Sunday, December 4, 2011

The good and the bad of Switzerland

Yes after one day at home in Paris I am back on the road for a Swiss adventure.

Remember when you were a kid, a game we played "That's good, no that's bad". It went something like this: "A man jumped out of an airplane yesterday" (oh that's bad).
"No that's good he had a parachute." (Oh that's good), and so on.
Well here goes
My taxi arrived on time to take me to the airport Sunday. (Oh that's good) but Immediately faced traffic that was absolutely stopped. The hand on the clock was moving toward my scheduled departure time, but the traffic not at all. (Oh that's bad).

Surprisingly I made it in plenty of time, (that's good) but discovered that the taxi driver did not accept credit cards. (That's bad) Luckily I had cash, (that's good) which is not always the case.

Arrived Zurich airport and bought a train ticket to Basel. Caught a train as the doors were closing (that's good) - but it wasn't going to Basel (that's bad). No problem, it let me out at Zurich Main Station and I transferred to Basel. (that's good)

Side note: getting on that train, it is not at all clear where you should sit. Some seats have words above that might indicate they are reserved. Some have Frankfurt or Mannheim above them. Should I sit in a certain car? A particular seat? Who knows?

Just before arriving Basel I finally saw a train employee (that's good), and I guess no one cared about seating arrangements, or perhaps I had somehow ended up in a perfectly acceptable seat for my ticket.(That's also good).

Arrived in Basel, put the hotel address into my mapping app - and discovered it would take more then 4 hours to walk the 20+ KM to get there. (That's bad. That's really bad) In fact I walked out the front door of the station and there was my hotel right across the street (that's really good!). I expected better from my app after attending that mobility conference last week!


  To show you the proximity of the hotel to the train station!

Nice photo of the Hotel Victoria entrance.

2 comments:

  1. So many that-is-good"s" and that-is-bad"s". Tough to count and say if it was good overall. Anyways, it looks like you are enjoying it by the way you write about it. :)

    Sometimes, the map does that to me. Then, I check if I used the mode - car, bus or by walking. When I choose the right mode, it works fine. Not sure if this is the same case with you.

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  2. I wonder how many others who attended that same conference experienced a similar fate. I'd bet most would not be able to find the humor in it as you did in this creative post. Nice work!

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