Flight from SFO took off at around 7 PM, through some expert negotiating I secured an exit row seat, which, on British Air means unlimited leg room (even in coach). The guy next to me had an Oracle bag so I struck up a conversation which lasted for 45 minutes about topics ranging from enterprise integration, to the start up culture, to the Google/MSN/Yahoo wars (and AOL trying to launch its own portal - how stupid). I only got a few hours of sleep and woke up at 2 AM PST time and just read a book until breakfast was served at 4 AM and we touched down a little after 6 AM.
In London's Heathrow airport we had a couple hour layover and we wandered around and soaked up the melting pot atmosphere. I saw a package of ciggerettes for sale with a huge SMOKING KILLS sign on it which was pretty funny, so I took a picture.
Then we took off for Zurich for a quick 1.5 hour flight - which I slept through, exhausted - and touched down into Zurich Saturday evening. From the air, it looked like the classic picorequesqe city, very cute and surrounded by the huge Alps. The aiport was immaculate and high-tech, fulfiling the Swiss stereotype. All the traveling had been pretty flawless until the very last checkpoint where he had to show passports....And won't you know it one of my friends had lost his passport somewhere btwn flashing it at London Heathrow and landing in Zurich.
So, the rest of the group sat around right outside the checkpoint in Zurich's airport, unable to proceed until our friend found his passport...Our host families waited for us without knowing what was going on. We sat around for two hours as my friend tried to get permission to leave the airport without a passport. Finally, our chaperone let us go up to baggage claim to let the host families know what was going on. We couldn't actually go outside (b/c then we couldn't go back inside, and we needed to wait for our friend), just look/talk through the big glass wall. This made for a funny picture.
Finally, after first thinking he would have to fly back to London to take care of his passport deal, my friend was let out of the airport and we all left. I arrived at my host family's very posh home at 9 PM Zurich time really really tired. Driving through Zurich, my first impressions were: a) extraordinarily beautiful, b) narrow roads, c) the people walking around remind me of the people who walk around in the Castro in San Francisco, d) everything is quite clean, e) banks, banks, and more banks everywhere.
Patrice, the guy who stayed at my house, his sister and the sister's boyfriend got take out pizza and we had a nice albeit late dinner mostly talking about American culture, the NBA, Gavin Newsom, etc. It was at this moment that I realized that in one sense I am an ambassador of US culture, responsiblity I needed to take seriously. Despite being on just a few hours of sleep over the past 50 hours, I went with Patrice to Lake Zurich where most of his friends were meeting up. There was a bar inside (16 is drinking age) and most people sat around outside in the nice weather overlooking Lake Zurich. I played another Swiss kid in chess, defeated him swiftly, made small talk, and then we took the train home.
I hit the sack at 1 AM and woke up at 3:45 PM. Patrice's parents came home this morning (Sunday) and made breakfast for my eating at 10 AM. I woke up at 3:45. How lovely. Now we're about to go for a little driving tour, after they finish watching a Swiss guy in German open.
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