Running through the streets of Zurich

Dear Blog, Yesterday my alarm went off at 8:45am. That's sleeping in for me, however, the night before I got no sleep whatsoever. So on this particular saturday, I just didn't want to get up at all. I could stay in bed if I wanted or catch a later train but I got up anyway...Zurich was waiting on me. I felt kind of off all throughout the morning and train ride. Woke up in a funk I guess. Once, I got there, it was magically lifted. I felt better again, I felt more like myself. I walked along the streets and found some really cool shops (english bookstore..glorious, record stores, and even a fun toy shop), didn't buy anything from any of those places because zurich is literally the most expensive city in the entire world..yikes! doesn't do well on my budget even if I just got paid. But this girl can't help herself when it comes to H&M and I found this adorable short white mod dress that I'm so excited to wear around the UK in a few short weeks. I was getting hungry though and went to find a pizza place (craving pizza for the longest time) and ended up at this one right by the water (you don't even want to know how much it was for a small one person cheese pizza...zurich..that's all I can really say). Let me diverge about the water for a second, it is SO clean. I've seen a lot of canals from venice to amsterdam and they don't have shit (sorry) on Zurich. You could swim in it and not only be certain that you won't get a bunch of diseases but come out of it feeling clean and refreshed. People weren't lying about switzerland being clean..in fact all the rumours I've heard about Switzerland are living up to their word. Expensive:check. Clean:check. Beautiful: double check. Alright back to pizza. Since I was alone, the waiter sat me next to this one bloke who was alone as well. Well..this bloke (Matt) noticed me fumbling with german words and speaking English so he asked me where I was from. He turned out to be from Colorado! I hardly ever meet fellow Americans on my travels. He just graduated from uni too. We were both travelling in Zurich for the day alone so at the end of the meal we decided to hang out for the rest of the day. I was really happy about this, travelling with someone else is so much better than being by yourself, even if it was just a one-day kind of friendship. I told him about the free bike place I saw online so we walked to find it...no luck though. It was there..luckily but they ran out of bikes..suppose I wasn't the only one in Zurich with this brilliant pocket saving idea. Well on to the next idea, walk around the lake front. The lake was perfectly clear, old swiss buildings surrounded it with mountains in the background, swans swam near the edges while the sailboats lazily sailed in the center. The weather was perfect too..sunny but mild. Perfect cardigan wearing weather. And you know how much I love my cardigans. They are to me as sweaters are to Mr.Rodgers. Then Matt and I saw paddle boats and thought we should check it out. We found the place really easily and it was decently priced (even better). So we got our paddleboat!! wooohooo! It was hilarious..we exchanged very few words with the guy who gave us this paddleboat but all he said to us was "Do you know the rules".."no" (in my mind...are you kidding, how would we know the rules..you have barely said 5 words to us).."Don't go under the bridges" and then he pushed us off and we were on our way. Matt and I couldn't help but crack up over that whole scenario. back in the states they would have surely gave us some long speech with a novel full of rules and how to even use the bloody paddle boat but all this strange swiss man had to say was not to go under the bridges..and we didn't. However, this contraption squeeked like crazy. Proper annoying to say the least. But I was happy, I love being on the water. We joked throughout the ride that we were going to jump in. About half way through our ride, we stopped to take pictures and give our legs a rest. And I said "If I'm going to do it, this is it...this is the time". So I did it. I jumped into Lake Zurich. Jeans and All. Once I was in, my first reaction ended up being a mouth full of curse words. It was damn cold. But after a few minutes, I felt so alive. I was spontaneously swimming in the middle of lake zurich. I kind of forgot about matt and the paddleboat for a minute. I just swam on my back and looked all around me. This is my life and I loved it. Once I got in, I really regretted the whole jean thing but hey what's a girl to do? I wanted to swim in the lake and I have a boyfriend so going in my underwear was definitely not an option. So once I'm sitting back in my seat, matt looks over at me...and says "Hell, I've got to do it". So he did! and once we were riding back..he sincerely says "Thank you, I would have never done that if it wasn't for you". Maybe he felt alive too. I was glad that I could be a part of that. I have to tell you something about this fellow...he is ROBBIE LAND! his voice, his looks, his humor. It freaked me out during that whole day. I felt like I just spent the whole day with Robbie. I think that really helped me feel comfortable and able to joke around as if he's been my friend for longer than just this one day. So once we were back on the streets of zurich..my jeans weren't drying and god knows that they weren't going to dry anytime soon. So we found some store (Adidas), I pretended to try something on but really just changed out of the jeans and into this mod dress that I bought earlier that day. The dress is quite short and I didn't want to slut it up in Zurich so then the goose chase to find black leggings began. Luckily I found some and all was right with the world. After exploring the city more and getting coffee ($7 small starbucks..killer), I was off on the train again, feeling much better than before. I love zurich as a city. I would live in Zurich. I always judge places on if they are visit worthy or living worthy and this was definitely both. It was beautiful with a blend of nature and city. It's perfect..minus the money bit. Once, I was back in my little village of Magden, I climbed up the hill looking at the clear night sky with an abundance of stars hanging about, and at the that time, the universe just felt right.