Off to the farm

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for my farm stay. I'll be gone for five days. I'm excited and a little nervous. My backpack is all packed. Helmut, the farmer, is supposed to pick me up at the train station in a little town on Lake Constance. We arranged it all over e-mail.

I packed my most rough-and-tumble clothes, read the brochure a dozen times and talked to Helmut over the phone, but I still have no idea what to expect. Will I be able to hack a week of hard farm labor? I know it's going to be tough and dirty and strange but every time I try to picture myself there, I see it like a magazine layout. Me in an idyllic, sunny orchard on a wooden ladder with a bucket full of apples, my hair in a bandana. I have to admit it - I even packed the bandana!

In the meantime, it was gorgeous here today so I got that hike in I was hoping to do. Christoph and I charged up Uetliberg, a popular day hike on a ridge overlooking Lake Zurich. The last time we went up there was last March. There was still snow on the ground and the paths were icy and treacherous. Today it was ideal -- golden leaves, crisp fall air and sunshine.

No Swiss hike would be complete without some refreshments along the way, so we stopped at Teehütte (Tea Hut) for some soup, bread and sausage. At the end of the hike we hit Gasthaus Felsenegg for homemade apple strudel. Does this really count as exercise?

Only four months to go

I just realized yesterday that we have only four months or so left in Zurich. We're supposed to ship ourselves back to the U.S. on March 1, 2007. I'm already starting to get wistful about Zurich. Lately, I catch myself thinking, oh no, this is the last chance I'll have to do this or I'm really going to miss that. Like today, I was sitting eating my lunch by the lake and thinking I really need to do one more hike before it gets too cold and rainy. Something close by, like Uetliberg, would do.

Perhaps the wistfulness is part of an overall melancholy I'm feeling these days. All the summer visitors have come and gone. The big, exciting trips around Europe are mostly over. The hubby is out of town on business. Jul, my partner in unemployed crime, is off running around Japan. So, here I am, left to my own devices. Yesterday that consisted of spending most of the day surfing the web and downloading music followed by a dinner of beer and potato chips. Not pretty, I know.

Here's the other problem. My state of joblessness is finally starting to catch up with me mentally. Without trips to plans, projects to work on or a job to go to, I've taken to sleeping in till 9 or, sometimes, even 10. The day can just slip by with nothing to show for it. Occasionally I start to feel anxious because I don't know what to do with myself. The last 8 months or so of leisure have been reallly nice, but it's starting to have a downside. I need to feel useful and productive again.

Perhaps my next adventure (you knew there had to be one!) will help clear the fog of idleness. On Monday, I leave for an apple orchard where I'll spend five days as a volunteer farm hand. No sleeping in there, that's certain. I expect I'll be getting up at the crack of dawn to pick and sort apples, plums and pears. The farm is family run, all organic and located in a beautiful area of Switzerland near Bodensee (Lake Constance), or so the brochure says. I found it through an organization called WWOOF, or World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.

I'm looking forward to getting to work and spending some time outdoors. Fall has been beautiful here so far (I've probably just cursed next week's weather by writing that). I'll also hopefully get to practice my German, which is in a dreadful state right now. And with any luck, I'll come back with a couple of bottles of freshly pressed cider. The farm operates its own cider factory. Reports to come.

Travel fatigue

Apologies, dear readers (if you're still out there!), for the extended lapse in publishing. I've been travelling nearly non-stop for the last seven weeks, zig-zagging across europe like a maniac. Needless to say, I let blogging fall by the wayside.

I'm back in Zurich now, recuperating. My husband and my apartment are a site for sore eyes.

Don't get me wrong. I'd do it again in a second. I visited fantastic places, enjoyed the company of dear friends and family and generally had a ball. But I think I can finally say I've got the travel bug out of my system - for a while anyway. I don't want to see my rolly luggage for at least a month. Ditto with strange train stations, airports, crinkled city maps and hotel beds. I'm parking my Lonely Planet collection firmly on the shelf.


I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow account of my wanderings. But I will give you a brief summary. Since Aug. 25, I've galavanted across five countries with eight travel companions in tow (in various groupings). I've boarded three planes, taken three international train rides and logged three major roadtrips. I've hiked three Alps, slept in 12 different beds (not including my own) and spent one afternoon in a Paris police station.

I made it back in more or less one piece minus a wallet (hence the police station).


All of this has me pondering why it is I love to travel. What compells me and countless others to endure far too many hours in a cramped aircraft or train cabin to get to a foreign country where we can't understand most of what is said, must drag all our belongings around in the street, and get stared down by the locals? Why do we glady hand over wads of cash in order to suffer various travel-related, gastro-intestinal problems and fall prey to subway pickpockets?


So many discomforts and yet as soon as I return from one trip (or before in some cases), I find myself scheming up the next one. It's like an addiction. In fact, I must confess I already have another trip planned. I'm going away again in two weeks. But this time I'm staying in Switzerland and it's only an hour and a half away by train. It hardly counts!

So back to why do it. In part, I think it's that I find travel somehow freeing. It takes you out of your routine and your expectations about how things work and how people live. It's also a personal challenge. You have to be on your toes or you might get on the wrong train or locked in a church. You might forget your passport on your trip to Italy and spend half the train ride back praying that the boarder patrol officers don't check your compartment.

You might think an art exhibit is more interactive than it actually is and almost get tossed out of the George Pompidou Center. Or you might get invited to a jazz club in Paris by someone you meet on the plane and then find yourself it a really scuzzy part of town being asked how much you cost. And then you've got to think fast.


So there are bound to be tight spots, but every trip has its really great, unforgettable moments too. For instance, getting scrubbed down by a large, toothless Turkish woman with a hose and a scratchy mit in a Paris hammam. Supressing giggles exiting an Amsterdam coffee shop with legally acquired doobie that comes in a handy, plastic, to-go vile (a great souvenir!). Learning how to insult someone in French from an American who's learned the hard way. Taking advantage of lax open container laws and polishing off a bottle of Burgundy en route to Frankfurt in a rental Fiat Panda (the driver abstained).

I could probably list a dozen more things, but you get the idea. This is the stuff that makes it all worth it.