The train stopped in Basel. For quite some time. Moved several meters, stopped again. Moved a little less, stopped. A long time. An announcement that we are delayed. Move again some meters… yes… oh… no… disappointment. One hour later I am free of Switzerland.
Sumi says, “I know you”, fixing me with a terrifying stare (she is not). Eventually we work out she saw Mercy 45 in Zürich three years ago, and was in St Gallen Stadtstheter with Cornelia and Debbie. Tomas is here also, a musician, Daniel and his perhaps boyfriend (a discussion on nomenclature is required), and Clint, who finds me at the train station whimpering, “This is a Small Town, isn’t it?”, and… Paea!!! Not seen since November last year.
I am here for some days, instead of the original longer stay in Zürich and then visiting them all in Luzerne. So I go back to Berlin at the end of the week. And…
Daniel is in the shower with a beer when I arrive. Two suitcases now, one full of books and hiking boots and other stuff I don’t use often. I get quite damp hugging him. The apartment is beautiful, large, a vast balcony, Annaplatz outside, with a plain church bearing a loud and clangy bell, each time it peals I think, oh they didn’t make that very well, did they? Despite my aversion to church-y things, when all the bells in Zürich went swinging, the harmonics they generated were quite sublime, a vibrating, interweaving series of notes far more than the single pitch struck by the clapper, building until the whole city reverberated.
Here the bell goes claaaanggg… and fades out in a mediocre blur, a cast-iron pot dropped on the kitchen floor.
We are told off for having fun before 10pm in the platz. I wonder if the geriatrics have washing machine rosters also? Later he looms out of the window, a sepulchral father pushing aside the curtain, the streetlight making it a Hammer House of Horror moment.
Freiburg is rather nice.
This week is grant writing and other excitement, and… I’m not sure how much blogging will ensue.
