To Liverpool, with Homage to Zurich

You’re wondering, why Liverpool? Its airport makes “why Liverpool?” abundantly clear in broad murals: The Beatles were born here, all four of the bright boys. But our reason was simpler, quieter, more practical, less star-struck, hardly musical. Ryan Air with its cheap plane tickets, and a proximal starting block for everything we wanted to see on a southerly itinerary through the Island, ending at Heathrow airport and including, in chronological order, the Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent), Birmingham, Huntingdon and St. Ives, all to the accompaniment of those rolling hills, that misted countryside. It was almost exactly what you’d expect from an American’s film-based perspective of the mother country. In this way England to me is much like Switzerland upon first glance: both countries fit their codified, maybe branded, international images.

Which reminds me, I skipped Switzerland, our first stop, in my writings. I want Switzerland and Sarah--my niece, Mom’s granddaughter and the facilitator of our two, let’s say idyllic, days in Zürich--to know that the oversight was neither intentional nor unintentional but, rather, natural. That is to say my experience in Switzerland was so flawless, relaxing, and easy from a logistical point of view (you might say everything went like clockwork) that it hardly shares the emotional tone of the trip it began. Being something like a dream, Zürich faded into the indelible smile I woke up with in the morning as the train approached Venice.

I recall this dream much in the way one recalls dreams, in fragments of the quotidian overlaid by the surreal. Our arrival at the airport, for example, was, as you would expect in Switzerland, on time, and the airport was also what you might expect of a Swiss airport: spotless, orderly, and convenient. But as the passengers of our flight from London filtered out into the vaulted, windowed space of the terminal it felt as if we’d entered a very clean ghost town, or a postmodern cathedral on a weekday. Besides an absence of vendors, loungers, and duty-free shops, there wasn’t even the usual rush of people to leave bread crumbs from debarkation to baggage claim. Everyone dispersed, and Mom and I found ourselves having to depend solely on signs to find our way to the exit. As we walked I imagined that robots took care of the cleaning at night, or that the floors and benches were self-cleaning, and that the whole airport operation was orchestrated from some central brain in a bunker underground: if I addressed it correctly it might respond. “Computer,” “Captain,” “Giselle, take us to observation deck fifteen.” (Big, powerful central computers are often given seductive female names, much as big boats. Someone once explained this phenomenon to me as the seductive power of all things flashy, or the confluence of a man’s growing monetary power and his waning sexual prowess.)

In such a surreal setting it was feasible to worry about finding Sarah and equally feasible to expect her sudden appearance before us out of molecules in the air. The latter version proved closer to the truth. Following the signs for the exit, we walked through the empty halls almost reverently, as if in a church or a library, and almost slowly, unlike any recent arrival at an airport that I’ve ever seen. We descended on a sporty escalator and entered the smooth, shiny, silent, and self-consciously uncomfortable airport shuttle. Inside, we looked around and wondered if we were moving in the right direction. It seemed appropriate at this point to say, “Giselle, give us Sarah Schofield’s coordinates, please,” but the big brain predicted our concerns and, obviating the need to voice the question, said in a rather seductive female voice to please hold the rail, the train would arrive at the exit in two stops. And, more or less, that’s where Sarah was waiting, one among very few other living people or lifelike robots at the reception area. We smiled, relieved; she smiled, relieved. She piled our luggage into her Audi and swept us off to what I like to call a cottage, because it was in Switzerland, was quaint, and was nestled in the idylls of the rolling hills above Zürich.

From here picture Zürich the way you’ve always pictured Zürich. Do you see a quiet, orderly, cobblestoned city surrounding a sparkling blue lake? Do you see Gothic-style churches, ecologically friendly cars, fashionable boutiques, and a clock tower about to chime the hour? Do you see unassuming European architecture? Classy, unhurried, unfettered pedestrians? Narrow, winding roads so clean one might consider removing footwear to feel the subdued pulse of the earth? A park just over the city where you might find a couple sipping white wine on a blanket or a group of locals gathered around a life-sized outdoor chessboard? Quick, efficient public transport? Public fountains that spout potable water? Rolling hillsides that alternate from forest to well-groomed farm fields? And tidy, inconspicuous cottages dotting the hillsides like wildflowers?

The parts of Zürich I saw made up a photo album for any Realtor looking to entice foreign investment. After we recovered a bit from our transatlantic flight at the beautiful, but unassuming house where Sarah works as an au pair, we drove into the city through a rolling hillside of forest and farmland, ate alongside unfettered, classy-looking Swiss at a charming vegetarian bistro called Tibits, and wandered along cobblestone streets that wound through small, fashionable boutiques and up past those ageless European churches to a park overlooking the center of the city. We meandered back into town and strolled along the flowering boardwalk of Lake Zürich, which winked and prevaricated under a setting sun.

Day two took grandmother and granddaughter on a bonding train trip to Bern, leaving Sarah’s best friend, Mika, also visiting from the States, and me to thumb through the sections on Lake Zürich in the realtor’s album on Switzerland. I felt like we were enacting some modern rendition of those classic impromptu expatriate encounters, such as A Roman Holiday, with paddleboat instead of Vespa, or Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, sans jewel heist. Mika and I trained into town through rolling hills of farm and forest, walked along the boardwalk bathed in midsummer sun, and settled on beach towels among the bronzed and lean of midweek, midday Zürich. Mika fit right in among the beautiful people basking on the banks of the lake, and I did my best to keep up, a phrase I can reuse to describe, vis-a-vis Mika, my swimming. This is how it was thus decided that I would man the paddleboat while Mika swam the width of the lake. She refused my request that she call me “coach,” and so I remained an awed, pale supporter shouting unnecessary calls of encouragement from behind the wheel of the paddleboat.

One farewell dinner of sushi on the bank of the lake and a cool walk to the train station through an impending rainstorm later, plus some adjustment to the idea of bedding down in the train’s cramped coupe-for-four, and we’re back at the next morning’s indelible smile and the start of going it on our own, at least until we met up with Neal, in Florence. But enough about Florence. How about a little Liverpool?

2006.08.04