I arrived at Zurich Airport around 0800h, and as I was taking the “little train” from International Arrivals to the Customs Hall, I was reminded on the unique welcome to Zurich, complete with cow bells and Alpenhorn, as an animation on the side of the tunnel wall.

As I came out of the baggage area I was met by Rita. We then hopped on an S-Bahn train to take us to Wollishofen, on the western shore of Lake Zurich, where we were to meet up with Joe and Karen, a Swiss-American couple who we met in Australia at the start of the year, and with whom we played in a small steelband combo at a friends 60th birthday party in Ocean Grove. While originally American, they have lived in Switzerland for over 30 years and raised their family there. They recently bought a run-down house in Wollishofen and have done a great job with the renovations. The view of the lake and downtown Zurich from their upstairs windows is stunning.

Since it was one of the hottest Swiss days for the year (mid-30s), we decided to go down to the lake, and while the others (and the dog) went for a swim in the lake, I rested in the shade and just admired the view.

After lunch, and an hour or so of Joe and Rita practicing some new tunes on the pans for the proposed 2018 French Tour, we jumped back on the S-Bahn and headed back to the main station in Zurich where we caught a train back to Bern. Many public transport advocates in Melbourne sing the praises of the Zurich system, and while it is a pretty good system, it is far from cheap. For the 90 minute trip from Bern to Zurich (return for Rita and one-way for me) and the 20 minute trip to and from Wollishofen, the total cost was about 150CHF (about 250AUD). A comparable trip in Melbourne, from say an inner suburb by tram to Southern Cross Station and then by train to Castlemaine, would cost about 80AUD.

On the train trip back to Bern, we had an amazing coincidence as the train pulled out of Burgdorf. Rita spotted a young guy run for the train and just get on before the doors closed. She looked at him for a while, and then he looked at her for a while, until he came over and said “Rita?”. It turned out to be Lars, a young Swiss guy who stayed with us for a while in Taggerty about 5 years ago, and who borrowed our campervan (which we had bought from Swiss friends Sarah and Albon) and who then drove it through Queensland until it gave up the ghost in Winton, an outback town in western Queensland. It is still there with Butch, the local mechanic, and we doubt we will ever see it again. Lars has since started and is about to finish his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at Burgdorf (maybe if he'd studied mechanical engineering before he borrowed the van, we would still have it!). We tried to guess the probability of us meeting Lars after 5 years, on that train, in that carriage, at that time, on this day, and figured it was very, very small.