Last night was tricky. I needed to be up at 5.30am to pack up my gear
and drive back to Zurich in time to return the car. However with my FitBit dead
and my phone battery unlikely to last the night (both containing the alarms I
usually use), and being at the end of an incredibly long walk which had left me
utterly drained, I was feeling a bit anxious about how I’d make sure I woke up
in time. Finally, after a couple of hours of lying awake, exhausted but too
anxious to sleep, I hit upon the (really quite mental) idea of drinking a lot
of water, which I hoped would prevent me from sleeping too long.
This idea wasn’t without its challenges – I wasn’t sure whether I was so
dehydrated by my walk that I’d drink a lot and my body would just absorb it, or
whether I was so tired that even this wouldn’t wake me – but in the end the
trouble was the opposite: I drank too much and kept waking up every hour.
However I did get a little sleep, and I woke up at roughly the right time, so
it kind of worked, and the car was safely returned to Zurich.
I felt a little odd with everything I own on this side of the planet
once again in a bag beside me, but I was so excited about the prospect of the
trip home that that feeling didn’t last long – especially once I arrived at my
hotel (yes, a hotel) for the night and beheld the beautiful, soft white bed,
bath, and other luxuries I’ve been doing without for the last month.
A gleam of sun shines through the clouds in Zurich. (Sort of.)
After a few hours’ sleep, I headed into Zurich for something I’d been
promising myself almost since the beginning of the trip: some real Swiss
fondue. I’d done some research and found a place, and got there just as they
opened for the evening – a good thing too, as they were heavily booked for the
evening and if I’d been any later I probably wouldn’t have been able to get a
table.
The accompaniments: bread and jacket potatoes.
My meal arrived promptly – a little basket of jacket potatoes, a big
basket of bread, cut up into bite-size pieces, and finally the piece de
resistance, the fondue itself, in a heavy metal pan over a small gas flame. It
was great fun spearing the bread and potatoes and dipping them in the fondue,
which tasted, as you’d expect, of a strong cheese with a hint of white wine.
The main event: cheese fondue.
After this, I decided to walk back to the hotel, feeling rather like a
fondue on legs, and when I arrived in my pleasant room, I found myself thinking
what a wonderful thing civilization is: sure, you can do without all the things
I’ve done without over the last month in order to make this trip happen, but
when you have them back again you have a wonderful new appreciation for the
comfort and convenience of little things like mattresses, toilets only a few
metres from the bed and not requiring rugging up in jumpers and/or rain gear in
order to visit them, and even chairs and tables.