I am back in Zurich. I have 2 clients here and 1 set were too busy to see me when we were camped by the Zurichsee. This morning I took a taxi from the airport hotel to the city centre to see the other. As we drove in by the river I remembered our old city walking tour. The weather was deteriorating by then, summer was over and autumn well on the way,the trip to the campsite shower no longer appealing in just a towel robe. The walking tour was pleasant until we stopped to drink a beer outside a bar – it started to rain and everyone went inside, but we stayed, huddled under a sunshade, not ready to let go of the summer just yet.
Minutes before we had emerged from a narrow old street into a small square following the sound of beautiful, almost ethereal, music. We thought it was flutes but in fact it was a small portable version of the Caribbean oil drum, being played by a guy in deadlocks, but he was playing an almost orchestral piece, merged with a new age meditational feel. It was mesmerising, magical.
This memory then reminds me of other magical moments from our trip, like the impromptu teenage choir singing the church bell hymn at the top of Rocamadour, and the silent but haunting sight of the spotlit castle of Morella appearing to float above the hilltop town.
Then I miss our trip and the feeling of freedom it gave us, I feel the freedom more now than I did then, now I have lost it. I can’t wait to go again, though our next trips will be much more structured, constrained by the ties of my business, but then again facilitated by it too – how many people can do what I do and combine work with real travel, rather than just transportation…