Day 17 – Le Misérable
Another rainy day. I so didn’t want to get out on the streets. Particularly knowing that the next city wasn’t of any specific interest to me, it was a simple pit stop on the way to Zurich. At my departure from Bern, I still didn’t have a place to stay, except for a camp site – brrr. But, oh well, the show must go on.
It was raining and raining and raining. I stopped a couple of times under some cover when the rain was too heavy. Soon, however, I stopped paying attention to how hard the rain was; I was wet and cold anyways. Around 1pm I received a message from my prospective host: “sorry but not tonight”. I had two choices: go to a camp site a couple of hours away or go directly to Zurich where I had a place to stay. Zurich was another five hours away. But as we say in Russia: “100 km is not a detour for a mad dog” and so I headed to Zurich.
About eight hours after I left Bern I arrived at my host’s place. I could not feel my feet, and my knees, elbows and wrist were sore, but there was a warm welcome, a hot shower and schnapps. I was right on time for dinner. It was a weekly dinner with friends. The company was interesting: my host Bernard, a professor of social studies, his wife, an economist, their friends, both lawyers, a québécois, a robotics engineer, a Russian, a computer linguist, and Pakistani refugee Anwar. Everybody knew how to speak Swiss German but me, but luckily they also spoke English… and French, and probably a couple more languages.
Then, of course, there was a football: Schweiz – Frankreich, as they say it here, projected on the wall.
So, a miserable day turned into an enjoyable evening.
Today in numbers:
129 km – distance covered, the longest ride I ever did
6h30m – riding time
7h57m – being wet, cold and miserable
195 bpm – maximum HR, I was really pumping
