TALES – What’s the Matterhorn Like?
I wake in a tiny, clinically-white room in a Zurich hotel at which I haven’t seen a single worker (I checked in last night with a computer and a key-dispensing vending machine), and pack my bag. Having completed “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the previous night, I decide to save weight and leave the English-language book behind in a German-speaking country, should there an be actual human who will eventually clean my room. I shoulder my pack and walk quickly to the nearest public transit station, inhaling the rest of last night’s pizza on the way. I choose not to pay (Zurich’s transit is on the honor system, which I am dishonoring) and awkwardly slide my pack and I into the Monday morning rush, clearly the only person not dressed in their downtown finest work clothes (mostly suits; there seem to be a lot of money-movers in this town), and definitely the only one with a forty pound backpack. I get off at the main train station and have barely enough time to buy the 8:02am ticket to Zermatt (the town at the foot of the Matterhorn), grab a cup of coffee, and relax on the pricey train ride into the Swiss Alps.
Three trains and five hours later…