At 6am, 16th August,2010, Zurich had the misty early morning glow. From the flight, just approaching its descent, everything seemed green with boxes placed neatly, some hilly landscaping and some smaller aircrafts flying in the distance. I'm not sure what I was expecting..maybe lego-land or something!
After getting engulfed by the aerobridge, we were taken down by huge escalators to this train-shuttle stop station. The PA system was announcing something in 3-4 different languages..And the signs said something strange. There are glass walls on both sides of the platform with automatic doors that open to allow people to enter the train. There was some line drawn on the floor near the automatic doors.... I didn't know which side was to and which was from! The guards cleared my doubt. So, I stood in the line. Most of the regulars stood well behind the line in a neat file, and we were wondering what the matter was! The train arrived, the PA started booming again, and people got in and got out and then some loud beeping sound came and I nearly got stuck between the glass automatic doors ! Arjun pulled me back in the nick of time!! So, we took the next shuttle. When the shuttle-train started moving, it made sounds of birds twittering, water falling and such further disorienting sounds. We were moving through a tunnel, where was the sound coming from?
Finally, we reached the main station. Cleared immigration, and picked up the bags. Our Swiss friends received us and took us up an escalator. We were heading toward the Zurich flughafen train station. I think, its the 1st time I saw people going up escalators with trolleys!We went up a couple of escalators and then walked across a bridge and then went down a couple. Going down was the tricky part. Someone's bags did fall out of the trolley and bounced down the escalator. And finally we were at this huge concourse. There were supermarkets, bagel stalls, fancy boutiques, everything. We got our Swiss travel Passes activated and then took another escalator to go down to the train station. We missed one train due to confusion on which compartment to enter into! Took the next one. In the train, we had to climb up a flight of staircase and find seats. We shoved our bags between seats, under seats, everywhere, and suddenly realised, in the entire train, only we were talking. Automatically, our language switched to Hindi and tone got softer. But the other travelling, although quiet, were very helpful. After a glimpse of the boxes I saw from the flight, through the train, we entered a series of tunnels and left Zurich.
The flight from Mumbai landed in Zurich, but we finally got out only at Bern!
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