read post (El Andalous – Dangers of Swimming (4th Feb 2019)) and the 10th most-read (El Andalous – My Mohammed is Different (10th Dec, 2018)). In fact, three of the most-read blogs have the word “swimming” in the title (Zurich – End of Swimming Lessons and El Andalous – Swimming Frustrations were the other two); ‘swimming’ doesn’t appear as a search term, though. I’m quite pleased that these blogs seem to be relatively popular because sometimes I wonder if this is more of a swimming blog than anything else, but at least my obsession doesn’t seem to stop people from reading.

Two of the most-read blogs were about my holidays (Colonia San Jordi and St Petersburg); again, I could quite happily think that these were more popular due to searches on the internet by those seeking holidays in these destinations but, again, these did not feature as search terms leading to the blog (in fact, no search terms other than the obvious [eg, “searching the dream”] were listed).

I don’t think there’s been much change in browsers used (Chrome is the most popular with 55%, followed by Safari (18%), Internet Explorer (15%), and FireFox (6%)). Similarly, operating systems used were predominantly Windows (71%), IPhone (11%), Macintosh (7%), and iPad (4%). Personally, I’m pleased to see that Chrome and Windows feature highly as it might encourage sports watch manufacturers to continue making platforms that can be used via a laptop rather than just via a mobile phone (which seems to be an increasing trend).

So, that’s how things stand as of 25,000 page views. Thank you everyone for reading.