The Devil lives in Zurich

After leaving the beautiful, peaceful, free internet zone in Luzerne, we
headed towars Zurich at about 11am today with a one hour drive ahead of us.
Here I sit at 6:30pm with utter hatred for this city! We arrived in Zurich
and put in the GPS a Train Station looking for an internet hotspot. We
were told by Swisscom there are LOTS of these in Zurich!The GPS took us to a platform in a Zurich suburb with not even a railway
office on which to fasten a wireless hotspot beacon! So after re-
programming our beloved GPS we headed into the belly of the beast - the
C.B.D. of Zurich in search of a wifi zone. We found one quite easily BUT
no parking as far as the eye can see. Soooo your's truly jumps out the
van, walks down the street holding the laptop in the air trying to get a
signal. I am happy to report that I was successful but only when standing
at the very street corner looking like a cyber hooker!
We then programmed the GPS to find the nearest Tourist Office. You have to
picture the roads in Zurich. They are mostly all one-way, with no lane
markings and tram lines EVERYWHERE! We even ended up on a dual tram
carriageway where cars are disallowed and the people in the back seat of
the tram in front of us all waving madly and pointing us to a small road
where we could escape.
I had mentioned in my previous blog that people in Luzerne looked at us as
if they had never seen a camper van WELL Zurich is not any better and they
openely stare rudely making us mutter obscenities under our breath at these
people.
Finally, at 4:45pm we found the Tourist Info. Let me interrupt right now
and say.... that Jane (our GPS voiceover) says it was 7 minutes to your
destination!!! Dean stopped the van, on a slight widening of a main road
but where we thought it would be okay. I ran into the Tourist Info, stood
in a line, came face to face with a not very motivated lady. She circles
two areas on the map that have free Wifi. Yay I think, although already
knowing what lay ahead in trying to find this wifi hotspot.
I ran out to the van, expecting to see Dean but no Dean in sight. My first
thought was, "how long is it going to be before he gets back to me". I
could do nothing but wait. In my haste to leave the van, I had not put on
a very warm jacket so needless to say I was quite cold!
Thank goodness Dean wasn't too long in coming around. Now here is an
insert from Dean:
M had gone into the Tourist info centre leaving me parked on a busy Swiss
main road. Across from where we were parked, I noticed a McDonalds and
previous experience in Luzerne had shown me the name of the mcDonalds
wireless Network which I found by carefully balancing the laptop in the
passenger seat trying not to make things too obvious as where the van was
parked wasn't the best. I had a flicker on making it look as though I was
ready to pull out into the traffic at a moments notice. I managed to get
to the McDonalds login page which is a simple matter of clicking a button
and having 30 minutes of internet access, just enough for me to download
mail while waiting for Marielle. I clicked the login button the page and
my browser flashed to an error message, meaning I had lost the signal to
their hotspot. The only thing to do was balance the laptop on one hand
while trying to hit the backbutton with the other and pointing it in the
direction over the busy road while screaming at the kids to sit down and
stop rocking the van suspension at such a precarious moment. Something our
3 year old has not yet fully learned to understand.
It was a this crucial balancing act moment, where I felt 2 pairs of eyes
boring into the right hand side of my South African face and with extreme
concentration on my face, I lifted my chin to look outside Marielle's
passenger door window to find the bewildered and astonished facial
expressions of 2 Swiss Policemen peering across the cement barrierinto the
van. Knowing there was hardly any explanation for the balancing act, I
gently placed the laptop on M's seat, waived at them, and sped off -
thinking I wonder if I will ever see my wife again. At least I had Jane's
beautiful voices to listen to as she gently guided me back through the
Swiss traffic. Back to M now...
I was so relieved to see Dean when he came round the corner but he had the
pedestrians very confused. He saw me so promptly slowed down although the
robot was still green for him. The people waiting to cross the pedestrian
crossing were wondering what on earth he was doing.
We then started looking for the two wifi hotspots that the not-so-happy
tourist lady had circled on our map. To cut a very long story short, we
never found them so eventually after hours of driving headed for the same
one we had found before where it was Dean's turn to jump out the van, walk
to the street corner and download his mail leaving me in the van to cook
some supper BUT of course, after about 15 minutes of being parked (for the
very first time since 11am this morning), someone has the cheek to knock on
our van door and tell us to move.!!!
During the entire course of the day, I have moaned and groaned about this
city but Dean has said, all cities are the same, but we will still enjoy
this one when we walk around...
After the very rude person knocked on the door, Dean jumps in the van and
says, WE ARE LEAVING THIS PLACE!!! I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!!
We have now bade a very happy farewell to Zurich, have already encountered
major traffic out the city but are finally on a freeway heading towards
Bern where once again Swisscom says "Yes, there are plenty of wireless
networks".If this blog is updated by tomorrow afternoon, then you will know he was
right!
We have nowhere to sleep yet but Jetan has falled asleep and we hope to
find a place soon. I must admit, I can't wait to get back to the U.K.
where everyone speak English and it doesn't cost me R36.00 for about 350g
of mince meat!