The last night in Zürich... after my final interview, and a very rainy day.
The interview went well, I thought – in fact I'm hoping that all six went well; we will see, of course. I was tired and a bit dazed afterwards, wandering the city in the rain, trying to find a place to eat... which at 1:55 p.m. is not a very sensible idea, as many restaurants close punctually at 2 p.m. But I finally found an Italian one that pays attention to tourists, and had a rather hearty risotto.
But here I am, back in my rented apartment at the corner of Asylstraße and Hölderlinstraße. (Yeah, I get it too.) Instant Rösti... hmm, well, don't rush out and buy it as a delicacy – at least not on my account. A simple convenience food, and even that I'm screwing up slightly (don't plan to hire me as a cook, either). But it will be edible; and there will be about 15-20 SFR of food I can't take with me – hopefully the cleaners will find it useful (especially the half-bottle of white wine for the risotto I never made).
I wandered into an absolutely excellent book shop – the brilliantly named 'Calligramme' – though most of the books were in German, and I'm not going to overestimate my ability to enjoy German novels. I bought just two books, one of which was from a series of writers talking about various famous cities – the Zürich one of course, to make the city itself more interesting (I love the idea of the whole series, but since they're all in German I held back). There is a fantastic tale about Canetti's mother becoming entirely paranoid over her Swiss au pair, who has an education and expects to eat at the family table – this is such a contrast to the Austrian slaveys the mother is accustomed to hire that she becomes convinced that the girl is a spy.
But the best line is by Vaslav Nijinsky, writing in his diary in 1919 – of course it was written in Russian, but it seems even weirder in German, so here it is – the last line is the plum:
"Ich werde in Zürich nicht schreiben, denn ich fühle großes Interesse für diese Stadt. Ich werde ins Bordell gehen, denn ich will die Kokotten erfühlen. Ich habe vergessen, wie das ist mit Kokotten. Ich will die Psychologie der Koketten verstehen lernen."
To be honest, despite Nijinsky's inspiration, I'm a bit tired of Zürich today – two or three fewer days would have been fine with me, it will be good to get home. I sent a message to Giovanni – one of the few (new) friends still around after the end of the three-week course (the analysts and teachers who live here have undoubtedly had enough of students for a few months, I wouldn't bother them). I may go out with him one last night – though not to a bar I hope, I'll vote for a café. It's proven a bit difficult to steer Giovanni toward quieter venues, but I've started to get fairly blunt about it.
And some packing, and some figuring out train schedules. Out of here about 10 a.m....
Time to go home.
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