Zürich techno fiesta

On Saturday morning we hit the autoroute (Switzerland 1) bound for Zürich at exactly 120 kph, a 600 km roadtrip based on the rumor of some kind of love- parade-like happening there. A prerequisite trip to the central Post office in Geneve tested our linguistic abilities; our requests for a motorway sticker resulted in directions to train and bus and taxi stations and ride-sharing agencies, and it was only on the tenth pronounciation of "autoroute" (all variations of ou-toe`root) combined with some suitable gesticulations (and just as I was looking for something to scribble a little picture upon) that the agent said, "Ah! An autoroute sticker! Just one moment." There are three things that they sell, and one of them is autoroute stickers. And so we obtained for forty francs the decal allowing us on the intercanton highways.

It seems quite odd that Zurich and Geneve are part of the same country; with Geneve French-Speaking, and Zurich German-speaking (the motorway exit signs change from Sortie to Ausfahrt), it's easy to wonder whether they use the same currency, etc. It's easy to think of Europe as condensing into Nations at some point, and here parts that might (should?) have been parts of Germany, France, and Italy, fell instead to a different center of gravity, forming the strange Confederation we have today.

On the approach to Zurich we needed only follow the packed Volkswagens with Deutschland designations, packed with passengers and leaking loud techno beats. Zürich street parade — apparently Zurich has become some kind of European techno-capital, with the prerequisite wealth to attract the best DJ's and all that, and this is their big annual city-wide, officially sponsored rave, with the city full of that mechanical dum-dum-dum of the techno, like some kind of heavy machinery, iron cogs revolving, cycling, then joined by the sweet harmony from the synthesizer, the piercing bursts stabbing into the brain. and then, fist in the air, you can't help but jump up in the air, smile, and dance. And the people all around are out in their clubbing / raver gear, from ridiculous get-ups seemingly based on shag carpeting, to the girls dressed in short vinyl skirts with fishnet tops and nothing more than red glossy tape crossed over their nipples.

But we grew tired of these huge sweating masses (more than a million people stuffed into the city center) in the 36 deg C heat, the pounding sound pressure (doubtlessly destroying our ears), the increasingly mundane people on the floats, and so we wandered off to the grass and sat and rested and gazed longingly towards the cool waters of the river, where hundreds frolicked in the water and in boats, dancing in the boats to the techno and jumping from the boats into the clear, aquamarine waters. Our attemps to contact our Zürich native friends failed, so we set off in search of a quiet cafe to restore ourselves; on the way we pushed through the Zurich old town, which, too, was packed with these raver kids, and we passed a DJ supply company which surprised us for not having been looted.

café differente (Hotel Krone Unterstrass, Schaffhauserstrasse 1, CH-8006 Zurich) provided for our restoration, a quiet cafe and nice restaurant perched on an otherwise deserted (and blessingly quiet) street up only a corner away from where our dear little Berlingo lay stationed. From there we enjoyed a leisurely italian dinner at Restaurant Santa Lucia (Luisenstrasse 31) and finally a bizarre visit to Picasso Bar around the corner, where they seem to speak neither German nor French but some incomplete Spanish that made our ordering a small fiasco in misunderstandings.