Obviously I can't fly from my little city in the South to Slovenia....so I spent a long time looking at options....all with wonderful sounding names.....Amsterdam, Dublin, Munich, Barcelona and Zurich. I have a zillion frequent flyer miles so I have to fly American Airlines. To my big surprise, the flights out of New York City (where I had hoped to leave from) were nasty. Fly to Boston, fly to London, catch this catch that. I had hoped to go to New York before or after Slovenia in order to do research for my next book....(I know I don't even have the first one finished....but.. I absolutely already know what the second one will be.....which makes me either eternally optimistic here or extremely deluded.) Now...New York doesn't seem like a good option.
As it happens, Zurich out of Dallas......is the easiest possibility....Zurich....my god that Switzerland!!...The thought of passing through Switzerland seemed mildly amusing and interesting......but as I studied Adria Airlines (the official airlines of Slovenia) I realized I hit another snag.....the flight in and out of Zurich did not match.....when Gina needed to come in and out Slovenia.
And so the thought occured to me....rather than go through my painful acclimation to a new time zone in Slovenia why not in Switzerland? Where in a hallucinogenic state I could face streets called...Krahbuhlstrasse and Bahnkofstrasse. Wouldn't that be fun? I can imagine myself falling asleep before I even pronounce the avenue.
Jet lag is a real concern for me. My body holds on to the central time zone with a death grip. In Paris, I laid in bed those first nights with my heart and head pounding in the dark..I would even sometimes "accidentally" kick my hub...so he would wake up and keep me company. I tried Lunesta or whatever the new sleeping pill was....only to discover I didn't really remember any of Paris till about 2PM........which sort of takes the thrill out of visiting a new country......in the Museum D'Orsay....I actually got so weird I thought of lying down on a marble pedestal off to the side... to take a nap.....even though the marble pedestal was already occupied by a marble woman. Hey..I've slept with strange women before.... (I actually do have a great story about sleeping with a naked French woman in Thailand).
And so why not Zurich? If I'm going to be miserable and dopey....why not be miserable and dopey in a beautiful city....not that Lake Bled in Slovenia doesn't sound pretty.....but if I was going to take a few days to acclimate ...why not in Zurich? I guess I'll sleep on this.....do a little more Googling.....and then best get a move on it.....I found a little hotel in Switzerland...that is basic and clean and in the old section of town.....and has "writer's rooms".....rooms with a view of some cathedral....which for some reason makes folks want to write something down about the experience....sounds right....or....write? And really after Africa where spiders rained down from the ceiling in one of my hotels....isn't everything else a real upgrade?
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Am I imaging things or do you get a Disneyland feeling when you look at Zurich?
I wonder if this is where Walt got his inspiration?~~~~
