When we arrived in Zürich on friday,
the streets were still wet from the rain but as we got on the tram to
spys home it had stopped raining and the sun peeped out and it was
pleasantly warm.....(We not once had to make use of our umbrellas by
the way).
Spy was expecting us and gave us the
key for the room with a view on the 5th floor.
lotta_torkel rushed in, busy getting ready for her wedding in the
evening, leaving us with the best of wishes and a salad from her own
garden.
We then had a an hours rest, me and
Lytteltonwitch in the room, MissMarkey decided to go up to the roof,
where the new floorborads have been put in and only the deckchairs
were missing;-)
Unfortunately spy-there was not ready
with the bookhunt, so we decided to take a stroll from Cafe Gloria
around the Kunstmuseum nearby. MalLisa took us along to some hidden
treasures, places like tiny art-galeries with great art, tourist
usually don't get to see. Time did fly and soon it was 19h, time to
get the grill going.
MalLisa and I brought some of the
sausages from St.Gallen, the famous Kinderfestbratwurst, and of
course: a „Servelat“ for MalLisa - a saussage a grillparty could
not do without.
Soon we got the charcoal glowing and
the table ready underneath the treehouse in the backyard.
Then franaloe arrived, rather tiredly
as she admitted but never the less stayed on for the meal and chatted
with our guests from GB. Spy did her favorite dishes, filled
mushrooms and lovely tomatosoup from the Soup-shop in her house. The
light drizzle did not do any harm to our party and we all tucked in
and even got some wine and pickles from Elisabeth, a longtime
neighbour and friend of spys, who did make a bed in her livingroom
for myself so our special guests from lovely Great Britain could be
at ease and all by themselves in their room. She also had a days work
behind her and did not feel well enough to join us underneath our
treehouse.
I myself was happy that none
interferred in my task to get the fire going, and MalLisa as a real
pal did her best to help setting up the table, wash the salad etc.
(The next day she lay ill in bed, was
sick from something she might have eaten or other infection she could
have catched with her grandchildren als she pointed out to me when I
went to see her in her home the next day. MissMarkey had some
medicine with her which I took with me and made her drink, as I went
to see her.....so when I called her up on sunday afternoon she
already had recovered from her upset stomach.)
The next day we had our breakfast at
Migros Limmatplatz without MalLisa, which was a real shame, I know
she would have loved to keep us company and laugh away the day.
We then went to CafeGloria to empty the
shelves there from almost all the books, dust them with a wet cloth
from the owner and stock them up with fresh books which I brougth
with me in my red travellingbag. MissMarkey and Lytteltonwitch were
busy writing down the BCID-numbers from the books they are about to
set free in their city-releasewalk, sadly without me and MalLisa
because I went to get here the medicine during this two hour
bookrelease.
After that we had a lovely meal at the
Gloria Cafe, I my favorite Ciabatta Gloria with aubergines, MissM
hers with tomato and cheese. Our special guests wanted to attend the
„Drumming for the Amazone“, so we hopped on a tram which got us
there by a detour via the famous Bahnhofstrasse because the
demonstration did clogg the Limmatquai at that time.
We then heard two fantastic
drumming-groups and a indigeneous chief from Manaus (2 Mio people
living there), who told us about the threatening plans of the
goverment of Brazil about the plans to put in place 60 new dams for
electricity and flood large aerias of the jungle for it. This
electricity is planned to be sold to the north of course. The whole
event was organized by Greenpeace and about a hundred people of all
ages attended the show in lovley sunshine on the „Gemüsebrücke“
over the river Limmat in the very heart of Zürich
(„Vegetable“-bridge-because they sell vegetables there already
for a long time).
MissMarkey then asked to see some of
the modern art set up around town. But first I would have liked to
show them the river and the public bath underneath the railwaybridge
close to spys house. We went there and boy, was the river rolling
high, much higher than it usually is in the summertime. We took off
our shoes and had a quick refreshment by putting our feet in the
water. Then MissM spottet some box from our planned bookhunt and we
decided to go back to spy-there and ask whether she's now ready with
it. She was in but said that we now were to late for all the posts
she had been putting up, some places are already closed and others
soon were closing, it would have been too confusing to follow it
under this circumstances, so we gave up on it and instead took the
tram to the station „Technopark“ to see the sculpture made by MacCarthy and maybe others.
We had a plan from the yesterdays
newspaper to guide us for the art displayed. The trip took us to a
whole new quater of Zürich, all shiny and interestingly new. There
was elisa not working
properly still....the artist and helpers tried to undo the chain that
held the arm in place, we watched, took picture (soon to come), and
then we crossed over on the new bridge to the MacCarty sculpture
„Apple Tree Boy and Apple Tree Girl“ which is set close to the
remaining few allotment gardens which soon have to give way as well
to the developement of the city. There were slabs of marble to sit
and lay on and although the sky was covered in dramatic steelgray it
was still pleasantly warm, and a lovely breeze was on.
We strolled back in town and came
across some more art, artgoers, posh hotels, a fenced in old house in
the middle of all new buildings like for instance the new Temple of
Comunication from Swisscom (now we know where all the money goes;-)).
At the Shiffbau there was a lady on a
black wooden box reciting poems in Englisch and German, then of
course we stopped at the steelgirl Vanessa and eventually
headed back to Limmatplatz and on to Helvetiaplatzt to find somewhere
to eat.
We walked quite a bit about the
redlight-district on Langstrasse, came back, and eventually ended up
an the restaurant Mundialon the Corner Neugasse and
Gasometerstrasse which we found by sheer luck.
We were hungry by now but we had to
wait another 45 min. For the food to come. Because there was a big
party just before us and in the kitchen they where struggeling to
keep up with the food preparation. We enjoyed meanwhile the interior
which was an ecclectic hotchpotch of wodden table and chairs from the
near „Brockenhaus“, garnished witch pompous sofas made in Bali,
with plenty of cushions for being stuffed in the customers backs to
sit as comfortably as possible..and I loved the illumination by the
well placed lamps and chandeliers in the room. Our waiting was
honoured by a lovely meal which came in either XXL or XXXL size, so
beware and come only here if you are really hungry.
Happy and tired we fell in our beds and
had a goodnight sleep. The meetup was over and the tomorrow brings
another day of travelling and new andventures to come.
Goodby Zürich, goodby OBCZ -
CafeGloria, goodby art, and last but not least: a warm goodby to our
hospitable spy-there and Elisabeth, our alwas gay and helpful
MalLisa, lovely franaloe, and our special guests from GB MissMarkey
and Lytteltonwitch: IT'S BEEN A GREAT TIME TO BE WITH YOU!!!