I'm Rory Parle, an Irish software engineer living in London.
I’d like to thank the Riverbank Park Plaza for their foresight in giving me a room about 20cm from seven train tracks. I’ll admit that the bone-rattling noise every half second was less than desirable, but at least it gave me an easy route to suicide if I was going to be driven to that.
Today is yet another travel day, much like yesterday but in reverse. Before that though, I have some important business to attend to.
I’m in Zurich this week from Monday to Friday. It’s my first travel since the end of May. A year ago that would have sounded like a very short time between trips, but it’s actually by far the longest single stretch I’ve been at home this year. My flight out was my eighteenth flight this year. It was nice not to have to deal with airports for a few weeks, even if it did mean failing in my half-assed attempt to travel internationally during every month of the year.
I haven’t seen a lot of Zurich, and because I’ll be working I don’t know how much I will see. The hotel is great, if you can judge a city by such things. The water in the minibar is free. What an innovation! On the other hand the rail system seems set up deliberately to confound non–German speakers, which is strange for country with four official languages. The two people I did have to ask for help at various points were able to speak English but didn’t seem entirely pleased to be asked to. Maybe my pronunciation of “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” was just wrong enough to somehow insult their mothers.
So, there you are. Airport good, trains bad, hotel good. Overall pretty neutral.